NSA to Stop Accessing Phone Data on November 29, Will Delete Old Records

[Karamjit]

Phone metadata will be deleted as soon as litigations end

After the US Senate approved the US Freedom Act, a new law which greatly reduced NSA's spying capabilities, changes were bound to take place in the activity of the agency.

In a blog post on Tumblr, the U.S. Intelligence Community, through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, has announced that NSA employees will stop collecting and accessing phone call logs on November 29, 2015.

Since the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved the US Freedom Act provisions on June 29, November 29 represents the 180-day grace period to transition from the old Patriot Act to the newer Freedom Act rules.

After this period, access to the data will be granted only to "technical personnel" and "solely for data integrity purposes." This will also last for only an additional three months.

"The telephony metadata preserved solely because of preservation obligations in pending civil litigation will not be used or accessed for any other purpose, and, as soon as possible, NSA will destroy the Section 215 bulk telephony metadata upon expiration of its litigation preservation obligations," says the official communique.

Surveillance operations have not stopped

While many people think the NSA has been defeated, very few know that the US Freedom Act is as devilish as the original Patriot Act, only it limits the government's ability to store the data on its servers.

Under the new Freedom Act, telecom and ISP companies are the ones that keep phone metadata, and government agencies can still access it using warrants or court orders.

This doesn't sound as the victory many people were proclaiming when the US Freedom Act was approved, and it will surely raise as many eyebrows later on if a new Edward Snowden steps out of the shadows and reveals abuses to this surveillance system as well.

Source