WASHINGTON—Congress approved sweeping changes Tuesday to surveillance laws enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, eliminating the National Security Agency’s disputed bulk phone-records collection program and replacing it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies’ hands.
Two days after Congress let the phone records and several other anti-terror programs expire, the Senate’s 67–32 vote sent the legislation to President Barack Obama, who planned to sign it promptly.
The legislation will revive most of the programs the Senate had allowed to lapse in a dizzying collision of presidential politics and national security policy. But the authorization will undergo major changes, the legacy of agency contractor Edward Snowden’s explosive revelations two years ago about domestic spying by the government.
