Obama to consult intel leaders, Congress on NSA review

STORING OF PHONE DATA BY COMPANIES

One option that Obama has talked about is allowing some bulk phone data collected by intelligence agencies to be kept by private companies instead of the US government.

The reasoning is that this would give Americans more confidence that their privacy is being protected. Critics of this idea say it would make data less, rather than more, secure.

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said the White House believes that "we can take steps to put in place greater oversight, greater transparency, and constraints on the use of this authority" and is open to proposals that would house the telephone data at the providers or elsewhere.

"There are obviously some specific criteria that would need to be met for the program to stay effective, but it's a question we've been studying," she said.

Civil liberties groups would like Obama to rein in the government's use of so-called "national security letters," which allow the FBI and other agencies to compel individuals and organizations to turn over business records without any independent or judicial review.

A senior administration official said no final decisions had been made yet, but some operational agencies have concerns about limiting the use of these letters because it would raise the bar for intelligence investigations above that for criminal ones.

Obama is also considering a ban on US eavesdropping on leaders of allied nations after reports that the NSA had monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone triggered outrage in Germany. US officials have said they are not now tapping Merkel's cellphone.

Administration officials said Obama's meetings this week will allow interested parties to weigh in on his decision-making and voice their opinions.

Two sets of congressional committees have come up with diametrically opposed proposals for dealing with the telephone metadata issue.

Judiciary Committee chairs Patrick Leahy in the Senate and Jim Sensenbrenner in the House of Representatives have introduced bills which would eliminate bulk metadata collection by the NSA entirely.

But the House and Senate intelligence committees have included provisions in their spending bills that would keep metadata collection authorization precisely as it is.

This is in spite of the conclusion by Obama's outside advisory panel that since 2007, bulk telephone metadata collection by NSA had produced "no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome" of a terrorism investigation "would have been different" if the metadata had not been collected.