The U.S. Congress should kill the section of the Patriot Act that has allowed the National Security Agency to collect millions of phone records from the nation's residents, instead of trying to amend it, a civil liberties advocate said Friday.
A U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program focused on overseas telephone and email communications is targeted and narrow, and not the bulk collection portrayed in numerous news reports from recent months, U.S. officials told a privacy watchdog board Wednesday.
Proposals in Congress to end the National Security Agency's bulk collection of U.S. telephone records would compromise the agency's ability to find and track terrorists, representatives of the intelligence community said Monday.
Several U.S. senators will push for changes in the way the National Security Agency collects the telephone records of millions of U.S. residents, with lawmakers saying they will focus on making the NSA program more transparent to the public.