President Obama’s administration has announced that the NSA phone surveillance program will be shut down today and will be replaced with a more granular program. So if the government is telling the truth, Americans can expect that the NSA will no longer be tapping their conversations listening in on private moments. In the past the NSA has made the argument of national security and the privacy of many is secondary to the security of the nation. Many people disagreed and many have waited for this day to arrive when the NSA is finally forced out of regular citizens private lives.
As required by law, the NSA will end its wide-ranging surveillance program by 11:59 p.m. EST Saturday (4:59 a.m. GMT Sunday) and expects to have the new, scaled-back system in place by then, the White House said.
Under the Freedom Act, the NSA and law enforcement agencies can no longer collect telephone calling records in bulk in an effort to sniff out suspicious activity. Such records, known as “metadata,” reveal which numbers Americans are calling and what time they place those calls, but not the content of the conversations.
While a great many people are still very concerned about the security of the nation, they are also very concerned about the liberties and privacy of the citizenry of a country who claims to be free. For now, it seems, the Obama administration and the National Security Agency have figured out a way to surveil for possible threats without encroaching on the privacy and rights of regular citizens.
What do you think of the NSA phone surveillance program being shut down? Let us know in the comments below.
[button link=”http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/us-usa-nsa-termination-idUSKBN0TG27120151127#OheQ2FhZXcl0KEQ3.97″ icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Reuters[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.