The legislation will phase out, over six months, the once secret National Security Agency bulk phone record collection program made public two years ago by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.
It will be replaced by a program that keeps the records with phone companies but allows the government to search them with a warrant.
Senate Republican leaders initially opposed the House bill, arguing first for an extension of the Patriot Act, the sweeping surveillance legislation passed in the days immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was eventually forced to accept the House version unchanged after senators rejected various last-ditch attempts to amend it.
The legislation would continue other post-9/11 surveillance provisions that also lapsed at 12:01 a.m. Monday. These include the FBI’s authority to gather business records in terrorism and espionage investigations and to more easily eavesdrop on suspects who regularly discard cellphones to avoid surveillance.