White House Weighs Four Options for Revamping NSA Phone Surveillance

Administration lawyers have presented the White House with four options for restructuring the National Security Agency's phone-surveillance program, from ditching the controversial collection altogether to running it through the telephone companies, according to officials familiar with the discussions. None of the three options for relocating the data have gained universal favor. But failure to agree on one of them would leave only the option of abolishing the program, which would be a setback for intelligence agencies and other backers of the surveillance effort. Of the three options for relocating the data, two of them -- with phone companies or another government agency -- appear most technically possible.

One way would have the phone companies retain the data, officials said. The NSA would then tell the companies when it needs searches of call records concerning specific phone numbers the agency believes are connected to terrorism. The companies would provide the results to the NSA. Under this model, the NSA would only collect the data that comes in response to the search, rather than millions of unrelated American phone records. Several lawmakers have proposed legislation on Capitol Hill that would take this approach. But telecommunications companies oppose this option.

A second option would have a government agency other than the NSA hold the data. Candidates for this option could include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which some current and former intelligence officials have recommended. Another possibility floated in policy circles was turning the program over to the custody of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the phone-data and other NSA surveillance programs, but judges have balked at an expanded role for the court.

A third option would be for an entity outside the phone companies or the government to hold the data, officials said. This approach has been criticized by privacy groups who say such a third party would just become an extension of the NSA and would provide no additional privacy benefit.