NSA will stop gathering some messages from US residents

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US National Security Agency has confirmed it will halt a form of surveillance that allowed it to collect digital communications of US residents that mentioned a foreign intelligence target without a warrant.

The "NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target," an NSA press statement said. "Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target."

The decision to end the program, which collected messages sent or received internationally and which had been criticized by privacy advocates, was first reported by the New York Times.

It ends a once-secret form of wiretapping that privacy advocates have argued violated the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches - despite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court having upheld it as lawful - because the government was intercepting communications based on what people say, rather than who sent or received them.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of NSA surveillance, said that he would introduce legislation codifying the new limit. The FISA Amendments Act, which authorizes the program, is up for renewal at the end of 2017.

"This change ends a practice that allowed Americans' communications to be collected without a warrant merely for mentioning a foreign target," Wyden told the New York Times. "For years I've repeatedly raised concerns that this amounted to an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. This transparency should be commended."