The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute...

The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is “reserving judgment” on the White House’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies report on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, said OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston. The report is due this weekend, but The Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/JesFgv) and The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1fblhgr) published advance looks at the report Friday. OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston said in an email statement that the report “recommends some important, common sense reforms, like separating the NSA’s code-making and code-breaking missions to avoid a dangerous conflict of interest, introducing a public advocate into the processes of the secret surveillance court, and establishing some level of privacy rights for people outside the United States.” But the review group “as we feared would be the case ... has urged that the NSA continue with its bulk collection and analysis of American phone records, just with the companies rather than the NSA holding the data,” Bankston said.