The NSA is set to end one of its most controversial programs on Sunday. The mass vacuuming of the phone data of Americans will end. It will be replaced with more targeted surveillance means.
The change is required by the USA Freedom Act which was passed by Congress this summer. The law also requires the Federal government to get a court order to order the records from telecommunications companies for a special person or group for up to six months. The law also forbids the NSA and other law enforcement agencies from storing phone records, called metadata.
The metadata contains the name, phone number, the person called, and the length of the conversation. It does not contain the details of the conversation.
Reuters reports:
A presidential review committee concluded the surveillance regime did not lead to a single clear counter terrorism breakthrough that could be directly attributed to the program.
Metadata collected by the NSA over the past five years will be preserved for “data integrity purposes” through February 29, the White House said.
After that the NSA will purge all of its historic records once pending litigation is resolved.
On the campaign trail, Marco Rubio has been on attack against this surveillance reform. He supported a permanent extension of the metadata program and opposed the USA Freedom Act.
Rubio has taken to attacking Ted Cruz, one of the supporters of the USA Freedom Act, on this issue. Rubio has accused Cruz of “weakening U.S. intelligence capabilities.” This is despite the fact that the program was called ineffective and that the vast majority of metadata collected by the NSA belongs to innocent Americans with no ties to terrorism.
AAN Staff
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