Senator Ron Wyden: White House considering scaling back data collection [View all]

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Source: The Guardian

Top surveillance critic says he believes Obama is increasingly concerned about privacy issues around NSA collection

Spencer Ackerman in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 July 2013 11.43 EDT

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One of the leading civil liberties supporters in the US Senate has said the Obama administration is considering scaling back its bulk collection of Americans' phone records.

Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Senate intelligence committee, told the New York Times that he believed the administration was increasingly concerned about the privacy implications raised by a surveillance effort it has performed for four and a half years, after National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed it to the Guardian.

"I have a feeling that the administration is getting concerned about the bulk phone records collection, and that they are thinking about whether to move administratively to stop it," Wyden told the Times.

Aides to Wyden said on Friday that the statement was based on public comments from executive branch officials and the senator's prior experience with the termination of a bulk email collection program in 2011, something the Guardian recently reported. The administration has given Wyden no additional assurances of changes to the phone records collection, the aides said.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/12/senator-ron-wyden-white-house-data-collection