US House Passes Freedom Bill: Citizens’ Privacy Protected, NSA Spying Curbed

Edward Snowden, in 2013, leaked thousands of documents to journalists that reported that the National Security Agency had been secretly collecting Americans’ landline phone calls, emails, and other online data, for many years. With an overwhelming 338-88 margin, the US House of Representatives today passed the Freedom Act to put troves of telephonic metadata beyond the reach of government spies – a heavy blow to the mass surveillance programs of NSA.

The Freedom Act replaces the controversial Patriot Act, under which the NSA routinely collects vast amounts of communication data from the Internet and telephone systems, including targets in India and other nations considered friends of the U.S. The reforms explicitly prohibit the mass collection of telephone metadata – phone numbers, time and duration of calls – by the NSA, as well as electronic data such as emails and web addresses. It, however, seeks to only protect American citizens from the Agency’s bulk surveillance; it does not limit the NSA’s power to collect telephonic metadata relating to foreigners.

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