OTI Supports New USA FREEDOM Act As Last, Best Hope for Surveillance Reform

Tonight,
Representatives Sensenbrenner (R, WI-5) and Conyers (D, MI-13) will introduce
the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015. Senators Leahy (D, VT) and Lee (R, UT) will
introduce an identical companion bill in the Senate. This bill is the latest
version of the flagship surveillance reform bill that passed the House
overwhelmingly last year but then fell two votes short of moving forward in the Senate.

The bill, expected to be considered by the House
Judiciary Committee this week,
would end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of American’s telephone
records currently being authorized under USA PATRIOT Act Section 215, while also
banning such indiscriminate bulk collection of any type of record under a
variety of other legal authorities.

This new reform bill
comes just a week after Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) introduced his
own legislation (S. 1035) to renew PATRIOT Section 215 for another five years
without any reforms at all, a move that New America’s Open Technology Institute
(OTI) strongly condemned.

A chart comparing
today’s bill to last year’s Senate version of USA FREEDOM, as well as to the
version of last year’s House USA FREEDOM that was unanimously approved by the
House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, can be found here.
Based on OTI’s analysis, the new bill retains and in some cases improves
on most of the key provisions of the Senate bill and is a substantial
improvement over the weaker House Committee bill, which in turn was much
stronger than the watered-down version that the House eventually voted on.

The following statement can be attributed to Kevin
Bankston, OTI’s Policy Director:

“Although the bill
does not contain all of the reforms that the Open Technology Institute believes
are necessary, passage of the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 would represent an
important first step in the long process of reining in the NSA’s overreaching
surveillance programs. OTI therefore urges the Judiciary and Intelligence
Committees to favorably report the bill to the House floor as soon as possible,
and for the House to approve the legislation without delay and without
weakening any of its important reforms. A strong vote in the House will help
ensure that the bill can pass through the Senate ahead of the June 1^st
deadline for the renewal of PATRIOT Section 215, that deadline being the
primary leverage for obtaining reform during this Congress.

“In addition to
being necessary to protect Americans’ privacy, reform is also necessary to
restore international trust in the US technology industry, which as detailed in
OTI’s report “Surveillance Costs” has been seriously damaged by news of the
NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Last month, OTI and a coalition of 47 civil
society groups and major tech companies wrote to Congress demanding that, at a minimum, surveillance
reform must include a clear and effective ban on bulk collection along with adequate
transparency and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the bans are working.
We believe that today’s version of the USA FREEDOM Act meets those
requirements, much like last year’s Senate bill, which OTI strongly supported.

“Although it is not
the ideal surveillance reform bill—few compromises are ever ideal—today’s
version of the USA FREEDOM Act is a much stronger bill than the version that
the House of Representatives approved last year. The bill would end a bulk
surveillance program that the President’s own Review Group and the independent
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded has not helped prevent
any terrorist attacks and poses a serious threat to all Americans’ privacy, and
the bill also includes a wide range of transparency and accountability reforms
that the privacy community and the US technology industry have been demanding
for the last two years. It’s time for Congress to start restoring trust in the
privacy and security of data that’s stored with US companies, not only to
protect our rights, but also to protect America’s economic security.

“We hope that the
House of Representatives will quickly vote to approve the USA FREEDOM Act so
that we can take the fight to the Senate, whose leadership appears intent on rubber-stamping
the NSA’s mass spying. In the meantime, we will continue to work with Congress
to try and make the bill even stronger and get key reforms that were lost in
negotiation put back into the bill—reforms such as even more detailed
transparency reporting provisions, and new ‘super-minimization’ procedures that
would require the government to destroy records it collects under PATRIOT Act
section 215 that aren’t related to terrorism or espionage investigations.

“This latest version of USA FREEDOM is far
from perfect, but it will definitively end the NSA’s bulk records collection
program, and would represent a clear victory for reformers that we could then
build on as we begin to address even bigger and more worrisome programs like
the NSA’s broad programs of Internet surveillance conducted under Section 702
of the FISA Amendments Act. Passing USA FREEDOM now, using the upcoming
expiration of Section 215 as leverage, is our last, best chance for meaningful
surveillance reform in the foreseeable future. Anyone in Congress who
cares about ending bulk surveillance by the NSA should support this bill,
because the most likely alternatives if this bill fails are either a sham
reform bill that’s much weaker, or a straight reauthorization of Section 215
with no reform at all. At this point, a vote against USA FREEDOM is a vote
against surveillance reform, period, even if it’s motivated by a desire for
stronger reforms. We want more reforms too—but the best way to get them is to
succeed in passing USA FREEDOM now and then build on that success, rather than
let this opportunity slip by.”

A chart comparing today’s bill to last year’s Senate
version of USA FREEDOM, as well as to the version of last year’s House USA FREEDOM
Act that was approved by the Judiciary Committee, can be found here.