https://www.cnet.com/news/controversial-nsa-phone-data-collection-program-shut-down-aide-says/
Controversial NSA phone data collection program shut down, aide says
Program that analyzed Americans' calls and texts hasn't been used in six months, according to a senior Republican congressional aide.
The National Security Agency has quietly discontinued a controversial program put in place after the September 11 terrorist attacks that collected and analyzed millions of Americans' domestic calls and texts, according to a senior Republican congressional aide.
The NSA hasn't used the system in months, and the Trump administration might not seek to renew its legal authority, Luke Murray, the national security advisor for House minority leader Kevin McCarty (R-Calif.), said in a podcast Saturday.
Under a controversial national security policy put in place by the Patriot Act in 2001, the NSA had been collecting large amounts of metadata, the digital information that accompanies electronic communications. That information included what phone numbers were on the call, when the call was placed and how long it lasted, which was then saved in a database.
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden intensified already heated debate over the Patriot Act programs in 2013 when he leaked documents detailing the ways in which the secretive US government agency was collecting data. A new system put in place by Congress in 2015 required federal agencies to seek a court order on a case-by-case basis to obtain call data from telephone companies.
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