Obama’s NSA Phone Spying Reforms Might Make Things Worse

[Commentary] President Barack Obama turned heads just days before Christmas when he announced that he is “seriously” considering following the recommendations set forth by an advisory panel, which he appointed, that suggested a major overhaul to the National Security Agency’s wholesale collection of telephone metadata. But an examination of a key suggestion from the “President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies” finds those revisions will do little to improve the protection of American’s calling history. In fact, it may well make the data more vulnerable to government inspection by potentially mandating that Americans’ phone call records be stored for longer periods of time than many telecoms currently archive them. And there likely would be few, if any, legal barriers to law enforcement officials, from the FBI to your local police department, to clear before obtaining that data. [Dec 30]