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The official stated that an internal NSA review showed that

Dec. 31, 2018 by Elizabeth Duran

The official stated that an internal NSA review showed that the NSA had "no control over the collection of call data," but that the agency "has the tools to do this." As a result, some of the records had been deleted and other of the records had been reclassified as non-federal records. A third of the records were not included in the NSA database for the first time.

"This is a significant change to the agency's practice and it's not the first time that the agency has decided to discontinue bulk collection of records," wrote David Smith in an email to the Washington Post. "As an added benefit, the agency's decision allows for more robust oversight of its collection of phone records and other data collection practices."

"The agency has been working with the Department of Justice on a variety of requests to address the concerns," Smith wrote. "The department continues to work with the Department of Justice on a variety of requests to address the concerns, as well as addressing any other government-related concerns that arise."

According to the Washington Post , the changes to the program were made under a 2014 decision by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, to halt the program altogether.

While this may not be the last time the NSA stops collecting call records from telecommunications companies, analysts from the NSA's own Office of the Director of National Intelligence discovered that the number of calls the agency has received is also growing.

The NSA has been collecting call data for the last two years, but "that continued growth is likely to be temporary," said James Baker, a senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Studies. "That's because of the huge growth in the number of calls that may be given to [the National Security Agency]," Baker said. "Those calls are now being collected by the NSA by third-party agencies, and that includes the NSA itself. The numbers are growing rapidly because they're being collected by all of the other agencies, and the number is growing at a much higher rate than what's happening in the last years, as many of them were once considered to be the largest of the NSA's collection programs."