WASHINGTON (AP) The chairman of the House intelligence Committee is warning that a congressional plan to bar the U.S. government from collecting millions of Americans' phone records would scrap an important tool for tracking terrorists.
Rep. Mike Rogers said Tuesday that the U.S. cannot return to the pre-9/11 intelligence-gathering mindset he said limited investigators from piecing together clues and preventing an attack.
Rogers spoke at the start of a hearing where top intelligence officials were testifying, including National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander.
A bipartisan plan filed Tuesday would end the NSA's massive sweep of phone records. Critics both at home and abroad have derided the program as intrusive and a violation of privacy rights.
The plan would require the government to seek only phone records related to ongoing terror investigations.
