Attorney General Holder: ‘We’re not done’ on NSA reform

The Obama Administration is promising to come back to Congress with additional reforms of government spying operations.

Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee that the White House’s recent legislative proposal to end the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of phone records would not be its last word on the surveillance. Additional reforms, he said, would be on their way to Congress once he and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper decide how to move forward, as President Barack Obama directed in a January speech.

“We have begun the process that the president gave us in that regard. We are not finished with the work that we are doing,” Attorney General Holder said.

Critics of the NSA’s surveillance have said that the White House’s plans to end the phone records program, unveiled in March, seemed too limited. “They focus on one program used to access one database collected under one legal authority,” said Rep John Conyers (D-MI), the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel. “To me the problem is far more complicated than that narrow lens implies.”

The prime subject under review before the administration is Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which allows the NSA to collect information about “non-US persons” who are “reasonably believed” to be outside American borders.