Are sweeping changes coming to the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the US?
administration Obama is expected to propose to Congress this week an overhaul of the electronic surveillance program.
Specifically, it is considering proposing that phone companies continue to keep call records, as they do so far, and that the National Security Agency, according to a government official, stop collecting telephone metadata. The New York Times first reported the details of the proposal on Monday night. Their source, of course, did not want to reveal her name.
The White House proposal would end the Secret Service's practice of collecting phone data from millions of Americans and storing it for five years. Instead, the White House is expected to propose that the data be kept for 18 months by phone companies, which are already required to do so under federal regulation.
Details about the NSA's secret phone data collection program were revealed last year by Edward Snowden.
In January, President Barack Obama tasked a team to evaluate the National Security Agency and submit a proposal with alternatives to the current counterterrorism program. Obama said that having phone companies hold the records creates problems.
“It won’t be simple,” Obama said. The independent review panel recommended that the Secret Service stop storing data and that records of phone calls be stored at a third of the phone companies.
“There are difficult problems,” Obama said in January. “If we have to rely solely on provider records, for example, it could require companies to modify their processes in ways that raise new privacy concerns.”
And the telephone companies, of course, are against this option.
In several meetings with White House staff since December, phone company executives have reacted strongly to the administration's proposals. They have made it clear that they will accept changes to the NSA program as long as they are legally obligated to do so and if that requirement is spelled out in existing law.
You say things will change and NSA agents will suddenly find themselves out of work. Without wanting to play with the seriousness of the news, it seems somewhat utopian that the secret services would not do what the state has assigned them.
