The real winners in the fight over government surveillance

After the Senate passed legislation aimed at reforming a program that collected data about the phone calls of millions of Americans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quoted an Associated Press headline calling the bill a "victory for Edward Snowden" and added his own twist: "It is also a resounding victory for those currently plotting attacks against the homeland," he said. Supporters of the legislation would dispute that argument, pointing instead to the Constitution or the public at large. But there's another group that won big: Tech companies.

"The Internet industry's support for surveillance reform was critical -- and exceptional to the extent that until the Snowden revelations, although they had sometimes gotten involved in law enforcement, they'd steered clear of national security since it was such a sensitive topic," said Kevin Bankston, the executive director of New America's Open Technology Institute. A slew of major tech companies were tied to National Security Agency surveillance in some of the first reports sourced to former government contractor Edward Snowden. Reporting and documents released in June 2013 revealed that many of the biggest names in tech, including Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, were part of a program called PRISM that let the spy agency tap into services -- accessing things like chats, documents and e-mails. Other revelations showed how the agency evaded security measures and infiltrated the links between some companies' data centers. And with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, tech companies are claiming their first significant policy win.