Jan. 9, 2014 8:30 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—President
Barack Obama
is leaning toward extending broad
privacy protections to non-U.S. citizens and is seriously considering
restructuring the National Security Agency program that collects
phone-call data of nearly all Americans, officials familiar with the
process said on Thursday.
Mr. Obama plans to unveil these and other changes to surveillance programs as soon as next week, the officials said.
Though he has made no final decisions on some of the most controversial proposals, Mr. Obama is nearing the end of his
closely watched assessment of surveillance reforms that will define the NSA's rules of the road for years to come.
Mr.
Obama will unveil his proposals in a highly polarized political
environment, and his decisions are sure to upset one or more interested
parties in a debate that crosses political party lines.
Liberal
and civil-liberties advocates—and, to some extent, technology
companies—have been pushing for a significant curb on spy activities.
Some intelligence and law-enforcement leaders, as well as some
telecommunications companies, have quietly advocated for the status quo.
"This
is really crunchtime," Sen. Ron Wyden, (D., Ore.) a member of the
Senate intelligence committee who has advocated a major surveillance
overhaul, said in an interview. "This is when major decisions about the
new rules as it relates to surveillance are going to be made."
Responding to the furor that followed disclosures
contained in leaks of documents taken by former NSA contractor
Edward Snowden,
Mr. Obama is expected to back a mix of
executive actions and measures that would require congressional
approval, U.S. officials said.
White House Press Secretary
Jay Carney
said on Thursday that Mr. Obama is near
the end of the decision-making process but is still soliciting advice
from various groups and lawmakers before delivering his speech.
"I
expect that this will be an important milestone in the process and a
conclusion in many respects for this review," Mr. Carney
said, "but not all of the work will be done simply because these
recommendations are being acted on."
The president and top
administration officials have held a flurry of meetings, and
representatives of technology companies will meet with White House
officials on Friday, a senior administration official said.
The
degree to which surveillance practices are overhauled—rather than
simply adjusted—will depend on whether the president decides to adopt
some key reform proposals from his NSA-review panel.
The president has signaled that he favors, or is leaning toward, three of the review panel's recommendations.
The
NSA-review panel recommended that the U.S. should extend to non-U.S.
citizens the protections of the Privacy Act of 1974. The president is
leaning toward accepting that proposal, the senior administration
official said. Details of how the privacy protections would be applied
were
unclear.
Applying privacy protections to non-U.S. citizens
would be a significant shift in U.S. posture that wasn't proposed
seriously until the uproar overseas in response to disclosures by Mr.
Snowden, which suggested that the NSA had built a global surveillance
operation that regularly scooped up communications of citizens of
countries around the world, including friendly ones.
U.S.
intelligence officials have said they don't spy on anyone in any
country except for "valid intelligence purposes." They also have said
reports that Snowden documents reflected spying on French and Spanish
citizens were totally false.
Another recommendation would
create the post of advocate for privacy issues, who would argue before
the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The court now
approves surveillance requests based only on arguments from the
government's perspective.
Mr. Obama proposed such a change
himself in August. Details of the post are still being fleshed out.
A
key reform proposal is the restructuring of the phone-data program.
Currently, the NSA collects all the data and houses it in its database.
The review panel had said the data should be held by the phone
companies or a third party, not by the NSA.
"It is absolutely
being seriously considered," the senior administration official said
of the proposal. "We are studying it really carefully and hope that
we'll have a decision that the president can announce on how we want to
move forward on that."
The scope of the eventual NSA overhaul, however, will depend on what the president decides on other key proposals.
The
review panel recommended that U.S. phone data only be searched with the
approval of a court. Currently, NSA searches are based on a standard it
calls "reasonable, articulable suspicion," which is determined
internally.
Requiring a court order is a key priority for privacy advocates but has faced resistance from some intelligence leaders.
The
White House is still weighing the proposal to require a court order,
the senior administration official said. "It's not a gelled position
yet," the official said.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) a
member of the House intelligence committee who has sponsored a bill to
maintain call records at phone companies, said he also supports the
requirement to obtain a court order, as long as there is an exception
for emergencies, such as an immediate terrorist threat.
Another
of the review panel's recommendations would end the practice by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation of demanding data through "national
security letters" without a judge's signoff. Instead, it would require
judicial approval of such requests.
The White House is
considering ways to make that process more
transparent, said U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.
Recipients of the letters currently are prohibited from ever publicly
acknowledging their receipt.
FBI Director James Comey,
meeting with reporters on Thursday, said the recommendation requiring
court approval for a national-security letter would significantly slow
national-security investigations. But he said he supported greater
transparency after an investigation has concluded.
In advance
of his announcement on NSA-reform proposals, Mr. Obama and top White
House and intelligence officials have spent much of this week
discussing potential reforms with interested parties.
On
Tuesday, top White House and intelligence officials met with members of
the presidentially appointed NSA-review panel. Senate intelligence
committee members also met with the review panel that day.
On
Wednesday, Mr. Obama met with members of the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board, which plans to complete the first of two
assessments of NSA programs. Mr. Obama also met with top intelligence
officials to discuss NSA reforms. White House officials also met with
congressional aides.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama met with
lawmakers on NSA reforms, including Messrs. Wyden and Schiff. The two
lawmakers said the president listened carefully to lawmakers in the
90-minute meeting. But, Mr. Schiff said, "He kept his cards pretty
close to the vest" on his own positions.
White House Counsel
Kathryn Ruemmler also met with privacy advocates on Thursday. The
75-minute meeting was "interesting, though inconclusive," said one
attendee, Steve Aftergood, a government-secrecy specialist at the
Federation of American Scientists. "There was an implicit assurance
that change is coming, even though its exact contours could not be
disclosed."
Mr. Aftergood said much of the discussion
centered
around privacy advocates' concerns about the phone-data program and
the need for judicial authorization for searches. He said he also
recommended that the administration create a new type of check on NSA
activity by having the Government Accountability Office assess NSA
programs, which it currently does not do.
Other advocates also
weighed in on Thursday. A group of former NSA officials who are
critical of the agency called on Mr. Obama in an open letter to make
drastic changes to surveillance statutes, including outlawing all mass
collection of U.S. business records and ending broad authorizations for
surveillance programs.
Next week, members of the NSA-review
panel will provide their first public testimony on their far-reaching
recommendations at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
One thing is certain, though, Mr. Aftergood said: Mr. Obama's final decision will produce winners and losers because
the positions of privacy advocates and the intelligence agencies are completely opposed.
"Somebody is going to be unhappy at the end of this process," he said. "I hope it's somebody else."
—Devlin Barrett
contributed to this article.