WASHINGTON (Sputnik), Leandra Bernstein — Ending the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk data collection program is the beginning of other intelligence reforms the US Senate Intelligence Committee will take up in the future, Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden told Sputnik.
“This is the beginning,” Wyden said after the passage of the USA Freedom Act to reform the NSA’s dragnet surveillance program. “[We] are going to go back to the Intelligence Committee in the days ahead, ask the hard questions, and deal with [more] issues.”
In the coming period, Wyden said he will push his committee to consider laws “making sure that the FBI does not require our companies” to build data security backdoors into their electronic products.
Other proposed legislation includes ensuring that cell phones “cannot be used as tracking devices,” Wyden noted.
The Senate passed reform legislation to allegedly end the NSA’s bulk data collection program on Tuesday by a vote of 67 to 32.
Nearly 60 percent of US citizens oppose the idea of the US government monitoring their communications, according to a recent Pew Research poll.
“It has always been about reforming intelligence policies that do not make America safer and threaten our liberties,” Senator Ron Wyden said.
On Tuesday night, US President Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law.
“The Senate looked out for the security and personal privacy of law-abiding Americans by ending bulk phone record collection,” Wyden added.
