President Barack Obama and Congress changed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which oversees all manner of counter espionage eavesdropping, when he signed the USA Freedom Act on June 2, 2015.  

Under the new law, the National Security Agency must be more specific in its request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court to collect information. The change ended the practice of bulk collection of metadata -- information on the time and duration of a call. In its place, the NSA must make the case that it has reasonable suspicions that a "search term," such as a name, telephone number, address or communication device, is tied to terrorism.

The new law contains other features. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can bring in an outsider to serve as a public advocate when new sorts of intelligence issues crop up, plus there are some additional opportunities to appeal decisions by the court. On the transparency front, the court must issue a public report when it decides on new technical or legal matters.

All of this qualifies as providing more oversight on government surveillance, but privacy experts and advocates caution against assuming that everything is fine and dandy.

Neema Guliani at the American Civil Liberties Union characterizes the oversight as "better than the dismal status quo," but hardly ironclad.

"There's a question whether the government is giving the judges all the information they need to make a decision," Guliani told us. "And it seems unclear what the government sees as its notification responsibilities.  If you don't provide notice and information, it become difficult to determine if the judges are performing their oversight function."

Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote that metadata -- information on the time and duration of a call -- might not be as protected as people think.

"There are many other ways in which the government could be sweeping in the same records," Kadidal wrote. "In part, that is because metadata isn't protected by the warrant requirement the same way the content of your phone calls is."

Kadidal said the government might be able to get what it wants through a more easily obtained subpoena.

To be sure, the advocates say the new law is better than the Patriot Act, but they see loopholes.

Obama promised to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to limit warrantless wiretaps and provide more oversight and accountability. Critics say the new rules are better than what was in place before, but they are not full-proof. The government still has access to significant amounts of metadata. We rate this Compromise.