President Barack Obama promised to reform the National Security Agency a year ago this month. Interviews and a report released Thursday show just how slow the going has been.
The new report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, an independent agency within the executive branch, gave the administration an incomplete at best. Congress, meanwhile, gets a failing grade.
One of the privacy board’s signature recommendations last January was to end the controversial NSA program that collects data on who Americans call and when. The privacy board said the program has “limited value” in fighting terrorism — but Congress failed to pass a reform measure.
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Overall, the kinds of dramatic changes that many advocates hoped for have come nowhere close to fruition. But the phone metadata collection program is set by law to expire in May — which may give reformers the leverage to enact major changes in exchange for a renewal.
“It has been some time since the Snowden relations, and frankly the rest of the world is watching the U.S. on this issue,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s really time for our government to take a lead.”
