President Barack Obama will call for the NSA to end its rampant collection of the phone records of millions of Americans. Instead the NSA will have to gain permission from a secret court before it moves forward with phone data collection, The New York Times reported.
According to an administration official, Obama will announce his request in a speech Friday morning.
"The president will say that he is ordering a transition that will end the Section 215 telephone metadata program as it currently exists and move to a program that preserves the capabilities we need without government holding this bulk metadata," a government official told the Times.
Section 215 refers to the section of the Patriot Act that currently requires companies to give the government business records when requested for antiterrorism operations.
Though the president will call for overall sweeping changes to the NSA's surveillance methods, the focus will be on the acquisition of Americans' phone records, which did not include the actual content of the conversations, the Times reported.
"The president believes that the 215 program addresses important capabilities that allow us to counter terrorism, but that we can and should be able to preserve those capabilities while addressing the privacy and civil liberties concerns that are raised by the government holding this metadata," the official told the Times.
Obama will also call for the NSA to remove the phone records they have already obtained, and ask the attorney general to come up with a way to transfer the records by March 28, the Associated Press Reported. However, some intelligence officials are concerned about the practicality of Obama's proposal, saying the NSA is the best place for the records to be.
"No one will hold it (the phone data) as well," said retired General Michael Hayden, a director of the NSA, according to the AP.
Phone companies are also concerned that if the phone records are returned to them, they will be in danger from potential hackers, the AP reported.
International attention to U.S. government surveillance was sparked when in 2013 former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the media secret documents detailing the monitoring of Internet and phone activities of Americans and government leaders around the world.
