The US Senate Intelligence Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would tighten controls on the government's sweeping electronic eavesdropping programs but allow them to continue.

In a classified hearing, the panel voted 11-4 for a measure that puts new limits on what intelligence agencies can do with bulk communications records and imposes a five-year limit on how long they can be retained.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that US spying has gone too far in some cases, an unprecedented admission by Washington in the row with Europe over widespread surveillance.

The top diplomat also sought to assure that such steps, which have roiled close allies like Germany, would not be repeated.

"I assure you, innocent people are not being abused in this process, but there's an effort to try to gather information," Kerry told a London conference via video link. "And in some cases, I acknowledge to you, as has the president, that some of these actions have reached too far, and we are going to make sure that does not happen in the future," he said.

Despite growing national concern about surveillance, the FISA Improvements Act would not eliminate programs that became public this year after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents describing how the government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously known.

If approved by the full Senate and the House and signed by the president, the act would require the special court that oversees the collection programs to designate outside officials to provide independent perspective and assist in reviewing matters that present novel or significant interpretations of the law.

However, the bill ran into immediate opposition from technology companies, civil-liberties groups and another chairman in the majority Democratic Senate.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner this week introduced a bill to end what they termed the government's "dragnet collection" of information.

Codify practices

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, one of the four intelligence committee members voting against their panel's legislation, said it would codify surveillance practices that are too broad.

"More and more Americans are saying that they refuse to give up their constitutionally guaranteed liberties for the appearance of security; the intelligence committee has passed a bill that ignores this message," Wyden said in a statement.

A critical role in the debate may be played by Google Inc, Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and other major technology companies, which have been whipsawed by intelligence agencies and consumers, especially those overseas with little protection from US spying.

On Thursday, those three companies, joined by Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc and AOL Inc, wrote to Leahy and other members of Congress to "applaud" the contributions of his bill.

The tech companies' anger mounted after the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the NSA had intercepted massive internal transfers of Google and Yahoo data overseas.

In a response to that report and others this week, the NSA said it must collect information of foreign intelligence value "irrespective of the provider that carries them."

AFP-Reuters

(China Daily 11/02/2013 page8)