WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) has cosponsored legislation that seeks to restore Americans’ privacy rights by ending the government’s warrantless bulk collection of phone records and requiring greater oversight, transparency, and accountability with respect to domestic surveillance authorities.

“From the founding of our nation, the warrant requirement has served as a fundamental check on government intrusion into the private sphere,” Senator Coons said. “Yet federal authorities are able, in the name of national security, to obtain vast amounts of information about U.S. citizens without providing cause for suspicion and without any meaningful opportunity for citizens to challenge that collection. In the months following revelations about the scope of government surveillance authorities, it has become increasingly clear that ongoing warrantless surveillance represents an unacceptable violation of Americans’ privacy rights. The USA FREEDOM Act would end this practice and reintroduce transparency and accountability into government surveillance activities. Americans expect and deserve a government that can keep our nation safe while respecting our most cherished privacy protections, and this bipartisan bill would take important steps toward restoring that balance.”

The USA FREEDOM Act would end the dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and ensure that other authorities cannot be used to justify similar dragnet collection. The bill also provides more safeguards for warrantless surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act.

Among other significant privacy and oversight provisions, the bill provides for the creation of a Special Advocate to focus on the protection of privacy rights and civil liberties before the FISA Court, and requires more detailed public reporting about the numbers and types of FISA orders that are issued.

The bill, which is led in the Senate by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), has 21 bipartisan Senate cosponsors and more than 140 cosponsors in the House. The bill has been endorsed by a diverse array of groups ranging from the National Rifle Association to the American Civil Liberties Union.

In August 2013, Senator Coons cosponsored the FISA Court Reform Act of 2013, which would create an Office of the Special Advocate tasked with advocating in the FISA courts’ closed proceedings for legal interpretations that minimize the scope of intrusion into our privacy. He also cosponsored the FISA Accountability and Privacy Protection Act of 2013 to require the government to be more transparent in how it publicly reports on its surveillance activities. Both bills contain provisions included in the USA FREEDOM Act. Read more about them here: http://1.usa.gov/1j8UJ1L