House of Representatives votes to end NSA bulk phone data collection

The US House of Representatives has approved legislation that would end the collection of phone records from millions of Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA) despite opposition from some Senate Republicans.

The bill, named USA Freedom Act, was passed n Wednesday 338 to 88, with broad bipartisan support. 

The measure would prevent an NSA surveillance program that collects bulk information about who Americans call and the duration of conversations.

A federal appeals court ruled last week that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone records is illegal.

“That program is illegal and based on a blatant misinterpretation of the law,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who helped co-author the new bill.

Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, accused Republicans calling for reauthorization of the program of “bluster and fear mongering.”

The bill would take the government out of the phone collection business and place it in the hands of private phone companies. However, the NSA would still have access to phone records.

The bill would create a new system that requires the NSA to obtain court approval to request phone records from phone companies on a case-by-case basis.

It would also allow telecommunication and internet firms to reveal more information about their involvement in national security investigations and require the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to declassify more judgments and opinions, which are often kept secret.

Congress must act by June 1 when the provision of the Patriot Act that allows the NSA mass spying program expires.

The House measure is widely seen as a big win for privacy and civil rights advocates who blamed the NSA for its unconstitutional surveillance of ordinary citizens’ telephone data.

The NSA is an intelligence-gathering division of the US military, and many of its operations are secret. It frequently focuses on intercepting foreign electronic or telephone communication to help US spying efforts, though it has collected domestic telephone records as part of the controversial program.

The mass collection, which began after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, was revealed in June 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The revelation inflicted a heavy blow to the US image across the globe.

Several Senate Republicans have said the US government should be collecting more data, not less.

“I am incredibly disappointed that we’ve allowed a program that is something that’s supposed to be so important to our national security to be so ineptly carried out,” Sen. Bob Corker said. “The amount of data collected is so minimal.”

AHT/AGB

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