White House task force recommends major curbs on NSA surveillance activities

White House appointed task force has reportedly recommended significant curbs on the National Security Agency's surveillance activities which include limits on national orders for collecting user data.

The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, in its 308-page report recommended that the NSA should end storing huge amount of users' phone data processed by the US phone carriers.

According to the BBC, among its 46 recommendations, the review panel said that more transparency at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) level is required as it should be the only authority to grant collecting phone data related to a specific terrorism investigation deemed 'reasonable'.

The panel further said that the president should take serious considerations to ensure that the next NSA chief is a civilian and separate the position from the US Cyber Command.

Other recommendations include curb on spy agencies' efforts to undermine commercial encryption methods and when it comes to spying operations on specific targets including foreign leaders, the president should personally approve all the methods.

Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the review, which was originally to be published in January, was being released now in response to 'inaccurate' media reports about the contents indicating that there won't be many changes to the intelligence operations.

The review report comes days after US judge Richard Leon called the surveillance programme likely to be unconstitutional and questioned its very existence.