The US' National Security Agency is reportedly exploring ways to hold on the domestic phone record database for surveillance.
Following the growing controversy by the revelations made by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the NSA is mulling how it could sustain the massive phone data and examining ways for third parties such as phone companies to save the data.
According to The Washington Post, the intelligence agency is motivated by the prospect that Congress will not renew the NSA's bulk-collection authority when the statute it is based on expires in June 2015.
A former senior intelligence official said that the shifting of phone data to telecom companies would take time as there are many obstacles including the phone companies' stiff resistance, who do not want to lose on their consumer trust.
NSA's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, explained that the agency itself has seriously considered moving to a model in which the data are held by the private sector, but no one wanted that model, including phone companies and called it like a 'hot potato'.