The Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a bill that would provide for increased transparency of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of US phone records but allow the controversial practice to continue. Sponsored by Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, the bill lets the NSA continue to collect phone metadata of millions of Americans for renewable 90-day periods and allows the government to retain it. Some legislators have alternatively proposed letting phone companies hold the metadata. It passed the committee by an 11-4 vote, paving the way for a full Senate vote. 
The bill allows analysts to search through the data if they suspect there is a 'reasonable suspicion' that a suspect is associated with international terrorism. Additionally, the bill allows the NSA to continue surveillance begun on foreigners outside the US if they enter the country 'for a transitory period not to exceed 72 hours'. 
The bill is a direct challenge to one introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy that would end domestic phone-records collection. It was also opposed by leading Intelligence Committee member Mark Udall, who said it did not go far enough. “The NSA’s invasive surveillance of Americans’ private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform, not incidental changes. Unfortunately, the bill passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee does not go far enough to address the NSA’s overreaching domestic surveillance programmes,” Udall said. 
Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden, said the bill maintains “business as usual” and “remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform”. Feinstein defended the NSA bulk collection programme, but said there was a need to rebuild public trust. “The NSA call-records programme is legal and subject to extensive congressional and judicial oversight, and I believe it contributes to our national security,” she said in a statement. “But more can, and should, be done to increase transparency and build public support for privacy protections in place.” 
In her statement, Feinstein said the bill would also make a number of improvements to transparency and oversight on the NSA, including: requiring an annual public report of the total number of queries of NSA’s telephone metadata database and the number of times the programme leads to an FBI investigation or probable cause order; requiring that the foreign intelligence surveillance court impose limits on the number of people at NSA who may authorize or query the call-records database; establishing criminal penalties of up to ten years in prison for intentional unauthorized access to data acquired under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the United States; mandating the FISA court impose a limit on the number of contacts an analyst can receive in response to a query of bulk communication records.