Legislative overhaul: Under the Obama administration's proposal, the National Security Agency could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order. Photo: AFP

Washington: The Obama administration is preparing to unveil a legislative proposal for a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agencys once-secret bulk phone records program in a way that if approved by Congress would end the aspect that has most alarmed privacy advocates since its existence was leaked last year, according to senior administration officials.

Under the proposal, they said, the NSA would end its systematic collection of data about Americans calling habits. The records would stay in the hands of phone companies, which would not be required to retain the data for any longer than normal. And the NSA could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge, using a new kind of court order.

In a speech in January, US President Barack Obama said he wanted to get the NSA out of the business of collecting call records in bulk while preserving the programs capabilities. He acknowledged, however, that there was no easy way to do so and had instructed Justice Department and intelligence officials to come up with a plan by March 28, this Friday, when the current court order authorising the program expires.

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As part of the proposal, the administration has decided to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to renew the program as it currently exists for at least one more 90-day cycle, senior administration officials said. But under the plan the administration has developed and now advocates, the officials said, it would late undergo major changes.

The new surveillance court orders envisioned by the administration would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received, the officials said.

They would also allow the government to seek related records for callers up to two calls, or "hops", removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.

The NSA now retains the phone data for five years. But the administration considered and rejected imposing a mandate on phone companies that they hold onto their customers calling records for longer than the 18 months that federal regulations already generally require a burden that the companies had resisted and that was seen as a major obstacle to keeping the data in their hands. A senior administration official said that intelligence agencies had concluded that the impact of that change would be small because older data is less important.

The NSA uses the once-secret call records program sometimes known as the 215 program, after Section 215 of the Patriot Act to analyse links between callers in an effort to identify hidden terrorist associates, if they exist. It was part of the secret surveillance program that then president George W. Bush unilaterally put in place after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outside of any legal framework or court oversight.

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Obama to call for end to NSA's bulk data collection