NSA's new surveillance system is nearly operational

The National Security Agency (NSA) is on track to end its controversial bulk collection of Americans’ phone records in November.

In a memo to Congress, the NSA’s legislative affairs director said the agency “has successfully developed a technical architecture to support the new program” as called for by legislation passed earlier in 2015. That new program is set to go into effect on Nov. 29. That system will replace the government’s sweeping collection of phone call records with a process in which NSA officials obtain court orders to access a narrower set of records from private phone companies. The metadata collected by the NSA includes information about the numbers involved in a call, when it took place and how long the call lasted but not details about people’s conversations.

National security hawks who opposed the congressional intelligence reform bill, called the USA Freedom Act, have remained skeptical that the new system will work as well as the old regime. Forcing the spy agency to request information from phone companies could cost valuable time, they worry.