By Devlin Barrett, Jared A. Favole and Siobhan Gorman
WASHINGTON--The White House outlined broad changes to end the
government's mass collection of telephone records, saying Thursday
that Congress must pass legislation to allow intelligence agencies
to have speedy access to information held at telephone
companies.
"I have decided that the best path forward is that the
government should not collect or hold this data in bulk," President
Barack Obama said in a written statement, expressing confidence his
approach would "provide our intelligence and law enforcement
professionals the information they need to keep us safe while
addressing the legitimate privacy concerns that have been
raised."
Under the president's proposal, details of which were revealed
earlier this week, the government will no longer store such
telephone records in bulk. Instead those records would remain at
phone companies, to be searched when officials obtain a court
order, or without a court order in cases of emergencies.
Once a judge has approved such a query for a specific target,
the searches could continue for a specified time period without
further court approvals, meaning the NSA could run daily searches
to see what new numbers have been called by the target and the
target's contacts.
Such searches would also be limited to only two "hops" from the
suspect phone number. One hop would be access to all the incoming
and outgoing calls on a suspected number, while the other hop would
be the call logs of any phone linked to the original number.
Under the proposal, the phone companies would be "compelled" to
provide technical support to ensure the records are in a format
that can be searched and quickly transmitted to the government.
As the White House has acknowledged, the president's proposal
must be passed into law by Congress. Legislation similar to the
president's bill has been proposed in Congress, but its future is
uncertain. Until Congress adopts changes, the administration will
continue to seek reauthorization of the current program every 90
days.
But without congressional action, the current
phone-records-surveillance program will expire in mid-2015.
Verizon Communications Inc. approached the White House plan and
other legislative proposals to shift the searches of phone data to
companies cautiously, praising the end to bulk records collection
but wary of implementation details.
"Companies should not be required to create, analyze or retain
records for reasons other than business purposes," said Randal
Milch, Verizon's executive vice president for public policy and
general counsel.
Reaction was mixed among critics of U.S. surveillance practices.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary
committee, said the president's plan wasn't sufficient.
"The President's proposal is promising, but true reform must be
comprehensive," he said. "We must end the bulk collection of phone
records, but we also must ensure that other authorities are not
used for similar types of bulk collection."
Mr. Leahy is sponsoring a bill that would outlaw all types of
so-called bulk collection of American records. He said other
government-surveillance practices also need to be reformed as well,
such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's national security
letters, which it uses to obtain without judicial oversight.
Privacy groups reacted tepidly to Mr. Obama's plan, saying it
only addresses some of their concerns.
"Although we appreciate the president's efforts and look forward
to working with the White House to end the bulk collection of
telephone records, the time has passed for half-measures that only
address a small sliver of the NSA problem, and the time has come
for leaders in Congress to stop waiting to see what the President
will do," said Kevin Bankston, policy director the New America
Foundation's Open Technology Institute.
He said he prefers a bill sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner
(R., Wis.) and Mr. Leahy, which more narrowly limits the type of
searches NSA can request of phone companies, and bans all types of
bulk collection of American records.
The White House plan wouldn't outright ban any type of
bulk-record collection; it just ends the bulk collection done under
NSA's phone program.
Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com, Jared A.
Favole at jared.favole@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at
siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
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