The NSA reform bill now shuts down a secret database. Will that fix anything?

[Commentary] A last-minute change to the National Security Agency reform bill making its way through Congress, as reported by the Guardian, may minimize one of the greatest dangers of the program.

Or it may make things far worse! Even though you may not talk to terrorists, you and a suspected terrorist may both use FedEx, so you still might have your most intimate relationships exposed to NSA’s analysis.

Right now, the NSA tries to minimize the number of innocent people whose call records get sucked up in queries by taking those voicemail and cable provider numbers out of the database. The new language in the USA Freedom Act would “require the prompt destruction of all call detail records” turned over by the telecoms “that the Government determines are not foreign intelligence information.”

If the NSA thinks you have interesting friends and relatives in China or Russia or anywhere else, it might keep your data. If it thinks you have ties to the drug trade, it might keep your data. If you work for an interesting foreign-owned company, it might keep the data. Plus, what process is the NSA going to use to decide if your phone number -- after all, it’s just a number, without a name -- is “foreign intelligence information” or not?

The NSA has to conduct some seriously intrusive analysis just to determine if your phone number amounts to foreign intelligence information! So to learn enough about your phone number to decide to destroy it, the NSA probably has to do intrusive searches on your number.