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Obama puts limited controls on NSA spying

Iran Press TV

Tue Feb 3, 2015 6:13PM

The US administration has put limited controls on the National Security Agency's collection of data on Americans and foreigners, a move that comes a year after President Barack Obama vowed to reform the controversial NSA spying regime.

NSA analysts will be ordered to delete some information accidentally collected about US citizens, but which provides no real intelligence value to the agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said it its report on Tuesday.

Information about foreigners that offers no real intelligence value must be expunged within five years.

'We have imposed new limitations on the retention of personal information about non-US persons,' the ODNI announced.

The NSA's spying programs, uncovered in 2013 by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, has raised widespread concern about the reach of the agency's operations and its ability to spy into the affairs of private individuals in the United States and abroad as well as the communications of foreign leaders.

The metadata collection program has been the most controversial aspect of the NSA's surveillance revealed in documents from Snowden. Civil liberties proponents have claimed that the program is illegal and should be ended.

Obama said a year ago that he would end the NSA's bulk collection of US telephone records. He announced some changes to how the NSA handles spying data, but Congress has so far failed to enact any new law governing the agency.

Privacy rights advocates and tech firms had strongly criticized Obama's proposed reforms to Washington's spying activities, saying the proposals would have little effect and would only preserve the status quo.

However, the US president's latest effort falls far short of the changes demanded by privacy rights advocates.

The Obama administration's new rules will also formalize the White House's review of the NSA's monitoring of foreign leaders, days before German Chancellor Angela Merkel's planned visit to the US.

Revelations in 2013 that the NSA had been spying on Merkel for more than 10 years caused tensions between Washington and Berlin.

The German weekly Der Spiegel revealed in October 2013 that the magazine had seen secret documents from the NSA which show that Merkel's mobile phone had been listed by the US spy agency's Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002.

GJH/GJH