Obama’s New NSA Reforms

Privacy advocates and other critics of the National Security Agency’s methods of intelligence collection are warily praising the Obama administration’s proposed changes to gathering vast swaths of data, while still insisting that more details and further action is needed.

 
The White House on Thursday morning issued a new fact sheet describing the steps it would be taking to limit the amount of data the NSA collects in the course of its mission, confirming earlier reports from the New York Times that changes to the surveillance program were on the way.

 
The administration will be ending the bulk collection of telephonic metadata — the information that describes how long phone calls last and between whom — from wireless carriers. Instead, the records containing this metadata will be left in the hands of the phone companies, and absent an “emergency situation” the government would only gain access to the specific numbers within those records following an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Read More: Privacy Advocates Skeptical Of Obama’s New NSA Reforms | ThinkProgress.