Obama to make changes to NSA programmes

US President Barack Obama is considering putting an end to the NSA’s sweeping operations that collect and store up huge amounts of data on the phone calls of US citizens.

This week Obama will outline proposals in Congress to overhaul the vast surveillance operations of the National Security Agency.   

The plan, first reported by the New York Times, would end the US government’s practice of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans.

Not only are these records collected though, they are stored for years for national security purposes.

The NSA and their practices have triggered a huge debate over privacy rights since the extent of the surveillance programme was exposed last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Obama is set to propose that the phone records be kept for a maximum of 18 months, like the phone companies are required to do by federal law.

Mr Obama, currently in Europe for global security talks with world leaders, has been struggling to come to a conclusion as backlash to US government surveillance programmes has been immense since the Snowden leaks.