Following the controversial disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance practices, a presidential task force is on the verge of proposing a dramatic overhaul of the agency, CBS News reports.
The task force’s draft report is due Sunday, and will be released for public review before the end of the year. The goal, the article says, is to roll out the new NSA procedures in January, most of which will be enacted through internal administration procedural changes.
The panel’s draft includes some far-reaching limits on the government agency’s collection and storage of information, the article reports. One of the recommendations, according to The New York Times, would be to create an adversarial presence, such as a privacy advocate, to push back against the government’s case for expanded surveillance authority at court hearings.
The draft also recommends that administration officials, including the president, regularly review which foreign leaders are having their communications monitored by the NSA.
In terms of the government’s collection of telephony metadata, the draft proposes to store any metadata collected by the government within the telephone companies or a third party rather than the government itself. It would also institute tighter restrictions on when and how the government is able to query and examine data, the Wall Street Journal reports.