Privacy groups skeptical of plan to limit NSA access to data

Privacy advocates are skeptical of proposals to restructure a National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program so phone companies, rather than the spy agency, would retain consumers' phone records.

"The acquisition of everyone's telephone call records under Section 215 is illegal and it should be abandoned. If the government tries to require the phone companies to retain the data for five years, we would oppose that strongly because it creates huge privacy risks," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "One of those risks is that the data, once retained for national security purposes, would almost certainly be made available for law enforcement and other purposes." Amie Stepanovich, director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, echoed a similar concern. She noted that phone companies do temporarily keep information on the phone numbers its customers call, the length of those calls and where those calls took place, but the concern rests with "how long the companies are keeping this information."