They will give in the ears

The US administration will take measures to limit the activities of the National Security Agency in order to protect the inviolability of the private life of Americans. This was stated by US President Barack Obama in a speech dedicated to the revision of the principles of the country's special services for the collection of information, CNN reports .

At the same time, the NSA and other special services will continue the wide collection of intelligence information using electronic means in the interests of the country's national security and foreign policy, the president emphasized. At the same time, the United States will refuse to listen to the leaders of friendly states.

Obama said that foreign states are constantly conducting electronic intelligence against the United States. He noted that counteraction to foreign special services and the collection of intelligence plays a “vital role” in ensuring the security of the United States.

Nevertheless, the program for collecting and storing metadata NSA in the current form will be discontinued. During the year, the American intelligence community will provide the US President with a report on the transition from the mass to the target data collection. In the transition period, the search on databases can be carried out by court order or "in really emergency situations."

The president critically responded to the exposure of the American special services of Edward Snowuden. “The safety of our nation also depends on the honesty of those who are entrusted to the secrets of the country,” the president noted. “If a person who does not like government policy will not publicly disclose secret information, then we will never be able to ensure the security of our people or pursue foreign policy.”

The American administration was forced to proceed with the reforms of the special services in connection with the publication of information about the secret programs of the NSA, transferred to the media by Snowden.

On December 24, Snowden in an interview with The Washington Post stated that his mission has already been completed . “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to start working, everything that I tried to do was done,” said Snowden. “I did not want to change society. I wanted to give society the opportunity to determine whether it should change myself.”

The goal of the US National Security Agency Snowden called "information domination", the use of other people's secrets to form events. He noted that the NSA acts uncontrollably and is practically not criticized. “I did not want to discredit the NSA, I acted to improve the NSA,” Snowden emphasized.

On December 17, the US Federal District Court ruled that the collection of NSA information about telephone conversations of citizens of the country of security is unconstitutional . According to Judge Richard Leon, the program contradicts the fourth amendment to the US Constitution, which protects Americans from unreasonable searches. Earlier, the Federal Intelligence Court 15 times confirmed the legality of the program for collecting telephone metadata, that is, subscribers, date and duration of conversations.

The defendants claimed that the program does not allow to monitor the content of conversations, but only fixes metadata. However, the judge questioned the effectiveness of the program, since the government did not bring a single case when the collection of metadata helped prevent a terrorist attack.

On December 9, it became known that Google, among other leading Internet companies in the United States, sent a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress demanding that the law regulates the work of American special services. The appeal was also signed by the top managers of Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Twitter and AOL. According to the authors of the letter, the actions of the special services "can undermine the faith of people in technology." This, in turn, is fraught with the rejection of the Internet.

On a specially created website, the companies stated five principles that are guided in dialogue with the authorities. This is: the legislative restriction of the right of the authorities to collect information; control and accountability; transparency of government requirements; respect for the free flow of information; Avoiding conflicts in this area between the authorities of different countries.