Director
Kate Martin
The Center for National Security Studies Applauds
The USA Freedom Act, the First Significant Limit on
Unnecessary and Unconstitutional Surveillance Powers
of the Post- PATRIOT Act era
June 8, 2015
The USA Freedom Act was signed into law by President Obama on June 2, 2015 after
both the House and Senate passed it with large bipartisan majorities. As Senator Leahy, a chief
sponsor of the bill recognized, it “is a historic moment. It is the first major overhaul of
government surveillance laws in decades that adds significant privacy protections for the
American people.”
The Center for National Security Studies has worked on government surveillance since
the mid-1970’s, including the 2001 PATRIOT Act and all the amendments since then.
Enactment of the USA Freedom Act is the first time since 2001 that the civil liberties
community, the intelligence community and industry have agreed on a package of measures to
protect individual liberties and constitutional government by curtailing unnecessary government
surveillance powers. The USA Freedom Act was supported by civil liberties groups, including
the Center for National Security Studies as a significant improvement to current law. It was
negotiated with the intelligence community, as well as other parts of the Executive Branch and
was supported by the President, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence.
The Act makes clear that Congress does not authorize the mass collection by the NSA of
the metadata of all communications by Americans – whether by telephone or internet - while
preserving the government’s capability to retrieve the metadata of communications by suspected
terrorists. The Act does so by amending not only the business records provision of the
PATRIOT Act, section 215, but also by amending the pen register/trap and trace provisions of
the FISA that were used by the NSA for bulk collection of Americans’ internet metadata, and by
amending national security letter authorities so that they may not be used for such bulk
collection. The Act requires greater transparency about the operations of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, by mandating disclosure concerning rulings by the Court, a
necessary step to prevent the use of secret law for the secret surveillance of Americans. It also
requires additional public reporting concerning the use of these surveillance authorities and
requires internal reviews by agency Inspectors General.
The Center is extremely appreciative of the many months and even years of work by the
sponsors which were essential to enactment of this legislation, including Senators Leahy and Lee
and Congressmen Sensenbrenner, Conyers, Nadler, and Goodlatte and would like to note
especially the countless hours and irreplaceable expertise brought to the task by the staff of these
Members. The Center also applauds President Obama’s support for the legislation over the past
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year and a half and appreciates the work done by the intelligence community, including the
ODNI, the NSA and the DOJ to negotiate a bill consistent with the President’s objectives, which
would advance privacy and government transparency and accountability.
Additional reforms to government surveillance authorities that have mushroomed in the
past fourteen years are still needed to properly protect constitutional rights. We look forward to
continuing to work with the Executive and the Congress to identify the information that is
necessary for an informed public debate and then engaging in a public democratic process to
identify additional reforms that will both restore constitutional protections and serve legitimate
national security needs.
In the meantime, we expect the government to adopt all necessary procedures to
faithfully implement the publicly understood intentions of Congress as quickly as possible. In
particular, we expect that the executive will faithfully implement its commitments to ending bulk
collection of communications metadata and to insuring transparency concerning the scope of
surveillance and the interpretations of the legal authorities being used.
For further information, please contact Kate Martin at kmartin@cnss.org or Joe Onek at
jonek@rabengroup.com.
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