Where is Obama on government spying?

More than a year after Obama promised to end the controversial program, which came under fire following disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the president has pushed through only minor changes to how the intelligence community monitors ordinary Americans.

Unlike a range of other issues on which Obama has flexed his executive muscle, the White House is insisting it’s up to Congress to determine the fate of NSA spying methods.

“The president did his part — he gave them the blueprint,” a senior administration official said of long-stalled NSA legislation on Capitol Hill. “Whatever we do going forward will be stronger with the participation of Congress.”

In March 2014, as part of his reform program for the NSA, Obama proposed that metadata — numbers dialed, time of the calls and duration — should remain stored with the telephone companies. The government would have access to that data only through individual court orders, the president said.

However, the Obama administration has quietly requested and received approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court five times to continue the bulk collection of Americans metadata since the president pledged to stop the practice.

The White House has not telegraphed its next move.

In November, legislation that would have halted the government’s bulk collection of phone data failed to reach the 60-vote threshold to make it through the Senate. The bill needed two more votes for passage, and the now-Republican Senate is even less sympathetic to such reforms, as conservatives cite national security concerns over stopping the program.

Regardless, lawmakers soon will need to find a fix: Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which grants the authority for dragnet surveillance, expires June 1.

It’s not entirely clear what happens next for the NSA’s most controversial program, if Congress doesn’t pass legislation to address it. Some legal scholars say Obama could still receive approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue the mass collection of Americans’ data.

The White House has not said how it would proceed without congressional backing for the Obama plan.

Critics of the NSA, however, argue Obama is leaving too much up to Congress. They say that as commander in chief, Obama has not lived up to his pledges to defend privacy rights.

Some Democrats are urging Obama to end the program on his own, regardless of what Congress decides.

“There’s no reason, if you think that this is the correct policy, that you have to wait for the Congress to mandate you to do it,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told NSA Director Mike Rogers at a recent congressional hearing.

“You don’t have to wait for the USA Freedom Act,” the Democrat added. “There is no statutory mandate of any kind for the government to collect bulk metadata.”

But Obama’s reluctance to get heavily involved in the debate showcases the uncertainty surrounding any legislative package overhauling the NSA.

Republicans who have accused the president of not being aggressive enough in combating the Islamic State have credited his administration for using NSA spying techniques to root out terror plots.

Right now, Obama is hoping that his silence will give conservatives and progressives enough room to reach a compromise.

But simply saying that the government should no longer be in the business of storing the metadata is not winning Obama favor with those pushing most ardently for NSA reforms.

“As long as the government is collecting Americans’ telephone records, listening to their phone calls, and reading their e-mails without any suspicion of wrongdoing,” argued Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, “the gulf between our constitutional values and the government’s surveillance practices remains.”