Obama hints at changing bulk collection of phone records to make the public more comfortable

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama suggests he may be ready to rein in some of the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records to allay the public’s privacy concerns.

At an end-of-year news conference, Obama said he has not yet made any decisions about the National Security Agency’s collection programs. But he offers the first indication that he may be willing to change some parts of the controversial program that collects and stores Americans’ phone records. He says there may be “another way of skinning the cat.”

One reform could be to stop the practice of government storing phone records for five years and shift that storage to phone companies.

Obama offered a broad defence of the surveillance programs that have been revealed in documents leaked by a former NSA systems analyst.