NSA review urges halt to bulk phone data collection Washington: The US government should stop systematically collecting the phone records of all Americans, and instead leave the information in private hands unless it has specific cause to access it, a panel established by President Barack Obama in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks has found. Many of the recommendations in the 308-page document appear to be designed to restore domestic and international trust in the US government after revelations of its massive global surveillance operations made by the former contractor. NSA: Telephone and internet data collected. The five-person panel established after the leaks has recommended that foreign leaders only be targeted with presidential approval, after the risks and benefits of such an action are weighed. It also recommended that those who lead nations with which the US has a co-operative relationship should be accorded "a high degree of respect and deference." US spies targeting foreign nationals should abide by six constraints, the document recommends. The surveillance should be properly authorised by law or executive order, it should be directed exclusively at protecting US national security interests and it must not be directed at obtaining commercial secrets. Such surveillance should not be targeted solely on a person's political and religious views, and data gathered should be protected. The process should be subject to "careful oversight and the highest degree of transparency." Mr Obama will address the nation in January and detail which recommendations he plans to adopt. The panel was established when the US - and allies that included Australia - began grappling with the domestic and diplomatic fallout of the revelations. Australia's relationship with Indonesia was damaged due to revelations it had spied on the Indonesian leadership, while America's diplomatic ties with Germany and Brazil were similarly strained. In the US even many of Mr Obama's supporters were stunned at the extent of America's spying on its own people, particularly the systematic gathering of phone records of US citizens. Held in private hands, the records could only be accessed with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, though the panel insisted it was not weakening America's intelligence gathering operation. "We are not in any way recommending the disarming of the intelligence community," said panel member and former acting CIA director Mike Morell. Another panel member, Richard Clarke, a veteran counter-terrorism expert, said: "We're not saying the struggle against terrorism is over or it has declined to such an extent that we can dismantle the mechanisms we have put in place to defend the country ... What we are saying is those mechanisms can be more transparent. They can have more outside oversight and judicial oversight. Another panel member, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, told news website Politico that the legal standard for queries on particular phone numbers would not be heightened, but the fact that requests would have to go to a judge might cause the authorities to rethink some of their requests. "They might decide not to go forward with some of them," he said. He also stressed that the searches of the database would probably be narrower. The White House praised the "comprehensive and high quality report" in a statement. "The President will work with his national security team to study the Review Group's report, and to determine which recommendations we should implement," the statement said. Others in Washington DC backed the report, saying it was evidence that the NSA had exceeded acceptable boundaries. "The message to the NSA is now coming from every branch of government and from every corner of our nation: you have gone too far," said the Democrat senator Patrick Leahy. The bulk collection of Americans' data by the US government must end. This momentous report from the President's closest advisers is a vindication of the efforts of a bipartisan group of legislators that has been working for years to protect Americans' privacy by reining in these intelligence authorities. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the panel had recognised the risks caused by the government's "mass spying on Americans, joining the global consensus that the NSA had gone too far." But the group voiced concerns that the panel had not called for more sweeping restrictions. "We are concerned that the panel appears to allow the NSA to continue the mass collection of emails, chats and other electronic communications of Americans under the pretext that the NSA is 'targeting' foreigners overseas," said the foundation'sTrevor Timm. While we're happy that the panel acknowledged that foreigners abroad need some additional privacy protections, mass surveillance isn't acceptable for Americans or foreigners.