AFTER missing its deadline on Sunday, the Senate met on June 2nd to pass the USA Freedom Act, which replaces and reforms a lapsed provision of the Patriot Act, the law that regulates America’s snooping. Lawmakers largely avoided debate over sundry amendments, ensuring the same bill passed by the House last month went straight to Barack Obama, who swiftly signed it into law. This was a blow to hawks such as Mitch McConnell, the majority leader and a Kentucky Senator, who argue that the changes come at the expense of national security. Before the final vote on the bill, Mr McConnell took to the Senate floor to lament that it will “take one more tool away from those who defend our country every day.” The USA Freedom Act will stop the indiscriminate harvesting of phone-call records by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s signals intelligence branch. Under the revamped rule, call metadata records would be kept by phone companies, not the government. Federal officials will be required to request records using “a specific selection term” on the basis of “reasonable articulable suspicion” that the call information is linked to international terrorism. Broad search terms, encompassing everyone in Ohio, or everyone on an AT&T plan, are out.



The USA Freedom Act also contains several reforms intended to shine some light on the secret federal court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—otherwise known as the FISA court. First, the law requires the government to declassify FISA court decisions that are deemed “significant”. Second, the FISA court must now appoint a panel of five “amicus curiae” to advise it on matters of privacy and civil liberties when new “significant” cases come before the court.

Mr McConnell and other Senate hawks had initially opposed the USA Freedom Act, preferring to reauthorise the Patriot Act's expiring provisions through 2020. But when it became clear on Sunday—mere hours before three parts of the law would expire—that support for straight-up reauthorisation would not materialise, Mr McConnell reversed himself and threw support behind the USA Freedom Act. But Mr Paul blocked the procedural measures that would have been necessary to pass the bill before the June 1st deadline.