USA FREEDOM Act of 2015

(This measure has not been amended since it was passed by the House on May 13, 2015. The summary of that version is repeated here.)

Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015 or the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015

TITLE I--FISA BUSINESS RECORDS REFORMS

(Sec. 101) Amends the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to establish a new process to be followed when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) submits an application to a FISA court for an order requiring the production of business records or other tangible things for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a U.S. person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities. (The FBI currently uses such authority to request FISA orders requiring telephone companies to produce telephone call records to the National Security Agency.)

Prohibits the FBI from applying for a tangible thing production order unless a specific selection term is used as the basis for the production. Maintains limitations under current law that prohibit the FBI from applying for tangible thing production orders for threat assessments.

Establishes two separate frameworks for the production of tangible things with different standards that apply based on whether the FBI's application seeks:

production on an ongoing basis of call detail records created before, on, or after the date of the application relating to an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism, in which case the specific selection term must specifically identify an individual, account, or personal device; or

production of call detail records or other tangible things in any other manner, in which case the selection term must specifically identify an individual, a federal officer or employee, a group, an entity, an association, a corporation, a foreign power, an account, a physical or an electronic address, a personal device, or any other specific identifier but is prohibited from including, when not used as part of a specific identifier, a broad geographic region (including the United States, a city, county, state, zip code, or area code) or an electronic communication or remote computing service provider, unless the provider is itself a subject of an authorized investigation.

The summary continues for 66 more paragraphs. Read it in full on Congress.gov

Written by analysts at the Congressional Research Service and published on Congress.gov, not by Civibrief. Summarized at the "Public Law" stage on June 2, 2015. It describes the bill, it is not the legal text.

Every answer above is assembled from this measure's own record on Congress.gov and from published counts of what Congress has passed before. Civibrief does not predict outcomes and takes no position on any measure.