US President Barack Obama announced plans to curtail the government's mass collection of communications data, the Wall Street Journal reports. One of the biggest changes could see communications providers required to store customer data for eventual law enforcement use, rather than the current system where the government keeps such records. Obama said the government would stop storing the telephone data on NSA computers, but he hasn't determined whether the databases will be managed by phone companies or a third party. The attorney general and intelligence officials will work with Congress to come up with alternative locations within 60 days.
Other changes will take effect immediately. Intelligence officials now must seek approval from a secret national-security court before conducting government searches of a person's phone data. In addition, data searches have been scaled back, so that investigators may only examine personal connections that are two steps removed from a target, instead of three.
Obama also adopted new privacy protections for non-US citizens and ended government spying on heads of state of close American allies, though monitoring leaders' staff members wasn't prohibited. Surveillance of foreigners will only be allowed for national-security purposes, such as counter-spying, counterterrorism and cybersecurity, and the NSA will not be allowed to hold communications data on non-US citizens for as long as previously.
The president said he recognized many surveillance issues weren't settled, and cast the changes as an attempt to balance national security with privacy and civil-liberties concerns.
