New legislation aims at stalling NSA reform

A bill introduced in the Senate would allow the U.S. National Security Agency to hold phone records collected by the agency for five years, while also making permanent some anti-terrorist provisions that have been criticized by civil rights groups.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, said Wednesday he would introduce the "Liberty Through Strength Act II" to require the federal government to hold on to the legacy phone metadata of Americans for five years and authorize its use for queries.

The senator last month introduced legislation, also called the Liberty Through Strength Act, that would delay the end of the bulk collection of phone metadata of Americans by the NSA to Jan. 31, 2017, in the wake of security concerns after the terror attacks in Paris. The bill was introduced a little before the Thanksgiving break.

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