Q: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Justice Dept. official won’t say whether NSA collects Obama’s phone data 
  
 By Agence France-Presse 
  
 Tuesday, February 4, 2014 18:11 EDT 
  
 A US official acknowledged Tuesday that the NSA likely scoops up data on congressional phone communications, but stopped short of saying whether such action extends to calls made by President Barack Obama. 
  
 The tense exchange occurred during a hearing on the status of the administration’s reforms of the secret, bulk data collection program exposed last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. 
  
 Deputy Attorney General James Cole, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, hesitated when asked whether the controversial NSA program that gathers the numbers, call times and lengths of virtually every US phone call extended to communications by members of Congress and executive branch officials. 
  
 Congressman Darrell Issa, a House Republican known for his staunch criticism of the Obama White House, asked specifically whether the program was scooping up information from “202-225-and four digits” — the phone exchange for House of Representatives offices. 
  
 “Without going specifically, probably we do, congressman,” Cole said. 
  
 Issa then asked whether the president’s phone calls were targeted by the program. 
  
 “I believe every phone number that is with the providers that get those orders comes in under the scope of that order,” Cole said, without clarifying whether the president’s phones fall within such an order. 
  
 Cole agreed to get back to Issa with clarification, to which Issa responded: “Especially if he (Obama) calls Chancellor Merkel.” 
  
 The remark was an apparent swipe at charges that the NSA had been listening in on the telephones of several world leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who told Obama in October that such action would be a “breach of trust” between two allies. 
  
 The hearing comes amid growing congressional and public concern over the scope of domestic intelligence gathering. 
  
 Members of the panel warned the Obama administration to swiftly reform the NSA’s bulk data collection program or risk losing overall authority to conduct such surveillance. 
  
 Congressman James Sensenbrenner, a primary author of the counter-terrorism Patriot Act that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, said it was a “shock” to learn how it was being used to justify a vast operation to hoover up telephone metadata. 
  
 “If the bulk collection program was debated by the Congress… it never would have been approved,” Sensenbrenner said. 
  
 The section of the law used to justify the program “sunsets” in June 2015, and with bipartisan congressional opposition to bulk data collection mounting, Sensenbrenner and others suggested it would not be re-authorized without a major overhaul. 
  
 “Unless Section 215 is fixed, Mr. Cole, you in the intelligence community will end up getting nothing, because there are not enough votes in Congress” to pass it. 
  
 Liberal John Conyers, the panel’s top Democrat, appeared to side with Sensenbrenner, saying “consensus is growing that this metadata program is ineffective.” 
  
 But he warned that allowing all of Section 215 to expire would “lose valuable counter-terrorism tools along with the surveillance programs many of us find objectionable.” 
  
 Obama last month said the administration was considering reforming the program by shifting metadata storage from the government to the telephone companies or a third party. 
  
 A key question though is whether such reforms are too late. Last year the House came just 12 votes shy of defunding the NSA surveillance program, and there is pending legislation in the House and Senate that would scrap the program altogether. 
  
 House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte warned that transferring storage to private companies “could raise more privacy concerns than it solves” and impede efforts by the intelligence community to connect the dots on possible terrorism cases. 
  
 But he called for rapid action on reform, saying many in Congress were “chomping at the bit to move forward” on legislation curtailing the spying program. 
  
 [Image via Agence France-Presse] ||||| Feds: NSA Collects Data from Members of Congress 
  
 The National Security Agency "probably" collects phone records of members of Congress and their staffs, a senior Justice Department official conceded Tuesday. 
  
 Deputy Attorney General James Cole buckled under questioning from multiple lawmakers during a House Judiciary Committee hearing reviewing proposals to reform the NSA's surveillance activity. 
  
 Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, began by asking Peter Swire, a member of the president's handpicked surveillance review board, whether lawmakers' numbers are included in the agency's phone-records sweeps. Swire protested that he was not a government official and couldn't best answer the question, but said he was unaware of any mechanism that "scrubbed out" member phone numbers from the agency's data haul. 
  
 Lofgren's time expired and Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, then put the question to Cole. 
  
 ADVERTISEMENT 
  
 "Mr. Cole, do you collect 202, 225, and four digits afterwards?" Issa asked, referring to the prefixes used to call congressional offices. 
  
 "We probably do, Mr. Congressman," Cole responded. "But we're not allowed to look at any of those, however, unless we have reasonable, articulable suspicion that those numbers are related to a known terrorist threat." 
  
 While the admission is hardly surprising, given that the raison d'être of the NSA's sweeps is to collect data of virtually all Americans, it may mark the first time the government has responded so directly to the question. 
  
 Several members of Congress have recently agitated to know whether their phone records are included in the NSA's sweeping data grabs. Last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, sent a letter to NSA Director Keith Alexander asking whether Congress was spied on. 
  
 In response, Alexander said that "nothing NSA does can be fairly characterized as 'spying on members of Congress or other American elected officials.' " His letter did not explicitly say whether congressional phone records were gathered, however. 
  
 This article appears in the February 5, 2014 edition of NJ Daily. ||||| The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Tuesday; witnesses included Deputy Attorney General James Cole; Peter Swire, who was on the review group that recommended changes to President Obama in light of NSA revelations; and David Medine of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. 
  
 Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) questioned Cole on whether members of Congress’s phone records were collected. 
  
 REP. ISSA: You gather the logs of members of the House and Senate and their official calls, including calls to James Rosen. Is that right? 
  
