NSA wants to end surveillance system exposed by Snowden

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Almost six years after Edward Snowden revealed to the American public that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting millions upon millions of telephone records without warrants or cause, the agency itself is calling for an end to the practice.

Officials loudly defended the practice at the time, insisting it all was necessary to keep America safe from terrorists. After a political fight, compromise legislation known as the USA Freedom Act allowed the data collection to continue but kept the information in the hands of the telecom companies and put restrictions on NSA agents' ability to access Americans' phone metadata (essentially everything except the actual content of their conversations).

But the NSA reportedly stopped trying to access these phone records earlier in the year, and now The Wall Street Journal reports that the agency says it doesn't want the program any more. That's a big deal, as the powers granted by the USA Freedom Act are up for renewal this year.

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