Senate bill would validate NSA’s harvesting of phone, e-mail records, privacy advocates say --- Privacy advocates and at least one U.S. senator are expressing concern that legislation introduced Thursday would not only endorse the National Security Agency’s collection of all Americans’ phone records, but also give the agency permission to collect massive amounts of their e-mail records. --- The bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which advanced out of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would codify limits that a special court has placed on the NSA’s use of the records. -- But if the FISA Improvements Act became law, Congress would be validating expansive powers that have been claimed by the NSA and upheld by a court — but never explicitly written into statute — to harvest the phone and e-mail records of millions of Americans, the advocates say. - More, Ellen Nakashima