Tech Firms Say Obama's NSA Proposals Fall Short

Telecoms don't want responsibility of maintaining metadata database

Technology and telecom firms said the reforms President Obama laid out in his speech were a good first step but fell short of their hopes to significantly change the government's vast surveillance program.

Telecommunications firms said they were pleased about limits to the collection of bulk metadata, but said they have unanswered questions on details of reforms, particularly on changes to the phones records database. The database, Obama said, would be removed from government control to a third party. Phone companies don't want to have the responsibility of keeping the database, they said.

In a statement after the speech, the wireless industry's biggest lobbying group, CTIA-The Wireless Association, stressed that it believes privacy and security "can be achieved without the imposition of data retention mandates that obligate carriers to keep customer information any longer than necessary for legitimate business purposes."