The U.S.
National Security Agency (NSA) on Sunday ended its mass phone
surveillance program and replaced it with a focused and targeted
domestic surveillance program. Under the new program, the NSA is
prohibited from collecting telephone metadata in bulk under the post
9/11 Patriot Act, as it had been doing for years even after
revelation by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
Instead,
the NSA will have to make a request to relevant telephone companies
and be granted a court order to get access to metadata records based
on specific cases.
According
to a statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
on Friday, the federal government will report annually to Congress
and to the public the total number of orders issued and the number of
targets of such orders.
Phone
metadata include information such as phone numbers, as well as the
time and length of calls. Conversation of calls are not included in
the records.
The
reform was a result of a new law passed in June and came more than
two years after Snowden revealed the U.S. government's underground
spying program, which triggered heated debates about privacy and
national security.
After the
terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month, however, some
Republican lawmakers were currently seeking further preservation of
the bulk metadata collection program until 2017.
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