President Barack Obama released the results of an independent panel's assessment of National Security Agency's controversial surveillance practices on Wednesday.
The "Liberty and Security in a Changing World" report, which surpassed 300 pages, contains 46 recommendations for updating the agency's practices to achieve a balance between maintaining national security and upholding citizens' right to privacy. The report focuses on increasing oversight more than curtailing surveillance tactics.
See also: NSA Surveillance News: Everything You Need to Know
First among the panel's recommendations is to amend section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to collect citizens' phone records from third parties. It also recommended that the government end its bulk storage of telephone metadata "as soon as reasonably possible."
The panel consisted of five men: Richard Clarke, a former national coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism; Michael Morell, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Geoffrey Stone, a professor at at the University of Chicago Law School; Cass Sunstein, a former Obama administration administrator and professor at the University of Chicago Law School; and Peter Swire, a professor at the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The White House is not legally obligated to adopt any of the panel's recommendations , but Obama recently said he plans on "proposing some self-restraint on the NSA and initiating some reforms that can give people some more confidence."
The independent investigation was one measure in a four-part plan to increase government transparency that Obama announced in August. Details of the probe began to leak earlier this week.
The release comes during a particularly busy week for NSA news. A federal judge ruled on Monday that the NSA's bulk collection of phone records is likely unconstitutional, calling it "almost Orwellian." On Tuesday, a group of top tech industry executives urged Obama to reform the NSA's surveillance practices during a closed-door meeting at the White House.
Indeed, the NSA has been a hot topic since June, when The Guardian published the first in what has become a series of reports on the agency's vast surveillance capabilities, based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Read the panel's full report below:
NSA Panel Report

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