Fact Sheet: Senate’s USA FREEDOM ACT OF 2014

http://blogs.rollcall.com/technocrat/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2014/07/USA-FREEDOM-Act-background.pdf
USA FREEDOM ACT OF 2014
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 bans the bulk collection of Americans’private records.
• This bill enacts significant reforms to the surveillance
authorities that the government has used to justify collecting Americans’ telephone records and Internet metadata in bulk.
• It bans bulk collection by requiring the government to narrowly limit the scope of its collection, and makes clear that the
government may not collect all information relating to a
particular service provider or to a broad geographic region, such as a city, zip code or area code.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 provides the Intelligence Community
with the authority it needs to collect phone records in a more
targeted manner.
To replace bulk collection, the bill authorizes the use of
Section215 to obtain two hops of “call detail records” on a daily basis, if the government can demonstrate reasonable, articulable
suspicion that its search term is associated with a foreign
terrorist organization.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 expands government and company
reporting to the public.
• The bill requires the government to report the number of
individuals whose information has been collected under various
authorities; the number of those individuals who were likely
Americans; and the number of searches run on Americans in certain databases. It contains exceptions for numbers that are not
currently possible to generate.
• This bill gives private companies four options for reporting
public information about the number of FISA orders and national
security letters they receive.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 reforms the FISA Court process.
• This bill requires the FISA Court, in consultation with the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, to appoint a panel ofspecial advocates who are to advance legal positions in support ofindividual privacy and civil liberties.
• This bill enhances mechanisms for appellate review of
FISA Court decisions. The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 brings
Section 215 and National Security Letter nondisclosure orders intocompliance with the First Amendment.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 imposes new privacy protections for
FISA pen registers.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 prohibits the use of unlawfully
obtained information under Section 702 of FISA.
The USA FREEDOM Act of 2014 extends the June 2015 USA PATRIOT Act sunsets to December 2017, to bring them in line with the current
FISA Amendments Act sunset.