Today, the National Security Agency will end its mass collection of data about Americans’ phone calls under the Patriot Act, 2½ years after a leak by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden forced the government to confirm its existence. That period ends at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 28.
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So why do we know about the NSA spying on your conversations with Grandma?
Rather than have the government collect and keep the records, under the Freedom Act, phone companies will now be expected to provide them to government agencies after reception of an intelligence court’s order based on a “specific selection term”.
The revelation touched off a contentious two-year debate about the proper scope of government surveillance and several lawsuits challenging the program.
According to NBC, after Saturday night the government must make a formal request to the telephone company any time it wants to examine a phone number that it suspects is linked to a terrorism case. No longer will the NSA have its own records of this sort of information.
Privacy advocates largely pulled their support for this reform effort before the USA Freedom Act was passed, saying that the language in the bill was too vague and noting that no “probable cause” standard was required to be granted a warrant through FISC.
Of course, not all members of Congress are pleased with the demise of this data collection.
Earlier this month, some Republican senators tried to delay the end of the metadata collection program, citing the November 13 attacks in Paris.
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But security experts – including James Clapper from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – seem confident about the next phase of USA intelligence. “He said in a statement, “[It] allows national security professionals to retain the capabilities necessary to continue protecting the country, while strengthening the civil liberties protections that the American people cherish”.
