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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, hails the end of the NSA bulk collection of phone data.
(The Associated Press)
The National Security Agency on Sunday ended its controversial bulk collection of metadata from U.S. phone calls. The massive phone trawling was allowed under the Patriot Act and kept secret for years. A new law, passed in June and called the USA Freedom Act, requires the NSA to get a court order to acquire records from phone companies for specific, targeted surveillance.
The Baltimore Sun calls the USA Freedom Act "the most significant change in U.S. intelligence-gathering since Edward Snowden revealed details of the agency's programs two years ago."
Ron Wyden, Oregon's senior U.S. senator, goes further than that.
"This is a victory for everyone who believes in protecting both American security and Americans' constitutional rights," he said in a statement released by his office. "Today the NSA is shutting down a mass surveillance program that needlessly violated the privacy of millions of Americans every day, without making our country any safer."
Wyden continued: "This program's very existence was concealed from the American public for over a decade. Across two administrations, senior officials from U.S. intelligence agencies and the Justice Department repeatedly made false and misleading statements that concealed the truth about what they were doing. These officials relied on a secret body of law to justify the mass surveillance of the American people. Fortunately, in America sooner or later the truth always comes out." He added that he is confident that the U.S. can overcome terrorist threats "without sacrificing our most cherished rights and values."
The USA Freedom Act requires the federal government to report every year to Congress on its court orders for phone records.