The National Security Agency has halted a controversial system that analyzes the text and call logs of Americans, according to a senior Republican congressional aide.
The NSA has not used the program in months and the Trump administration could shutter it entirely at the end of the year. The disclosure came from Luke Murry, national security adviser to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, in a weekend podcast for “Lawfare.”
Murry was discussing the U.S.A. Freedom Act of 2015, which is set to expire in December. He asserted that the Trump administration “hasn’t actually been using it for the past six months.” He also said that he is “not certain” the administration will seek to restart it after it expires.
Under the Freedom Act, the NSA received 151 million call-detail records in 2016 and 534 million in 2017, but last June the agency announced that it had to purge hundreds of millions of records after realizing its database contained files it didn’t have the authority to receive.
Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s collection of phone data in 2013 in a self-proclaimed bid to jump-start debate surrounding government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
President George W. Bush used executive authority to start wide-reaching phone surveillance weeks after al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A court secretly backed that order. While it was running, the program collected hundreds of millions of telephone records.
The NSA and National Security Council have declined requests for comment regarding the weekend disclosure.
[Also read: NSA preps public release of cybersecurity tool]
