NSA Considers Ending Collection Of Data On Americans' Phone Calls [View all]

[Purveyor]

By Michael Isikoff
National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

The National Security Agency is reviewing whether to stop collecting a vast stockpile of records of Americans’ telephone calls — the most controversial component of its surveillance programs— by allowing telecommunications companies to retain the data until U.S. intelligence officials have a specific reason to review it for possible connections to terror plots, U.S. officials said Tuesday

The NSA’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, disclosed the review during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, saying the agency and the FBI are jointly re-examining “how we actually do this program.”

Asked by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., if the records of phone calls – known as metadata -- could be left in the hands of telecommunications firms and then reviewed only when there is a suspicion “of a foreign terrorist connection,” Alexander replied: “I do think that that’s something that we’ve agreed to look at and that we’ll do. It’s just going to take some time. We want to do it right.”

The NSA’s sweeping collection tens of millions of phone records was disclosed on June 5 by the Guardian newspaper after ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the paper a top secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court requiring Verizon to turn over information on all calls in its system to the NSA.

Under the program, NSA does not eavesdrop on actual phone calls. Instead, it collects the metadata —phone numbers, the time and length of each call – from telecommunications companies. The firms have been secretly turning over the data to the NSA under FISC court orders for years based on a provision of the Patriot Act that forbids the companies from disclosing the NSA’s collection to their customers, officials say.

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