“The NSA’s large scale collection of phone metadata has deeply undermined the public’s trust in government and is doing serious harm to basic freedoms and democratic accountability in the US,” said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Senate’s bill is a much-needed first step, and Congress should act quickly to approve it without letting it be diluted.”
Human Rights Watch had previously criticized the ambiguous language in the House version of the bill. That version would leave broad loopholes that could ultimately fail to end mass phone data collection, despite the fact that its sponsors say that is the central objective of the draft law. The House-passed bill also would weaken transparency and oversight provisions in an earlier draft of the USA Freedom Act that could have improved supervision of surveillance practices.
