Roger That: NSA shuts down controversial data collection program

The U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA, on Sunday ended its controversial program of bulk collection of telephone data, exposed in 2013 by former employee turned whistle-blower Edward Snowden, according to Military.com.

The NSA surveillance ended after a new law, the U.S.A. Freedom Act, enacted by President Barack Obama was passed in June and entered into effect early Sunday.

According to the law, the government will no longer be able to collect this information, and will have to ask companies instead in case of security concerns. The reform amends certain sections of the U.S.A. Patriot Act that was passed after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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U.S. and coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State group will continue despite Russia’s decision to send advanced S-400 surface-to-air missiles to Syria, said the commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, according to Air Force Times.

“Yes, it does complicate things a little bit, and we’ll put some thought to it, but we still have a job to do here, and we’re going to continue to do that job – to defeat Daesh (the Islamic State group),” Lt. Gen. Charles Brown Jr. told Air Force Times on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian SU-24 that allegedly violated Turkish airspace. One of the SU-24’s pilots and a Russian marine who was part of the search-and-rescue mission were reportedly killed. Russian and Syrian special operations forces reportedly rescued the second Russian SU-24 pilot on Wednesday.

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An increasing number of Iranian soldiers and militiamen appear to be dying in Syria’s civil war, and observers credit media from an unexpected country for revealing the trend: Iran.

A flurry of reports in Iran’s official and semi official news outlets about the deaths — including funerals and even a eulogy to a fallen general by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — have surprised analysts who monitor the country’s tightly controlled media. The reports, they say, indicate that at least 67 Iranians have been killed in Syria since the beginning of October, according to the Washington Post.

Just a few months ago, Iranian media said little about the country’s military intervention in Syria to shore up the government. But as Iranian fighters participate in a new Russian-led offensive against Syrian rebels, Iran’s leaders might have a reason to offer more details of their country’s involvement, said Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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The Britain-based monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Thursday that “more than 50 American instructors” had arrived in northern and northeastern Syria in the past two days according to DW.com blog.

A Kurdish source told the AFP news agency that one group of instructors had been seen in Kobani, the town on Syria's border with Turkey that was besieged by "Islamic State"(IS) until the jihadis were driven back in January.

This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 9:35 AM with the headline "Roger That: NSA shuts down controversial data collection program."