In a speech Friday morning, President Barack Obama outlined his plans to reform the intelligence gathering practices of the National Security Agency while keeping the bulk of them in place as they are. He provided a robust defense of the need for such practices and also attempted to balance them against the increasing concerns of government overreach by civil libertarians, lawmakers, and citizens.

“The challenge is getting the details right, and that is not simple. And during the course of our review, I would not be where I am today were it not for the courage of dissidents like Dr. King who were spied upon by their own government,” he noted, referring to the mid-20th century American civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “And as president, a president who looks at intelligence every morning, I can’t help but be reminded that America must be vigilant in the face of threats.”

Notably, Obama immediately ordered the NSA to give up its vast control of a controversial (and perhaps even ineffective) database of telephone metadata.

Listen to President Obama's January 17 speech on NSA reforms:

The NSA and other intelligence agencies will now be required to get a court order to access the data. The president added that the attorney general would work with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before the metadata program comes up for reauthorization in over two months to determine a new method.

“Effective immediately, we will only pursue numbers that are two steps from a terrorist organization rather than three, and I’ve ordered the attorney general to work with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the database can only be queried after a judicial finding or in the case of a true emergency,” Obama said. “Step two: I’ve instructed the intelligence community and the attorney general to use this transition period for a new approach to fill the gaps without the government holding this metadata itself. They will report back to me with options before the program comes up for reauthorization on March 28. The reforms I’m proposing today should give the American people more confidence.”

The president also outlined a number of other changes, including appointing an “outside panel of experts” who will act as public advocates in cases heard before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Additionally, Obama said that there will be changes to the ways that National Security Letters are issued and that there will now be a fixed limitation as to how long the gag order is imposed. Finally, there will now also be an extension of some rights to foreigners against American spying infrastructure that they currently do not have.

Barring a compelling national security interest, he added, “We will not monitor the communications of heads of state and governments of our close friends and allies.”

According to the new nine-page presidential policy directive released by the White House on Friday:

All persons should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their nationality or wherever they might reside, and all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information. US signals intelligence activities must, therefore, include appropriate safeguards for the personal information of all individuals, regardless of the nationality of the individual to whom the information pertains or where that individual resides.

“I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations”

Obama’s Friday speech is the first major policy decision since he convened the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies last year in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. A similar group created by Congress, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, held its first public meeting with all five members in November 2013.

In December 2013, the presidential Review Group (summary, full report) suggested more than 40 other changes, some of them far-reaching. It recommended splitting up control of the NSA and US Cyber Command, limiting National Security Letters sent out by the FBI, making the head of the NSA a civilian post, and creating a "Civil Liberties and Privacy Protection Board" with greater oversight over NSA activities. The president then left on winter holiday to deliberate on which of those recommendations he would enact.

Obama only mentioned Snowden by name once.

“Given the fact of an open investigation, I’m not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden’s actions or his motivations,” he said. “I will say that our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it in their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe or conduct foreign policy. Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures come out often shed more heat than light.”

“Obama’s recommendations are now the floor, not the ceiling, for reform”

Privacy advocates and legal experts had mixed opinions on Obama’s reforms, but many told Ars that they did not go far enough. In particular, nearly all agreed that Snowden "won," and had achieved what he set out to do.

"The President's discussion of Snowden was masterful, but not successful, because it was contradictory," Ruthann Robson, a law professor at the City University of New York, told Ars. "Snowden's revelations were both irrelevant and dangerous. Yet the very fact that Snowden is mentioned must mean, in some sense, that the goals that Snowden articulated have been realized."

Others pointed out that there was a lot left unsaid in Obama's speech.

“Some of the most disturbing revelations that came out over the last few months were the ones surrounding the NSA's attempts to weaken or circumvent encryption protocols,” Brian Pascal, a research fellow at the University of California Hastings Law School, told Ars. "There was no mention of limiting these activities in the president's speech. The trouble here is that, in general, the ‘good guys' use the same encryption technologies as the ‘bad guys.’ You can't attack one without harming the other.”

"Now it's up to the courts, Congress, and the public to ensure that real reform happens, including stopping all bulk surveillance—not just telephone records collection," Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars. "Innocent Americans' information should not be collected without any reasonable suspicion. Other necessary reforms include requiring prior judicial review of [National Security Letters] and ensuring the security and encryption of our digital tools. Unfortunately, the President's speech made no mention of these."

Still, some hoped that the speech would galvanize a new era for the public and policymakers to improve on what Obama outlined.

“Obama's recommendations are now the floor, not the ceiling, for reform,” Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Ars. “The public can push Congress to add teeth to these reforms and make sure they provide the strictest oversight possible.”

“The measures President Obama laid out are not enough,” Jennifer Granick, the director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, told Ars by e-mail. “Obama himself recognizes that. Post-collection rules are an ongoing process. To my mind, they are not a solution, but a band-aid. The problem remains, now that our technological capabilities are so vast, if we allow bulk collection and mass surveillance, do we have the knowledge to (1) find actionable intelligence in the morass and (2) ensure civil liberties are not violated? We have a bad track record on both those imperative goals.

“More broadly, however, I would like to see continued critical examination of the claims that suspicionless spying protects the nation and building pressure to end dragnet surveillance. I do not believe this is compatible with democracy. If the FBI might use mass collection data to crush even one future Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the danger is too great.”