White House Added Last-Minute Curbs on NSA Before Obama Speech

On the day before President Barack Obama gave a highly anticipated speech on the National Security Agency, White House officials rushed to include additional surveillance restrictions to address concerns of privacy advocates and the President's own review panel, said people familiar with the process.

In one significant change made in the final hours before the Jan 17 speech, White House officials decided the President would require the NSA to obtain a court order each time it searched its database of information about American phone calls, a US official said. Some White House officials worried that earlier versions of President Obama's speech and corresponding plan of action, which lacked that element, could provoke a public protest from privacy groups and from members of his own review panel, the official said. But the added restrictions set off a scramble. Around 10 p.m. the night before the speech, White House officials were still working to query Justice Department lawyers about the question of court orders for database searches, the official said. The development of the President's prescription also underscored the potency of that debate. After trying for months to restore public trust in US spy programs, the administration appears to have been swayed by an 11th-hour appeal by members of the review panel.