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Obama clips NSA's wings but bulk data collection to continue
President Barack Obama curtailed the reach of massive US National Security Agency (NSA) phone surveillance sweeps on Friday.
But he said bulk data collection must go on to protect America from terrorists.
In a long-awaited speech designed to quell a furore over the programmes exposed by Mr Edward Snowden, Mr Obama also said he had halted spy taps on friendly world leaders and proposed new shields for foreigners caught in US data sweeps.
Mr Obama said at the US Justice Department: "Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won't abuse the data we collect."
The proposals represented a search for common ground between the intelligence community's resistance to reform and civil liberties advocates who view phone and Internet data trawling as a mass invasion of privacy.
But after charting new guidelines, the president left many of the details of proposed reforms either with Congress, top officials or the NSA itself.
"The power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do."
In the most significant reform, the president committed to ending the NSA's hoarding of telephone "metadata" detailing the duration and destination of the calls but not their content.
He did not believe that abuses had ocurred or that US spies had been "cavalier" about civil liberties. - AFP.
President Barack Obama curtailed the reach of massive US National Security Agency (NSA) phone surveillance sweeps on Friday.
But he said bulk data collection must go on to protect America from terrorists.
In a long-awaited speech designed to quell a furore over the programmes exposed by Mr Edward Snowden, Mr Obama also said he had halted spy taps on friendly world leaders and proposed new shields for foreigners caught in US data sweeps.
Mr Obama said at the US Justice Department: "Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us, we won't abuse the data we collect."
The proposals represented a search for common ground between the intelligence community's resistance to reform and civil liberties advocates who view phone and Internet data trawling as a mass invasion of privacy.
But after charting new guidelines, the president left many of the details of proposed reforms either with Congress, top officials or the NSA itself.
"The power of new technologies means that there are fewer and fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do."
In the most significant reform, the president committed to ending the NSA's hoarding of telephone "metadata" detailing the duration and destination of the calls but not their content.
He did not believe that abuses had ocurred or that US spies had been "cavalier" about civil liberties. - AFP.
