They are to move the obtrusive data collected to corporate owned servers the NSA will have full access to.

This announcement comes the day Target announces that 110 million customer accounts were affected by their hack at Christmas.

Not only did Target's announcement on Friday disclose a vastly expanded universe of credit and debit theft victims, but it revealed that the hackers stole a broader trove of data than originally reported. The company now says that other kinds of information were taken, including mailing and email addresses, phone numbers and names.

Yes, forty-six, which in and of itself would seem to argue that reforms are needed and in order.  The President took this report with him on his Christmas vacation so that he could study it, although one important recommendation did not take much consideration since it was dismissed out-of-hand.  Namely,that NSA be split from U.S. military Cyber Command. So  the NSA director will remain a general or admiral, where, in my view, a civilian should be at the helm of this spying agency.

But, the review group's recommendations would continue un-targeted spying and the bulk collection of data. Moreover, it is not clear how much better off we will be if private company servers are holding data instead of government data centers.

The FISA Court definitely needs change in how and who is appointed. Perhaps, a senate confirmation hearing, modified in that it would be conducted by the Intelligence Committee would be a safeguarding step.  And, if it is to continue to be labeled a "Court" it should provide for more than government arguments.

  Hopefully,  something more than a patina of change will be made  so as to head- off Congressional action and to pacify citizens who have become aware of the program's sweeping extent owing, in large measure, to Edward Snowden.  

Or Obama will emphasize how important it is for the American people to trust these intelligence agencies again, as if this is just a PR disaster he needs to clean up.

He referred to it as, "an inconvenience".

Monitor only between 8am and 1:30 pm.

Collect data for A - K on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Collect data for L - Y on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
"Z" to be collected on Sunday between 8 - 10am.

link

"Yet somehow none of these concerns are enough for Greenwald's most ardent supporters to even raise the question of how he is using his personal collection of leaked NSA files and who he is getting into bed with financially to do so.

One truly independent media figure who has raised this question publicly in recent days is Sibel Edmonds of Boiling Frogs Post. In a recent series of articles she has been reporting on the Greenwald-Omidyar-PayPal-NSA connection, and has exclusively reported that a retired NSA source is claiming that PayPal involvement in the NSA is explicitly mentioned in some of the documents that Greenwald has yet to share with the public. Greenwald has issued denials to the effect that he has not encountered any such information in the leaks, but has stated that he has no doubt that PayPal has a relationship with the NSA. However, to those presuming to ask questions about the possible conflict of interest of the lead NSA leak reporter teaming up with a man whose personal financial empire rests on a company that `undoubtedly' has a relationship with the NSA, Greenwald is surprisingly quick to issue ad hominem attacks and surprisingly slow to issue a substantive refutation of this concern.