A member of the House Intelligence Committee plans...

A member of the House Intelligence Committee plans to introduce what he calls the Telephone Metadata Reform Act. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., circulated a letter to colleagues Thursday looking for co-sponsors. The bill “would restructure the telephone metadata program by specifically removing call records from the types of records the Government can obtain under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act,” Schiff told fellow members. “Instead, records would be obtained on a case by case basis from the telephone companies subject to approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” Schiff said the proposal “mirrors” one of the 46 recommendations of the White House’s surveillance review group, which released its report last month. The question of where metadata should be stored was an especially contested recommendation following the report’s release. “This alternative structure of the telephony metadata program could accomplish the same goals as the current program while reducing the imposition on privacy rights of Americans,” Schiff said. He said the bill wouldn’t impose any new burdens on phone companies in retaining their records. Schiff doesn’t believe there will be too many serious costs associated with phone companies holding the metadata, said an aide, noting the proposed bill doesn’t mandate phone companies save data. The aide told us he suspects there will be some startup costs likely to be defrayed with government assistance. Although there are many data points, they are individually quite small and very cheap to store, the aide said. Under the terms of the proposed bill, any telecom provider can choose not to save the metadata if it is a burden, he said.