WASHINGTON DC – The US National

Security Agency has had its wings clipped a bit. On Tuesday,

the US Senate approved the USA

Freedom Act, legislation that will curtail the federal government’s sweeping

surveillance of millions of Americans’ phone records. Later in the

day, President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

The

legislation, which was passed by a 67-32 vote, revises a controversial national

security policy put in place by the Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001,

terrorist attacks, CNET.Com reported. Already heated debate over the programs authorized by the

Patriot Act intensified in 2013 after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden

leaked documents detailing the ways in which the secretive US government agency

was collecting data.

The leaked

documents revealed that, among other things, the NSA was collecting records on

nearly every phone call placed in the US and then comparing that against known

contact information of possible terrorists. Through the program, the NSA

collects metadata – including what phone numbers were on the call, when the

call was placed and how long it lasted – and saved that in a database.

The bill had

the support of a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and a host of tech

companies, and had the support of the president.

“Glad

the Senate finally passed the USA Freedom Act,” Obama wrote

in a tweet after the vote. “It protects civil liberties and our

national security. I’ll sign it as soon as I get it.”

The House of

Representatives overwhelmingly passed a similar measure last month.

The Freedom Act

requires federal agencies to seek a court order on a case-by-case basis to

obtain call data from telephone companies. Critics have said a new legal

process would be too slow and would hamper the NSA’s counterterrorism efforts.

Reform supporters, however, havechallenged claims about the current program’s effectiveness in preventing

terror attacks and have said the reform bill would help ensure individual

liberties.

Microsoft,

among a handful of tech giants fighting for greater transparency after being implicated

as a participant in the NSA’s controversial data collection programs,

applauded the vote.

“We

commend Congress for taking action to reform government surveillance

practices,” Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “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.”

Google also

voiced its support. “While most of the focus has been on ending the bulk

telephony metadata program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, there are

other meaningful reforms in the bill for Internet users. The USA Freedom Act

shuts the door to the bulk collection of Internet metadata under a separate

legal authority that the government relied upon in the past to collect Internet

metadata in bulk,” said Susan Molinari, vice president of Americas public policy and

government relations, in a blog post. “The USA Freedom Act

additionally prevents bulk collection of Internet metadata through the issuance

of National Security Letters. Not all of these legal authorities expired on

June 1, and we are pleased that Congress took the initiative to prevent the

bulk collection of Internet metadata under these legal authorities.”

The vote was

a “milestone,” according to ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer.

“This is the most important surveillance reform bill since 1978, and its

passage is an indication that Americans are no longer willing to give the

intelligence agencies a blank check,” he said.