Obama administration starts to implement changes to NSA phone records program [View all]

[ProSense]

Obama administration starts to implement changes to NSA phone records program

By Andrea Peterson

During his Jan. 17 speech on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, President Obama proposed a number of changes to the agency's bulk domestic phone records program. Thursday, the administration announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approved a motion to start implementing some of those changes.

Specifically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said the court granted a motion to modify the most recent primary order authorizing the 215 phone records program to ensure that the metadata will only be queried after a judicial finding that there is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that the selection is associated with an international terrorist organization "absent a true emergency." In addition, the motion limited the query results to metadata within two hops of the selection term, rather than the prior three.

The FISC also ordered a classification review of the motions and the most recent primary order authorizing the program from January of this year, the government's motion to amend that order, and the court's order granting that motion, to be completed by Feb. 17. Once the review is completed, ODNI says the documents will "will be published as appropriate."

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Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office mirrored his sentiments. "It's good to see that some of the president's reforms to the bulk collection program have been implemented," she said. "What we need now, though, is not tinkering around the edges but an end to bulk collection. If the president won't end the program, then Congress must pass the USA FREEDOM Act and shut it down permanently."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/07/obama-administration-starts-to-implement-changes-to-nsa-phone-records-program/