NSA surveillance programme to be shut

  1. United States National Security Agency(NSA) is planning to end the highly controversial, once-secret, surveillance program for counter terrorism.It used to annually collect hundreds of millions of telephone call records to analyze the data for clues.
  2. The program was disclosed by Edward Snowden. It then became a focus of debate about maintaining balance between privacy and counter -terrorism.The controversy over the surveillance issue eventually led to the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which curbed some of the agency’s spying powers.
  3. Under the Freedom Act, the NSA may have access to that data only after obtaining a court order that specifies a phone number or person associated with a suspected foreign terrorist.