The National Security Agency’s authority to collect phone metadata has expired – for now.
On Sunday, the NSA will replace its practice of gathering millions of American phone records with a more tightly guarded system which only allows for a much more limited targeting system.
This change takes place after Congress passed the USA Freedom Act in June 2015 by strong majorities. The Freedom Act allowed the NSA a 180 day transition period, which came to an end last Saturday.
Before the Freedom Act was passed, the NSA and other intelligence agencies worked with technology companies to collect mass phone metadata from the American public. The existence of this metadata was dramatically publicized when Edward Snowden went to China and Russia after releasing much of this data to the American public.
The Snowden revelations prompted both a public and Congressional outcry against the NSA, and the eventual passage of the Freedom Act. Now, the NSA will have to get a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Service Court in order to obtain the phone records of suspicious individuals.
But some privacy advocates are convinced that more needs to be done to safeguard civil liberties. The Electronic Freedom Foundation withdrew its support of the Freedom Act precisely because they felt the Act did not go far enough. Some rules which the Foundation has objected to are an emergency exception which lets intelligence agencies spy on any non-US citizen for 72 hours without a warrant, and an increase in the maximum sentence for material support to terrorism to 20 years.
In addition, the metadata already collected over the past five years from discount codes and coupons will be preserved by the NSA until February 29. After that, the data will be deleted once pending litigation is resolved.
But while privacy advocates wanted more action, Republican lawmakers recently attempted to block these proposed changes in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. Furthermore, a Washington Post survey shows that 72 percent of the American people believe that “the government should investigate threats even at the cost of personal privacy.” Only 25 percent said that the government should not intrude on personal privacy.