The administration’s proposed changes won’t happen right away. The executives have continued to discuss the issue with lawmakers, however. Industry officials said they had not been in contact with the administration as new options were being considered. The discussions with the White House ceased earlier this year. The companies are concerned about the costs of retaining the records and potential liability, such as being sued by individuals whose phone data was provided to intelligence or law enforcement agencies, these people said.

The executives said they would only accept such changes to the NSA program if they were legally required and if that requirement was spelled out in legislation. In several meetings with White House staff since December, phone company executives came out strongly opposed to proposals that would shift the custody of the records from the NSA to the telecoms. “Relying solely on the records of multiple providers, for example, could require companies to alter their procedures in ways that raise new privacy concerns.”Īnd the phone companies have been against this option, as well. “Both of these options pose difficult problems,” Obama said in January. An independent review panel suggested that the practice of the government collecting the phone records be replaced by a third party or the phone companies holding the records, and the government would access them as needed. Obama also said that the option of having the phone companies hold the records posed problems. In January, President Barack Obama tasked his administration with coming up with an alternative to the current counterterrorism program. Privacy advocates were outraged to learn that the government was holding onto phone records of innocent Americans for up to five years. Instead, the White House is expected to propose that the records be kept for 18 months, as the phone companies are already required to do by federal regulation.ĭetails of the government’s secret phone records collection program were disclosed last year by a former NSA systems analyst. The White House proposal would end the government’s practice of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans and holding onto those records for five years so the numbers can be searched for national security reasons. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the plan. The New York Times first reported the details of the proposal Monday night. The Obama administration this week is expected to propose that Congress overhaul the electronic surveillance program by having phone companies hold onto the call records as they do now, according to a government official briefed on the proposal. WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Security Agency may be getting out of the business of sweeping up and storing vast amounts of data on people’s phone calls.

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