USA Freedom Hailed as Great ‘First Step’ in Surveillance Reform

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., and Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., authors of HR-2048, issued a joint statement Tuesday applauding the Senate for “finally” approving the bill. “This strong, bipartisan bill contains the most sweeping set of reforms to government surveillance practices in nearly 40 years,” they said.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, disagreed USA Freedom ended government surveillance because the legislation failed to address Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes “‘backdoor’ snooping and seizure of citizens['] phone calls, text messages and emails,” Poe said in a statement. Poe said he would continue to work with his colleagues to “end warrantless government surveillance that defies the Fourth Amendment right to privacy guaranteed to every American in the Constitution.” Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., applauded passage of the bill, but agreed more work needs to be done: “This is just the first step in protecting Americans['] communications from unwarranted searches.”

Since USA Freedom doesn’t address Executive Order 12333, which allows acquisition of data “right off the fibers” and “automatically flows to the NSA,” NSA Whistleblower William Binney said the bulk collection program will continue for more than just the next six months as the NSA transfers the metadata collection program to the telecommunications companies, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Under FCC rule 47 C.F.R. Section 42.6, carriers that offer or bill toll telephone services must retain records on long-distance calls for at least 18 months, in the event of billing disputes. The rule requires companies to keep the name, address and phone number of the caller, along with the number called, date, time and length of the call. Some companies have applied this to wireless calls, but that’s not required at this time by the FCC. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has expressed concern with the 18-month data retention length, but Attorney General Loretta Lynch and National Intelligence Director James Clapper wrote a letter to Congress last month that said existing practices at telecommunications companies “will retain the essential operational capabilities of the existing bulk telephone metadata program while eliminating bulk collecting by the government."

Verizon endorsed the legislation in a statement in May after the House passed USA Freedom, but didn't respond to requests for comment Wednesday. AT&T and Sprint declined to comment. T-Mobile didn’t respond to our requests for comment.

More Work To Be Done

USA Freedom “is the most significant national security surveillance reform measure in the past three decades, but the bill does not solve all the problems with surveillance,” said Center for Democracy & Technology Advocacy Director Harley Geiger. Congress needs to end warrantless law enforcement access to Americans’ emails by “updating the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, as well as overhauling Section 702 of FISA to strengthen the privacy of Americans and non-U.S. persons alike,” Geiger said.

“Without a doubt, [USA Freedom] is the strongest new regulation of America’s intelligence agencies since the spying scandals of the [']70s, and it is the result of a broad bipartisan majority of Congress responding to the average American’s clear demand: do not spy on us,” said New America’s Open Technology Institute Policy Director Kevin Bankston. Ending the bulk collection program is just the beginning of reform, Bankston said. “We will need to be vigilant to ensure that the reforms in USA Freedom are implemented faithfully, using the transparency and accountability tools created by the bill to make sure that the new bans on bulk collection are working,” he said.

Bankston and Geiger agreed that Goodlatte should hold a hearing on Section 702 changes, as he promised during a markup of USA Freedom (see 1504300042). “Ultimately, we are not just fighting over this or that surveillance program -- we are fighting for the soul of the 21st century, to ensure that modern communications technologies remain a tool of liberation rather than of oppression,” he said.

A House Judiciary Committee aide told us the committee will continue to oversee intelligence-gathering programs operated under FISA and it plans to address Section 702 before it sunsets in 2017. Every privacy group wants to deal with other surveillance programs like Section 702 and EO 12333, ExposeFacts investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler said. USA Freedom is one of the biggest reforms ever, but it’s worth noting the Section 215 program was not working very well, so ending it gave the NSA some political credibility, Wheeler said.

In addition to ending the bulk telephony metadata program authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the bill continues “meaningful reforms for Internet users like shutting the door to the bulk collection of Internet metadata authorized under a “separate legal authority that the government relied upon in the past to collect Internet metadata in bulk,” Google’s Americas Public Policy and Government Relations Vice President Susan Molinari wrote in a blog post. Google is pleased “Congress took the initiative to prevent the bulk collection of Internet metadata under these legal authorities,” given they did not expire on June 1, Molinari said. While USA Freedom is a “critical first step toward restoring trust in the Internet,” Molinari, too, said additional reforms are needed.