Obama: US must 'win back the trust of ordinary citizens' over data collection

President confirms plans to end NSA bulk telephone collection, and admits revelations have shaken faith in US intelligence

theguardian.com, Spencer Ackerman in Washington and Julian Borger in The Hague, 25 March 2014

Barack Obama in The Hague. 'There's a tendency to be sceptical of government,
and to be sceptical of US intelligence services,' he said. Photograph: Sean Gallup/AP

Barack Obama confirmed on Tuesday that the US plans to end the National Security Agency's systematic collection of Americans’ telephone data, admitting that trust in country’s intelligence services had been shaken and pledging to address the concerns of privacy advocates.

Under plans to be put forward by the Obama administration in the next few days, the NSA would end the so-called bulk collection of telephone records, and instead would be required to seek a new kind of court order to search data held by telecommunications companies.

The proposals come nine months after the practice was first disclosed by the Guardian, based on leaks from the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Obama conceded on Tuesday that the revelations had caused trust in the US to plunge around the world.

“We have got to win back the trust not just of governments, but, more importantly, of ordinary citizens. And that's not going to happen overnight, because there's a tendency to be sceptical of government and to be sceptical of the US intelligence services,” Obama said at a news conference in The Hague, where world leaders were meeting to discuss nuclear security.

Legislators in the House of Representatives unveiled a separate bill on Tuesday that would significantly curtail the practice of bulk collection but lower the legal standards for the collection of such information. The House proposal would not necessarily require a judge's prior approval to access phone or email data.

Neither the White House nor the House intelligence committee proposal would require telecommunications firms to keep such records any longer than the current 18-month maximum, a significant shift away from the five years during which they are currently held by NSA. The moves represent a significant overhaul of the secret mass collection practices of the past 13 years, as exposed by Snowden.

But under the White House proposals, the National Security Agency would still be able to gain access to the data from thousands of phone calls from a single court order. Phone companies would be required to provide phone records up to two "hops" – or degrees of separation – from a phone number suspected of wrongdoing.

Speaking in the Hague, Obama said he believed the reform proposals presented to him by the US intelligence agencies were "workable" and would "eliminate" the concerns of privacy campaigners. "I am confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal the threat of a terrorist attack but does so in a way that addresses people's concerns," he said.

Activists gave a cautious welcome to Obama's plans. Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an article for the Guardian: "The president is acknowledging that a surveillance program endorsed by all three branches of government, and in place for more than a decade, has not been able to survive public scrutiny. It's an acknowledgement that the intelligence agencies, the surveillance court and the intelligence committees struck a balance behind closed doors that could not be defended in public."

Obama will ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which gives legal oversight to the system, to approve the current bulk collection program for a final 90-day period as he attempts to implement his plan.

Attention will now be focused on how that can be achieved in Congress. In Washington on Tuesday, NSA allies Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, of the House intelligence committee, published a bill which they claimed would end the bulk collection of Americans' phone records. But the government would be empowered, through a non-judicial order, to compel phone companies and internet service providers to turn over records of phone numbers or email addresses with a "reasonable articulable suspicion" of connection to terrorism or espionage, along with those contacted by that number or address, and all those contacted by those numbers or addresses.

Although that data can sprawl into the thousands of phone numbers and email addresses off a single order to the companies, Ruppersberger told reporters on Tuesday that their bill would represent "ending bulk collection".

Both said they were close to alignment with the White House's proposals, which Rogers and Ruppersberger said currently provide greater up-front judicial scrutiny on the data collection than their effort."We think the White House is now moving toward our position on this. We've been sharing text with them for the last few weeks," Rogers, the committee chairman, said.

There was a sense on Capitol Hill that consensus was growing around the House bill as a vehicle for Obama's proposals. Dianne Feinstien, Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said Obama's plan was "worthy effort". She said her committee would schedule a hearing to examine the president's proposals and the House bill.

Rogers and Ruppersberger forcefully rejected an alternative proposal, authored by GOP representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, which Ruppersberger said would make America "less safe." The Leahy-Sensenbrenner bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, permits the government to acquire data related to an "ongoing" terrorism investigation – the standard set out in the Patriot Act, which since 2006 the NSA has contended its bulk collection of Americans' phone data meets.

Leahy, the Senate judiciary committee chairman, welcomed Obama's plan to end collection of US phone records. "That is a key element of what I and others have outlined in the USA Freedom Act, and that is what the American people have been demanding," he said in a statement.

“I look forward to having meaningful consultation with the administration on these matters and reviewing its proposal to evaluate whether it sufficiently protects Americans’ privacy. In the meantime, the president could end bulk collection once and for all on Friday by not seeking reauthorisation of this program. Rather than postponing action any longer, I hope he chooses this path.”

Senator Mark Udall, the Colorado Democrat who has been a prominent critic of bulk surveillance, said he was "encouraged" by the president's plans. "The constitution is clear ... the ongoing bulk collections of Americans' call records is an unacceptable invasion of our privacy that doesn't make us safer and must be brought to an end," he said.

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