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Daines Watered Down USA Freedom Act Fails To Provide Much-Needed Protections From NSA Overreach

Press Release

Date: May 22, 2014
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: National Security Civil Liberties and Civil Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Representative Steve Daines today voted against the drastically weakened USA Freedom Act, which failed to adequately protect Americans' Fourth Amendment rights and prevent ongoing abuses and overreach by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Daines helped introduce the original USA Freedom Act last year to end the NSA's bulk meta-data program and work toward reforms that protect Montanans' privacy and civil liberties and increase NSA transparency and accountability.

The bill voted on today is substantially different than the original legislation supported by Daines. While the bill contains modest improvements to current law, non-transparent backroom deals drastically changed the intent of the bill and gutted its protections against NSA surveillance and bulk collection of metadata.

"I have long called for comprehensive reforms to the NSA's mass data collection program that fully ensure Montanans' personal information and civil liberties are protected, but this bill doesn't achieve the much-needed reforms and protections that Montanans deserve," Daines said. "Last-minute deals that were made behind closed doors stripped out badly needed protections of our Constitutional rights and personal privacy. I'm proud to have helped introduce the USA Freedom Act last year and stand in strong support of the important reforms and privacy protections it contains. The bill voted on by the House today looks nothing like that and is far too weak to effectively address the NSA abuses it was intended to stop."

Last year, Congressman Daines also supported an amendment to the 2014 Department of Defense Appropriations Act, introduced by Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), which called for the end of NSA's blanket collection of Americans' telephone records by authorizing the FISA court to order the production of business records and other "tangible items" that pertain only to a person under an authorized counterterrorism investigation.


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