Panel calls for changes to US government surveillance programmes

A presidential advisory panel, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, has called for extensive changes to US government surveillance programmes, which included limiting the bulk collection of Americans' phone records by barring the National Security Agency from storing that data in its own facilities.

A search of the information would be allowed only with prior court orders.

In a 300-page report released yesterday, the five-member panel also called for greater scrutiny of decisions for spying on friendly foreign leaders, a practice that had angered US allies around the world.

Even as the 46 recommendations are aimed at  ensuring greater oversight of the government's vast spying network, few programmes would be terminated. There was also no guarantee that the most stringent recommendations would be adopted by president Barack Obama, who authorised the panel but was not obligated to implement its findings.

According to the task force it sought to balance national security with the public's privacy rights and insisted the country would not be put at risk with more oversight.

Rather, the report had concluded that telephone information collected in bulk by the NSA and used in terror investigations "was not essential to preventing attacks."

According to Richard Clarke, a task force member and former government official, the panel was not saying the struggle against terrorism was over or that the mechanism put in place to safeguard the country could be dismantled. He added what the panel was saying was those mechanisms could be more transparent.

The five-member panel recommended 46 policy changes that would allow US surveillance programmes to continue even as they limited worldwide collection of communications by the National Security Agency.

The panel has recommended that the NSA retain access to bulk phone-calling records, with two changes, with phone companies, not the spy agency, keeping the records and the NSA would need court orders for specific customer data, the panel wrote.

Obama is not obligated to adopt the recommendations, that the panel has made in response to a domestic and international backlash over the extent of US surveillance exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Meanwhile, internet companies have been lobbying president Barack Obama and Congress to allow them to make public the extent of government prying into their data.

The panel agreed with the argument that secrecy posed a risk to the businesses of internet companies.

''If the government is working closely or secretly with specific providers, and if such providers cannot assure their users that their communications are safe and secure, people might well look elsewhere,'' the report said.