The Senate has passed the USA Freedom Act, which moves to curtail how the NSA collects and stores American call records.
The Patriot Act expired on Sunday and with it the NSA’s authority to collect call records en masse. Under the USA Freedom Act, telephone companies will now hold all call records for a period of 18 months.
The government will need to go through a court to access those records. Under the Patriot Act, the NSA collected and stored call data in bulk on its own. The House of Representatives passed the bill in April.
The USA Freedom Act has the support of the White House and President Obama is expected to sign it into law.
