President Obama said the NSA's collection of call log data is a "modest encroachment" on privacy Friday in a San Jose press conference:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: [...] But my assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content, that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing. Some other folks may have a different assessment of that. But I think it's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. [...]
The NSA's phone surveillance program collects phone numbers and call lengths of potentially all domestic phone communication to mine for potential leads on terrorism.
