WASHINGTON: A bill has been introduced in the US Senate, aiming at to strengthen civil liberties and curb the power of the secret FISA courts that approved widespread foreign and domestic National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance policies.
The bill, from a bipartisan group of US senators including Democrats Ron Wyden, Mark Udall, and Richard Blumenthal and Republican Rand Paul, was introduced in response to revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who shed light on the scope and scale of US spying activities.
The bill calls for an end to the NSA’s spying practices and more transparency on the part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA court, which reviews the US government’s surveillance requests.
If approved, the bill would end NSA’s collection of Americans’ phone records. It would also eliminate the agency’s authority to install so-called backdoors to monitor Americans’ various methods of internet communication.
