The U.S. Senate rejected the bill, complicating the access of U.S. intelligence to the data of ordinary citizens. At the same time, Congress did not renew the powers of the national security Agency (NSA) to conduct mass surveillance. U.S. officials fear that since June 1, the country will be defenseless in the face of the terrorist threat.
According to Cnews, the U.S. Senate did not support the bill “On freedom” (Freedom to Act), designed to end mass surveillance, which trades NSA. The bill was supported by 57 senators, while 42 voted against it. For the passage of the bill lacked three votes. Last week the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority of the lower house of Congress — the house of representatives (338 votes in favor and 88 against).
The adoption of the law “On freedom” were made by many large American companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Dropbox, Twitter and Mozilla. In March 2015 they signed an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama to limit the authority of U.S. intelligence agencies.
In the case of taking the law in its current form, data about the phone calls would be in the hands of operators. And the NSA could access them only after obtaining permission from the court.
At the same time the Senate rejected the bill, prolonging the action of some articles of the law “About patriotism” (Patriot Act) until 31 July 2015, including article 215. This article was adopted in 2001 after the terrorist attack, which destroyed the world trade center towers in new York. The article regulates the activities of the NSA and, in particular, allows the Agency to collect data on telephone calls by any subscriber, including ordinary citizens, even if they are not suspected of terrorism and the violation of any other laws.
It is expected that next week, may 31, 2015, senators will reconvene to decide the fate of article 215 of the law “About patriotism”. If they do not, from 1 June 2015, the NSA can no longer get unlimited data access on the phone calls.
Questions about the powers of the NSA appeared once in June 2013 Edward Snowden, a former system administrator of the NSA and CIA, have published information about the secret Prism program, which allegedly was involved Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and other companies, providing the intelligence data about their customers. The company, for its part, involvement in the program is denied.