 MR. COLE: We’re not allowed to look at any of those, however, unless we make a reasonable articulable suspicion finding that that number is associated with a terrorist organization. So while they may be in the database, we can’t look at any of those numbers under the court order without violating the court order. 
  
 REP. ISSA: Well, speaking of court orders, Mr. Rosen -- is he, in fact, a criminal? 
  
 MR. COLE: Is he, in fact, a criminal? 
  
 REP. ISSA: Well, the attorney general had said that James Rosen, a Fox reporter, you know, there was a wiretap placed on his family -- he and his family, correct? Not -- and this was -- 
  
 MR. COLE: No, there was not a wiretap, sir. 
  
 REP. ISSA: There wasn’t? I’m sorry. You collected personal emails. Let me get it correct. 
  
 MR. COLE: There was a warrant for -- there was a warrant for personal emails but there was also the -- they wiretapped his family. 
  
 REP. ISSA: Let me rephrase that. Let me go on and I’ll come back to that because I want to make sure I get the terminology right. Do you screen executive branch numbers? 
  
 MR. COLE: We don’t screen any numbers as far as I know. 
  
 REP. ISSA: So you collect all numbers. The president’s phone call log record is in the NSA database? 
  
 MR. COLE: I believe every phone number that is with the providers that get those orders comes in under the scope of that order. 
  
 REP. COLE: Would you get back with us for the record as to whether all phone calls of the executive branch, including the president, are in those logs? 
  
 MR. COLE: I’d be happy to get that back to you, Congressman. 
  
 REP. ISSA: OK, especially if he calls Chancellor Merkel. It’d be good to know. The freedom of association is a basic constitutional right, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Cole? 
  
 MR. COLE: Yes, it is. 
  
 REP. ISSA: And if you are looking at our associations and then if we have associations with somebody that you believe is, quote, “a terrorist,” then you take the next step, right? 
  
 MR. COLE: Well, we don’t look at your associations, Congressman. 
  
 REP. ISSA: What does the metadata -- what does the metadata do if it’s not look at -- 
  
 MR. COLE: Well, we don’t look at the metadata unless we have reasonable, articulable suspicion that the specific phone number we want to query is associated with terrorists. That’s the only way we can get into that metadata. 
  
 REP. ISSA: Do you -- you collect the phone number metadata of all embassies in here in Washington, all the foreign embassies? 
  
 MR. COLE: I believe we would. Again, we don’t screen anything out to my knowledge. But that’s something that NSA would know. My understanding is we don’t screen anything. 
  
 REP. ISSA: And they have conversations with large amounts of numbers back in their home countries, right? 
  
 MR. COLE: All the telephone numbers have large amounts of conversations with lots of other telephone numbers. We don’t look at them unless we have that reasonable, articulable suspicion for a specific -- 
  
 REP. ISSA: Well, isn’t it true that the reasonable, articulable suspicion goes a little like this. I talk to somebody in Lebanon who talks to somebody in Lebanon who talks to somebody in Lebanon who talks to somebody in Lebanon who talks to somebody in Lebanon. If you gather all that data, then I’ve talked to somebody who’s indirectly talked to a terrorist. Isn’t that right? 
  
 MR. COLE: That’s not how it would work, Congressman, no. 
  
 REP. ISSA: How do I know that? How do I know that a 12-step-removed somebody talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who talked to somebody who’s on the list wouldn’t occur? And I’ll just give you an example. 
  
 The deputy prime minister of Lebanon at one time gave $10,000 to a group associated with a Hezbollah element. If I called the deputy prime minister, which I did, from my office, wouldn’t I have talked to somebody who was under suspicion of being connected to a terrorist organization? The answer, by the way, is yes. But go ahead and give yours. 
  
 MR. COLE: Well, we wouldn’t be querying your phone number, Congressman, unless we had evidence that you were in fact involved with a terrorist organization. That’s the requirement -- 
  
 REP. ISSA: But you would query the deputy prime minister who had made a contribution and was under suspicion, right? 
  
 MR. COLE: If we queried his phone number, we might find that connection. 
  
 REP. ISSA: And at that point, you would have a connection between somebody who you had a warrant for and me. So you could have a warrant for me. Is that right? 
  
 MR. COLE: Well, I don’t think we would necessarily have enough to have a warrant for you with just that one phone call, Congressman. That’s not how it works. Again, there’s a lot of restrictions in those court orders and in the rest of the law as to what we can do and what we can get warrants for and what we can’t get warrants for. |||||
A:
Just how sweeping is the NSA's data collection? So sweeping that it likely includes members of Congress and President Obama himself, Deputy Attorney General James Cole conceded yesterday. In a contentious Judiciary Committee hearing, Darrell Issa asked Cole directly if the government collected data on numbers beginning with (202) 225-, which is the prefix for Congress. "We probably do, Mr. Congressman," he replied, according to the National Journal. "But we're not allowed to look at any of those" without a reasonable suspicion. Issa then asked about the president's phone. "I believe every phone number that is with the providers … comes in under the scope of that order," Cole said, implying that Obama's would be included. Issa asked him to find out specifically and report back, then quipped, "Especially if he calls Chancellor Merkel." You can read more of Issa's duel with Cole at the Washington Post. Other lawmakers piled on Cole, too. James Sensenbrenner, the primary author of the Patriot Act, said that "if the bulk collection program was debated by the Congress … it never would have been approved," the AFP reports. He warned that unless the program changes, "there are not enough votes in Congress" to renew it when it expires next year.