NSA director: No changes in telephone record collection coming

The U.S. National Security Agency is planning no major changes in its domestic telephone records collection program after a bill to rein in those efforts failed in the Senate this week, the agencys director said.

The NSA will continue to collect U.S. telephone records in bulk, while operating under some restrictions President Barack Obama put on the program back in January, Admiral Michael Rogers, the NSAs director, said during a House of Representatives hearing on cybersecurity Thursday. The NSA would rather wait to see what specific changes to the program Congress will require before making major changes, he told the House Intelligence Committee.

The NSA had hoped to get direction from Congress in the short term, but the agency may have to re-evaluate the telephone records program if were unable to gain consensus in the window that we thought, Rogers said. I dont have an answer to that in my own mind.

The NSA should take steps to end its bulk collection of U.S. phone records even though the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would have left the data in the hands of telecom carriers, failed in the Senate this week, said Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat. Theres nothing in statute that requires the government to gather bulk data, so you could move forward on your own with making the technological changes, Schiff said. You dont have to wait for the USA Freedom Act.

Theres no reason for the NSA to wait for congressional approval to put additional limits on the program if you think this is the correct policy, Schiff added. Why continue to gather the bulk metadata if [Obama administration officials] dont think this is the best approach?

But Rogers defended the phone records program, saying it has provided valuable antiterrorism intelligence to federal investigators.

The program operates under court and congressional oversight, and since January the NSA has needed approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before querying the database of collected phone records, he said. Obama in January largely left the program intact while Congress debates it, Rogers said.

I dont think Ive heard the president or the [director of national intelligence] say that the access to the data is not of value, Rogers said. What I think Ive heard is, the question gets to be who should hold the data.

The public has several misconceptions about NSA surveillance programs, said Representative Mike Rogers, the Intelligence Committees chairman and a Michigan Republican. The NSA is not penetrating U.S. computer networks, he said.

The NSA is not on American domestic networks, but the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and multiple other bad actors are, Representative Rogers said.

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NSA director: No changes in telephone record collection coming