- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
Washington (CNN)The Senate approved on Tuesday a bill to reform National Security Agency domestic surveillance programs, ending a drawn-out showdown on Capitol Hill that saw counterterrorism provisions expire.
The vote was 67 to 32.
The bill, which passed the House nearly three weeks ago, now heads to President Barack Obama, who has pledged to sign the bill.
His signature will ultimately end the government's indiscriminate collection of millions of Americans' phone metadata, requiring the government obtain a targeted warrant to access the data instead.
"It's historical. It's the first major overhaul of government surveillance in decades," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democratic sponsor of the reform measure called the USA Freedom Act.
The vote came two days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell begrudgingly moved to vote on the compromise bill after pressure from House Republicans, the Obama administration and staunch reform advocates in the Senate, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who helped force the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions late Sunday.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-vote-patriot-act-nsa/
The vote was 67 to 32.
The bill, which passed the House nearly three weeks ago, now heads to President Barack Obama, who has pledged to sign the bill.
His signature will ultimately end the government's indiscriminate collection of millions of Americans' phone metadata, requiring the government obtain a targeted warrant to access the data instead.
"It's historical. It's the first major overhaul of government surveillance in decades," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democratic sponsor of the reform measure called the USA Freedom Act.
The vote came two days after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell begrudgingly moved to vote on the compromise bill after pressure from House Republicans, the Obama administration and staunch reform advocates in the Senate, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who helped force the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions late Sunday.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/02/politics/senate-usa-freedom-act-vote-patriot-act-nsa/