A key member of the House Intelligence Committee...

A key member of the House Intelligence Committee reversed course on phone surveillance. Ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., no longer wants the government to collect phone metadata in bulk, as it currently does. “We should end the government’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, but preserve the important capability the intelligence community needs to keep us safe,” Ruppersberger said in a statement. “We must design a targeted and closely overseen way to find the early indicators of domestic terrorism. We must have mandatory judicial review, we must ensure that telecommunication providers are legally required to turn over their relevant records, and we must not require them to hold their data any longer than they normally do.” The process “efficiently and effectively gets the Intelligence Community the information it needs to protect our country and her people,” he added. Ruppersberger’s advocacy is “not yet legislation” so much as “just proposed changes for the time being,” his spokeswoman told us. Ruppersberger had previously spoken publicly about crafting a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act revamp bill with committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., legislation widely expected to codify the phone surveillance practices that exist now. They both described working on that for months, up through December. That legislation has never been introduced, and one committee Democrat, Jim Himes of Connecticut, has told us it is stalled for good (CD Dec 30 p4).