New bipartisan push to end NSA surveillance program

A group of bipartisan lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would end the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass collection of U.S. phone data.

The bill’s introduction by a group of civil libertarian lawmakers comes weeks after a national security aide to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) revealed that the NSA has shuttered its call-detail records program.

The Ending Mass Collection of Americans’ Phone Records Act would end the program for good, taking away the NSA’s authority to restart it. The bill was introduced by privacy hawks Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).

“This bill permanently stops one of the sprawling surveillance state’s most intrusive overreaches and is the first step in a movement to reclaim the constitutional liberties sacrificed by the overreaching provisions of the PATRIOT Act,” Paul said in a statement.

The call-detail records program gathered metadata on domestic text messages and phone calls, which privacy activists have long said allows the government to access extremely detailed private information about U.S. citizens.

The NSA program was authorized by the 2015 USA Freedom Act, which is up for reauthorization later this year. A major congressional battle has been expected over the reauthorization of the surveillance program’s legal authority, often referred to as Section 215, which is one of the USA Freedom Act’s most highly contested provisions.