President Barack Obama proposed several changes to the surveillance policies and programs of the National Security Agency (NSA) at a press conference on Friday.
Obama outlined four major goals in his speech: reforming the Patriot Act program that collects phone records; working with Congress to “improve the public’s confidence” in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and ensuring that the judge who decides whether certain government intelligence practices are constitutional will consider both the “security and privacy” sides of the issue; becoming more “transparent” by declassifying and making public as much information about surveillance programs as possible; and finally, “forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.”
A huge part of these initiatives is closely tied to increasing the transparency of the intelligence and surveillance community “to ensure that the American people can trust that [their] efforts are in line with [the public’s] interests and […] values.”
However, while these proposed changes are significant, The New York Times writes that Obama made clear that phone and electronic surveillance would still remain a part of the country’s intelligence practices. As long as terrorism is still a threat, such programs are necessary.