Congress passes first major NSA reforms since Edward Snowden leaks

After a bitter fight between Republican factions in the Senate, the USA Freedom Act was finally passed on Tuesday evening and rushed to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature.

The law ends the NSA's practice of collecting and storing billions of phone records in what critics called "a dragnet" that captured the personal information of citizens not suspected of any crime.

Under the new law, the phone records will be held by telephone companies rather than collected into a vast US government database.

US investigators must also provide specific reasons for searching the phone records, whereas before there were few limits on what they could look at without a warrant.

While the law was supported by 67 out of 100 senators and had the backing of the White House some national security hawks and civil libertarians opposed it.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican senate leader, said the law "undermines American security" and would weaken the ability of US intelligence agencies to foil terror plots.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a leading civil rights group, said the law did not go far enough and in practice did little to rein in the power of the NSA.

"The bill leaves many of the government’s most intrusive and overbroad surveillance powers untouched," said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU deputy legal director.

All sides agreed that the bill's passage was a milestone in the debate over security and liberty that began with Snowden's release of thousands of classified NSA documents.

The disclosures revealed how the American government was gathering "metadata" on every landline phone call made in the US, allowing investigators to see who called who, where they called from and how long they spoke for.

US intelligence agencies insisted the programme - known as bulk telephony metadata collection - was vital for stopping terrorist attacks against American cities.

But a group of experts convened by Mr Obama concluded that the programme was "not essential to preventing attacks" and the spy agencies eventually agreed to allow it to be reformed.

The passage of the USA Freedom Act also ends a two-day lapse in America's security capabilities after parts of the Patriot Act, the sweeping counter-terror legislation passed after September 11, expired on Sunday night.

The White House said the lapse - which meant that neither the phone companies nor the US government were collecting phone records - was "irresponsible" and a danger to American security.

(telegraph.co.uk)