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 Reversing security policy in place since shortly after the Sept.
11, 2001 attacks, the bill ends a system exposed by former National
Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The spy agency collected
and searched records of phone calls looking for terrorism leads but
was not allowed to listen to their content.
Passage of the USA Freedom Act, the result of an alliance between
Senate Democrats and some of the chamber's most conservative
Republicans, was a victory for Obama, a Democrat, and a setback for
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
After the Senate voted 67-32 on Tuesday to give final congressional
approval to the bill, Obama used his Twitter account, @POTUS, to say
he was glad it had passed. "I'll sign it as soon as I get it," the
tweet said.
Before voting, senators defeated three amendments proposed by
Republican leaders after they reversed themselves and ended efforts
to block it. The House of Representatives passed the measure
overwhelmingly last month.
 In the end, 23 Senate Republicans voted for the Freedom Act, joining
196 who backed it in the House. In a rift between Republicans, who
control both chambers, House leaders had warned that amendments
proposed by McConnell would be a "challenge" for the House that
could delay the bill.
A federal appeals court on May 7 ruled the collection of "metadata"
illegal.
The new law would require companies such as Verizon Communications
Inc and AT&T Inc, to collect and store telephone records the same
way that they do now for billing purposes.
But instead of routinely feeding U.S. intelligence agencies such
data, the companies would be required to turn it over only in
response to a government request approved by the secretive Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The Freedom Act is the first major legislative reform of U.S.
surveillance since Snowden's revelations two years ago this month
led to debate over how to balance Americans' distrust of intrusive
government with fears of terrorist attacks.
Along with the phone records program, two other domestic
surveillance programs authorized under the 2001 USA Patriot Act have
been shut down since Sunday.
MISSED DEADLINE
After Republican Senator Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate,
blocked McConnell's efforts to keep them going temporarily, the
Senate missed a deadline to extend legal authorities for certain
data collection by the NSA and the FBI.
McConnell made an unusually strong last-ditch argument against the
Freedom Act after his amendments failed. "It surely undermines
American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in
my view, at exactly the wrong time," he said in a Senate speech.
Telephone companies had been less than thrilled about potentially
overhauling their record-keeping systems to become the repositories
of surveillance records.
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Together with civil liberties groups, they opposed specific
requirements for how long they must retain any data, which were
proposed in some amendments that were later defeated. A Verizon
official, for instance, spoke in support of the Freedom Act, without
such a mandate, in a Senate hearing last year.
After the vote, Microsoft Corp General Counsel Brad Smith praised
Congress. "Today's vote by the Senate on the USA Freedom Act will
help to restore the balance between protecting public safety and
preserving civil liberties," Smith said in a statement.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a leading Senate privacy advocate,
voted for the Freedom Act. He pledged that he and his allies would
continue pushing for more limits on surveillance.
"This has always been about reforming intelligence policies that do
not make America safer and threaten our liberties," Wyden told
reporters.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the Freedom Act was a
milestone, but did not go far enough. "The passage of the bill is an
indication that comprehensive reform is possible, but it is not
comprehensive reform in itself," ACLU deputy legal director Jameel
Jaffer said in a statement.
A senior U.S. intelligence official said the bulk telephone data
collection system had been shut down since shortly before 8 p.m. EDT
on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear how soon the NSA program would be
restarted. The Freedom Act allows it to continue for six months
while the new system is established.
The White House said the administration would move quickly to get it
up and running again.
With Obama's signing of the bill, the executive branch will have to
apply to the surveillance court for reauthorization.
(Additional reporting by Alina Selyyukh, Susan Cornwell, Richard
Cowan, Mark Hosenball, Roberta Rampton and Eric Walsh; Editing by
Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)
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