Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Privacy

NSA to Stop Using Bulk US Phone Data in November

The National Security Agency will cease its access to most bulk data collected under a controversial surveillance program in November, but retain records for litigation purposes, officials said Monday.

The National Security Agency will cease its access to most bulk data collected under a controversial surveillance program in November, but retain records for litigation purposes, officials said Monday.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement that the bulk telephony data — the subject of leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden which shocked many in the US and abroad — would be destroyed “as soon as possible” to comply with a law passed by Congress in early June.

The statement said that during the 180-day transition period required under the USA Freedom Act, “analytic access to that historical metadata… will cease on November 29, 2015.”

But it added that “for data integrity purposes,” NSA will allow technical personnel to continue to have access to the metadata for an additional three months.

Additionally, the statement said NSA must preserve bulk telephony metadata collection “until civil litigation regarding the program is resolved, or the relevant courts relieve NSA of such obligations.”

The data kept for 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.”

The USA Freedom Act sought to roll back the powers of the NSA under the Patriot Act, and notably Section 215, which authorized a vast data sweep program the agency said was aimed at tracking potential terrorists.

The new law halts the NSA’s ability to scoop up and store metadata — telephone numbers, dates and times of calls, but not the content — from millions of Americans who have no connection to terrorism.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

It shifts responsibility for storing the data to telephone companies, allowing authorities to access the information only with a warrant from a secret counterterror court that identifies a specific person or group of people suspected of terror ties.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Artificial Intelligence

Two of humanity’s greatest drivers, greed and curiosity, will push AI development forward. Our only hope is that we can control it.

Cybersecurity Funding

Los Gatos, Calif-based data protection and privacy firm Titaniam has raised $6 million seed funding from Refinery Ventures, with participation from Fusion Fund, Shasta...

Privacy

Many in the United States see TikTok, the highly popular video-sharing app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, as a threat to national security.The following is...

Privacy

Employees of Chinese tech giant ByteDance improperly accessed data from social media platform TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source...

Application Security

Open banking can be described as a perfect storm for cybersecurity. At one end, small startups with financial acumen but little or no security...

Mobile & Wireless

As smartphone manufacturers are improving the ear speakers in their devices, it can become easier for malicious actors to leverage a particular side-channel for...

Government

The proposed UK Online Safety Bill is the enactment of two long held government desires: the removal of harmful internet content, and visibility into...

Cloud Security

AWS has announced that server-side encryption (SSE-S3) is now enabled by default for all Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets.