President Barack Obama may announce during his Friday speech on mass surveillance reform that he's ending the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone metadata. If he does, phone records could become even less private and lawsuits seeking a landmark ruling against government surveillance may be dismissed.

In some ways, Obama would kill two birds with one stone by ending the program, an action recommended in December by his five-member surveillance review panel.

The program's termination likely would hamstring the NSA's legislative and courtroom critics while outsourcing the agency's data dragnet to phone companies.

The president openly contemplated the option during a Dec. 20 press conference.

"It is possible," he said, "that some of the same information that the intelligence community feels is required to keep people safe can be obtained by having the private phone companies keep these records longer and create some mechanism where they can be obtained."

Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington Legislative Office, told U.S. News last month outsourcing the retention of records might "amplify out the privacy intrusions beyond where they are now."

Obama's panel suggested that metadata currently warehoused for five years by the NSA instead be retained by phone companies. The NSA would need a court order to access the information, but it's unclear if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would continue to grant broad browsing authority.

If the phone companies are either convinced or compelled to store records for longer periods of time than they currently do, that would eliminate an important "de facto civil liberties protection," Richardson warned. Not only would the NSA be able to review whom you called and when, but participants in a wide range of civil and criminal disputes would be able to as well.

"I share the same concern, if not horror," said conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, who is suing to halt the NSA program. "You cannot trust Verizon and the other companies."

Klayman said phone companies, which are entitled to payment for complying with government records requests, are "fat and happy" from government contracts and cannot be trusted to protect customers' privacy.

Verizon Wireless currently stores call records and location data for one year, AT&T stores that information for five years, Sprint Nextel does so for 18 months and T-Mobile retains call records up to 10 years and location information for 180 days.

The NSA's collection of phone records is probably the most easily understood of the programs disclosed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden, and it's also targeted by the most lawsuits. Three major lawsuits seek a ruling that could reshape the 1979 Supreme Court precedent used to justify phone metadata collection. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., intends to file a fourth suit.

Legal experts say it's possible those cases against the program would be considered moot if it is terminated.

"Simply stopping the practice does not, by itself, entitle the government to have the cases dismissed," says Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia. "But it gives them an argument, and especially if the practice is clearly banned by executive order, that argument might be good enough to get the cases dismissed."

In the NSA phone metadata cases, "where determining the legality of the practice presents a difficult and sensitive constitutional issue, the courts might be eager to avoid deciding if they can," Laycock says.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction against the phone program Dec. 16 after deciding in Klayman's lawsuit that the program almost certainly violates the Fourth Amendment. Leon described existing precedent cited by Department of Justice attorneys as outdated, but stayed his decision pending appeal.

U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley on Dec. 27 dismissed a similar case brought by the ACLU after determining the program a legal anti-terrorism tool. The ACLU is appealing the decision. A lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of a broad range of advocacy groups hasn't yet arrived in a courtroom.

Laycock believes courts probably would need more significant assurances than a presidential statement that the program is dead before dismissing the lawsuits.

"It has to be especially clear that [the] defendant will not resume the challenged practice, as where he has disabled himself from doing it again, or where he no longer has any reason or incentive to do it again," he says. "Voluntary cessation of an allegedly illegal practice does not prevent the court from adjudicating the practice's legality and enjoining its resumption."

The ACLU and EFF lawsuits seek declarations that the phone program is unconstitutional and permanent injunctions ending it. Klayman's suit seeks those actions as well as $3 billion in damages.

"Klayman is not likely to keep the suit alive by seeking damages, because of various immunity rules that protect the government and its officials from liability, especially for acts done before the law was clearly settled," Laycock says. Phone companies complying with government surveillance were granted immunity by Congress in 2007, but the government may be on the hook for damages if it's found to have violated Section 2712 of the Stored Communications Act.

Harvard Law School professor Richard Fallon says damages sought by plaintiffs actually may be what keeps cases against the program going.

The cases would "probably [be] moot" if the program ends, he says, "unless the plaintiffs seek damages for past harms."

Martin Redish, a law professor at Northwestern University, sees two possible outcomes if Obama terminates the NSA's in-house retention of phone records.

Courts either would decide the cases are moot because the government shows the collection is permanently over – possibly in conjunction with judges wanting to avoid the contentious issue – or the challenges would proceed based on the potential of similar conduct in the future, he says.

"Mootness is largely a discretionary doctrine and, some respected scholars believe, the court often invokes it to avoid politically delicate or difficult issues," Redish says.

"This strategic practice has sometimes been referred to as invocation of the 'passive virtues,'" he explains, meaning "use of the justiciability doctrines by the Supreme Court strategically to avoid difficult questions which the court does not wish to decide at this time."

Before denouncing the NSA program as "almost Orwellian" and issuing a preliminary injunction, Leon expressed hesitance about overruling 15 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges – each of whom were appointed by the Supreme Court's chief justice to seven-year terms and secretly authorized the data collection using a liberal interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Pauley dismissed the ACLU's lawsuit after determining the program "lawful," citing in part the FISC court decisions.

Although it's possible courts will slip out of the debate, Redish notes judges also may decide to keep the challenges alive if the program ends.

"One of the classic exceptions to the mootness doctrine occurs when it arises because of the defendant's voluntary cessation of the challenged activity," he says, and the cases against the NSA phone program would seem "to fit squarely within the 'voluntary cessation' exception."

Redish cites the 1953 Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v. W.T Grant Co., in which the court said a finding of mootness would mean "[t]he defendant is free to return to his old ways" and that "[t]his, together with a public interest in having the legality of the practices settled, militates against a mootness conclusion."

Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law also sees an uncertain trajectory for the lawsuits.

Obama might kill the constitutional challenges by ending the program, Tobias says, depending on "what representations the Department of Justice might make to the courts" and if plaintiffs can persuade judges that similar alleged offenses may happen again.

Skeptics – from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to Shelby – say the Obama administration has offered no evidence the 7-year-old program ever prevented a terror attack within the United States. Administration officials and Pauley say it has contributed to thwarting some plots, but the White House panel concluded the program was "not essential to preventing attacks."

Richardson, who has tracked the issue for years with the ACLU, recommended killing the program and "not even worry[ing] about data retention." Its collection has been demonstrably "worthless," she said.