07.01.2014 - 08:44 [ Techdirt ]

Obama Plans Cosmetic Surveillance Changes After All, Will Set Up Pretend Fight Over NSLs

The first is shifting the holding of phone call metadata from the NSA to the phone companies, allowing the NSA to still search through it after getting a court order. While this may be a marginal improvement, it still has tremendous problems. It will almost certainly come with some sort of data retention law — something that the feds have wanted for ages, and which civil liberties activists have been fighting against for years.