US ends phone data collection exposed by Snowden

The US government has halted its controversial program to collect vast troves of information from Americans' phone calls, a move prompted by the revelations of former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden. As of Sunday, the National Security Agency (NSA) ended the program whose existence its former analyst Snowden revealed in 2013. US lawmakers earlier this year passed legislation known as the USA Freedom Act to stop the program and roll back some powers the NSA had gained under the Patriot Act in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.