Fairfax, VA -(AmmoLand.com)- On Tuesday, the NRA-backed USA FREEDOM Act was signed into law.
As we reported when the bill passed the House in May, this important legislation will bring to an end NSA’s mass, undifferentiated collection of telephone metadata under the USA PATRIOT Act. The NRA has opposed this broad surveillance program because of its potential to chill our members’ communication, particularly given the Obama Administration’s well-publicized antagonism against Second Amendment freedoms.
We also noted that the availability of sophisticated means of analyzing the metadata to create detailed profiles of individuals could effectively create an end-run around federal prohibitions on firearm registries.
The PATRIOT Act provisions underlying the telephone metadata program had expired late on May 31. This gave impetus to passage of the USA FREEDOM Act, which reauthorized the intelligence community’s access to information, but with a variety of mechanisms to ensure collection of telephone metadata is more narrowly focused on legitimate national security concerns. Privacy advocates from across the political spectrum are hailing the Act’s passage as a historic, if measured, step toward ensuring the federal government is not given free rein to delve into the private lives of ordinary Americans.
The NRA is pleased that Americans’ concerns regarding overly-intrusive government surveillance have produced meaningful reforms. As ever, we will remain alert to any threats to Second Amendment rights, however they may appear.
About the NRA-ILA
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
For more information, please visit: www.nra.org. Be sure to follow the NRA on Facebook at NRA on Facebook and Twitter @NRA.
You are wrong! First, “given that the NSA is a super secret organization with ZERO oversight and a history of repeatedly lying about what it’s really doing, how on Earth are we supposed to believe the NSA when it says it suddenly stopped spying on Americans’ phone calls because it “lost the authority” it never recognized in the first place? The NSA was spying on us all long before it ever had any legal authority to do so, and when the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was asked under oath, at a United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,… Read more »
Is there anything,anything at all the NRA doesn’t take credit for ? What really pissed me off was when they took credit for open carry/campus carry in Texas ! They had about as much to do with that as the obama regime did !
I am hoping that they will not “modify” the legislation to make it easier for them to eavesdrop and (or) press charges against law-abiding Americans. I might add that the Patriot Act did not catch Tsnarev or his brother, thus making it
a piece-of-useless legislation! Kind of like having unplugged RADAR stations at Pearl Harbor!
patriot act or freedom act. the only differance is in name only minus one little change! so in stead they ok ! a general warrent to search and keep all of our internet data !!! and e-mail,s!……….. you can dress up a pig with a wig, dress, and lip stick!……… but it,s still a PIG!!!!!!