Pressure Builds for Data-Sweep Alternative

The White House and Congress have urged the National Security Agency to consider an alternative to its sweeping telephone-data surveillance program, but the Director of National Intelligence in a new report to select lawmakers has cited hurdles that will make drastic changes difficult to adopt, U.S. officials said.

NSA has drawn fire for collecting and holding the phone records of most Americans. An alternative would allow investigators to conduct terrorism-related searches on the data while it is held by the phone companies, and take only data that is part of...