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 In an 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) speech at the Justice Department, Obama
will say he is ordering a transition that will significantly change
the handling of what is known as the telephone "metadata" program
from the way the NSA currently handles it.
Obama's move is aimed at restoring Americans' confidence in U.S.
intelligence practices and caps months of reviews by the White House
in the wake of damaging disclosures about U.S. surveillance tactics
from former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.
In a nod to privacy advocates, Obama will say he has decided that
the government should not hold the bulk telephone metadata, a
decision that could frustrate some intelligence officials.
In addition, he will order that effectively immediately, "we will
take steps to modify the program so that a judicial finding is
required before we query the database," said the senior official,
who revealed details of the speech on condition of anonymity.
While a presidential advisory panel had recommended that the bulk
data be controlled by a third party such as the telephone companies,
Obama will not offer a specific proposal for who should store the
data in the future.
Obama has asked Attorney General Eric Holder and the intelligence
community to report back to him before the program comes up for
reauthorization on March 28 on how to preserve the necessary
capabilities of the program, without the government holding the
metadata.
"At the same time, he will consult with the relevant committees in
Congress to seek their views," the official said.
Obama is balancing public anger at the disclosure of intrusion into
Americans' privacy with his commitment to retain policies he
considers critical to protecting the United States.
The official said Obama believes the bulk data program is important
to countering terrorist threats but that "we can and should be able
to preserve those capabilities while addressing the privacy and
civil liberties concerns that are raised by the government holding
this meta-data."
People familiar with the administration's deliberations say Obama
also is expected to agree to other reforms, such as greatly scaling
back spying on foreign leaders and putting a public advocate on the
secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
TELEPHONE DATA
But the revelation that the NSA had been collecting vast amounts of
telephone metadata on both foreigners and Americans, which had been
done in secret for years, became the Snowden disclosure that
generated the most heated domestic U.S. political controversy and
led to the introduction of conflicting bills in Congress.
The Intelligence committees of both the Senate and House had
signaled that they believed current telephone metadata arrangements,
under which the data is collected and held by the NSA for five
years, should remain in place.
But both the Senate and House Judiciary committees had approved
bills that would eliminate domestic metadata collection entirely.
The presidential advisory panel that submitted its recommendations
to Obama late last year said collecting telephone metadata, which
shows which numbers call which other numbers, and the time and
length of calls, should be taken out of NSA control and handed to a
third party, such as the phone companies themselves.
Intelligence officials for some time had been circulating secret
proposals for having the data stored by phone companies or a
nonprofit group, and some officials had signaled publicly that NSA
might have to accept changes.
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Other officials have privately argued that if the system were
changed, the NSA should still have instant, direct, online access to
the data.
Citing recent breaches of credit card and personal data suffered by
Target stores, government officials opposed to changes in the
current arrangements for metadata collection argue that the review
panel's proposals would make Americans' phone data less, rather than
more secure.
Members of the review panel met with top administration officials on
Wednesday to discuss the president's speech.
COMBATING TERRORISM
Obama has been under pressure from the intelligence community and
key lawmakers to avoid tampering with programs they see as vital to
thwarting terrorism plots.
"We believe the program is legal. I am hopeful it's sustained by the
president, maybe in slightly different form," said Democratic
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee
and an important voice in the NSA debate.
Snowden leaked secrets about mass collection of telephone data and
other secret eavesdropping programs to newspapers before fleeing to
Hong Kong and then to Moscow. Journalists with access to Snowden's
materials say there are many more disclosures to come.
When the Snowden disclosures first appeared last June, Obama said,
"We've struck the right balance" between the desire for information
and the need to respect Americans' privacy.
But after a disclosure of U.S. eavesdropping on German Chancellor
Angela Merkel's mobile phone, he called for "additional constraints"
on American surveillance practices.
Privacy advocates have been appealing for greater protections for
Americans' constitutional right to privacy. Some privacy advocates
will doubtless be pleased by Obama's plan but other NSA critics may
say the president did not go far enough.
"While we welcome the president's acknowledgement that reforms must
be made, we warn the president not to expect thunderous applause for
cosmetic reforms. We demand more than the illusion of reform," said
David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, a civil
liberties advocacy organization.
As well as the tension with Germany, the eavesdropping has disrupted
relations with some other nations. Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff postponed a state visit to the United States to express her
anger over U.S. intrusions in her country.
(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan, and
Noah Barkin in Berlin; editing by David Storey and Eric Walsh)
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