White House meets with privacy advocates to discuss NSA surveillance

Major privacy and civil rights organizations including American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic) and the Open Technology Institute met with President Barack Obama on changing the National Security Agency’s controversial database of all domestic phone call records.

But the groups expressed concern that pushback from the NSA, its allies on Capitol Hill and those within the Obama Administration will lead President Obama to make cosmetic changes, rather than ending the mass surveillance. “The White House must end the NSA bulk record collection activities,” said Alan Butler, a lawyer with Epic, voicing the bottom line of the civil liberties coalition. There are gradations, however, in what counts as “ending” the bulk surveillance. Both civil libertarians and the NSA are jockeying for their definition to prevail with the President.