WASHINGTON — President Obama has ordered changes to the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance system that are intended to placate critics without undermining national security.
In a long-awaited speech Friday, Obama said the agency will continue to collect millions of telephone records to add to its database, but from now on judges will have to sign off when snoopers want to access the information.
Previously, the government could mine data without any restrictions.
The new protocol does come with a giant loophole, however — the NSA can still act unilaterally “in the case of a true emergency. ”
Obama also announced a general policy of no longer spying on friendly foreign leaders.
In order to snoop on allied foreign leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel — whose cellphone was found to have been monitored — NSA officials would now need to have a “compelling national-security purpose.”
The policy does leave open the possibility of spying on enemies of the state.
In a key shift, Obama said he wants to move the millions of phone records out of the NSA’s hands to a place that would still make them accessible to the agency. He did not specify where.
He asked Attorney General Eric Holder to come up with a system that would meet those requirements.
Private companies don’t want to take over the responsibility, which left Obama saying he would consult Congress on how to deal with the issue.
The new rules would also limit the “national-security letters” that the government sends to companies such as Google seeking their data without a court order.
The letters won’t remain secret indefinitely, as they do now. But advanced approval by a judge won’t be required, as an internal review board had recommended.
The NSA will now be able to gather data only from contacts two steps removed from a phone number associated with a terrorist organization, instead of three steps.
Responding to stunning disclosures by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Obama acknowleged past abuses by the US government, including how it “spied on civil-rights leaders and critics of the Vietnam War.”
But he said America “must be vigilant in the face of threats,” and noted how the nation was “shaken by the signs we had missed” before the 9/11 terror attacks.
Some civil libertarians were unimpressed by the first significant constraints on government surveillance programs since their dramatic expansion after 9/11.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called the president’s proposed changes “the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration.”
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed.
“He seems to endorse amending bulk-data collection but not ending it,” he said.