AT&T CEO says awaiting clarity on U.S. surveillance rules

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - AT&T Inc CEO Randall Stephenson said on Wednesday he was anxious to hear details of President Barack Obama's proposals to reform U.S. surveillance programs, hoping for more clarity on the rules guiding the data collection operations.

Obama is slated on Friday to unveil proposed reforms of National Security Agency surveillance programs, potentially including its once-secret program to collect metadata of billions of domestic and foreign telephone calls, whose existence was disclosed last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

A presidential review panel recommended that the controversial bulk phone metadata collection program be reformed by having telecommunications companies or private third parties, rather than the NSA, record and store the data.

"At the end of the day, the data needs to be provided only pursuant to court order or a subpoena or a warrant, so where the data is housed probably isn't that important as long as the rules are clarified and we know exactly what we're looking at," Stephenson told reporters on Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/15/us-usa-att-surveillance-idUSBREA0E1HU20140115