Tech giants call for swift implementation of the USA Freedom Act

Several tech companies that are part of the Reform Government Surveillance, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple, are calling for the USA Freedom Act to be passed. This bill aims to curb the NSA dragnet method of collecting metadata.

The USA Freedom Act allows technology companies to publish more information about the number and types of government requests. This transparency should counteract NSA excesses, such as those highlighted in the Snowden documents, especially the large-scale collection of metadata from US citizens.

The bill has yet to pass before the Christmas recess in the US Senate after the USA Freedom Act was passed by the United States House of Representatives in May. According to the members of the Reform Government Surveillance, which includes several large tech companies, the Senate members would do well to pass the bill before the end of the year. The reforms within the USA Freedom Act provide, according to the lobby group, “a reaffirmation of American freedoms” without jeopardizing national security.

The pressure to pass the law quickly appears to have been prompted in part by the recently held midterm elections in which Republicans, often in favor of far-reaching powers for secret services, obtained a majority in the Senate. Republicans have a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The new Senate takes office in January.

Despite the fact that several large tech companies are advocating the introduction of the USA Freedom Act, partly because they believe that they have suffered a lot of damage as a result of the Snowden revelations, many privacy advocates and mostly smaller tech companies argue that the content of the law has already been diluted too much after the treatment in the House of Representatives. For example, the definition of what data the government is allowed to collect has been stretched in the law.