The National Security Agency's spying powers could soon be curtailed thanks to what is being called the strongest show of bipartisan support for surveillance reform in over a decade.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 25-2 on Thursday to approve the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would effectively end the bulk collection of phone records allowed under the Patriot Act, and provide small but meaningful reform to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court that approves NSA surveillance requests, The New York Times reported. The bill will now move to the House floor, where it is expected to move through quickly.
The NSA is currently able to collect bulk phone records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. The USA Freedom Act would instead force spy agencies to narrow their searches by asking for specific information about an individual, account or device, rather than conducting mass data sweeps.
The information would be collected and stored by private phone companies and could only be retrieved by intelligence agencies after getting approval from the FISA court.
As for those secret courts, the Freedom Act would create a panel of experts to advise the FISA court on issues such as privacy, civil liberties and technology, and would require the declassification of novel court opinions or interpretations, according to the NY Times.
The vote took place just two days after the legislation was reintroduced in both chambers of Congress due to an urgency to reauthorize the Patriot Act before three key provisions expire on June 1. The USA Freedom Act would extend those provisions, including the one that the NSA uses to justify data collection, until December 2019.
An identical bill introduced in the Senate, backed by five Republicans, is quickly gaining support despite objections from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who introduced a bill that would renew without change the expiring parts of the Patriot Act.
If the Freedom Act passes, it would be the first time since 1978 that Congress has scaled back the NSA's surveillance powers, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF, which voiced support for the bill, noted that its passage is an important step in the right direction, but still lacks in certain areas.
"One example is the lack of clearly mandated procedures to delete any information unrelated to the target of the investigation," the EFF said. The group also voiced concerns over the extension of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
The Freedom Act also fails to address Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which the government uses to justify "upstream" mass surveillance and the PRISM program that collects Internet communications from nine major U.S. Internet companies.
The ACLU went even further by pulling its support for the reform measure. "Congress should let Section 215 sunset as it's scheduled to, and then it should turn to reforming the other surveillance authorities that have been used to justify bulk collection," said Jameel Jaffer, the group's deputy legal director, The Hill reported.
The ACLU also spoke out against a provision that would increase the maximum prison sentence from 15 to 20 years for people who provide material support to terrorist organizations, calling it "a significant step backwards."
