NSA Oultines New Telephone Spying Program
The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)on Friday said that its latest system for collecting domestic telephone records implements policies, procedures, compliance safeguards, and metrics that minimize the civil liberties and privacy impact. The changes is the result of the USA FREEDOM Act, which was enacted in June 2015 and became effective on November 29,2015. The USA FREEDOM Act made significant changes to NSA's authority to collect and analyze certain telephone metadata.
The program has satisfactorily complied with eight "Fair Information Practice Principles" - transparency, oversight, data minimization, use limitation, individual participation, purpose specification, data quality and data security - according to a report released by the NSA’s Civil Liberties and Privacy Office.
The goal of the program remains the same - to colllect, analyze and disseminate foreign intelligence information about international terrorist threats.
The NSA has ended its daily vacuuming of Americans’ phone metadata, meaning the numbers and time stamps of calls but not their content.
Under a replacement program, NSA and law enforcement agencies must get a court order and ask communications companies like Verizon Communications to authorize monitoring of call records of specific people or groups for up to six months.