A review board set up by United States President Barack Obama has recommended a wide-ranging overhaul of the National Security Agency's practices.
The panel issued 46 recommendations, including bringing to an end the retention of Americans' telephone metadata by the spy agency, and banning the NSA from asking technology companies to provide backdoor acess to information-gathering software.
It also addresses to an extent the surveillance of foreign nationals, and calls for more transparency and accountability surrounding the agency's operations and those of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that oversees its work.
The review comes six months after whistleblower Edward Snowden first released documents revealing the scope of the NSA's operations.
Dr Roger Clarke, from The Australian Privacy Foundation, has told Kristina Kukolja the move creates an opportunity to debate security and privacy matters.
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