This time last year, President Obama promised he'd take action to reform the broad, scary spying habits of the National Security Agency (NSA). At the time, his promises were met with little enthusiasm from civil liberties advocates, who deemed most of his plans far too limited.
On Tuesday of this week, Obama followed up with additional new rules for the NSA, modest changes which have received widespread dismissal as a failure to actually rein in the surveillance agency. Notably, the reforms do not stop warrantless bulk data collection on millions of innocent people and though they do theoretically limit retention of data about Americans, no such protection is offered to vast numbers of people the NSA monitors around the world.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Five best ways to save money at the petrol pumpThe Explainer You don't have to wait for petrol prices to fall to reduce your fuel costs
-
Exurbs: America's biggest housing trend you haven't heard ofUnder the Radar Northeastern exurbs were the nation's biggest housing markets in 2024
-
How to enjoy a coolcation in SwedenThe Week Recommends You won't break a sweat on Lake Asnen or underground at the Adventure Mine
-
Supreme Court allows transgender troop banspeed read The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration begin executing its ban on transgender military service members
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff ideaspeed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'
-
Trump is not sure he must follow the Constitutionspeed read When asked about due process for migrants in a TV interview, President Trump said he didn't know whether he had to uphold the Fifth Amendment
-
Trump judge bars deportations under 1798 lawspeed read A Trump appointee has ruled that the president's use of a wartime act for deportations is illegal
-
Trump ousts Waltz as NSA, taps him for UN rolespeed read President Donald Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
-
Trump blames Biden for tariffs-linked contractionspeed read The US economy shrank 0.3% in the first three months of 2025, the Commerce Department reported
-
Trump says he could bring back Ábrego García but won'tSpeed Read At a rally to mark his 100th day in office, the president doubled down on his unpopular immigration and economic policies
