US President Barack Obama has defended the controversial surveillance programme, saying such secret operations are "transparent" as these were carefully supervised and controlled.
Edward Snowden, an ex-National Security Agency (NSA) systems analyst contractor, has leaked documents revealing the Obama administration's spying programs that gather phone records of Americans and track the use of US-based Internet servers by foreigners.
"We should take pride in that because they're extraordinary professionals; they are dedicated to keeping the American people safe. What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails and have not," Obama told the popular "Charlie Rose" show on PBS channel.
"My job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy. And so every program that we engage in, what I've said is 'Let's examine and make sure that we're making the right tradeoffs'," he said in his interview, which took place on Father's Day, just hours before the First Family departed for Belfast for the G8 summit.
"If you are a US person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it's not targeting your emails unless it's getting an individualised court order. That's the existing rule," he said in response to a question.
During the course of the interview, Obama specifically referred to two programs of National Security Agency - 2015 and 702.
Program 2015, he said gets data from the service providers like a Verizon in bulk, and basically call pairs.
"You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names. There is no content in that database. All it is, is the number pairs, when those calls took place, how long they took place. So that database is sitting there," he said.
"Now, if the NSA through some other sources, maybe through the FBI, maybe through a tip that went to the CIA, maybe through the NYPD. Get a number that where there's a reasonable, articulable suspicion that this might involve foreign terrorist activity related to al-Qaeda and some other international terrorist actors.
Then, what the NSA can do is it can query that database to see did this number pop up? Did they make any other calls? And if they did, those calls will be spit out. A report will be produced. It will be turned over to the FBI. At no point is any content revealed because there's no content," Obama explained.
Asserting that the programme is "transparent", Obama said he is not Dick Cheney. "My concern has always been not that we shouldn't do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?" he said.
