In the coming days, I am certain we will see a lot of substantive commentary on the report by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies: Liberty and Security in a Changing World. But let me start out with a crass political observation: This is a really awkward document for the Obama administration. Really awkward.

The President, after all, has stood by the necessity of the Section 215 program and objected to legislative proposals to curtail it. Then the White House handpicks a special review group, and it kind of pulls the rug out from under the administration’s position. The review group concludes “that the information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional section 215 orders.” It also reflects skepticism that the program functions as a kind of insurance policy, “alleviating concern about possible terrorist connections. . . .” Ouch.

Similarly, the administration has stood by its national security letters authority. The review group suggests reining it in.

The administration has insisted that NSA needs to hold the telephony metadata. The review group suggests it should be held by the telecommunications companies—or a third party.

The administration has rejected calls to end the dual-hatting of the NSA Director and the head of Cyber Command. The review panel concludes that “the head of the military unit, US Cyber Command, and the Director of the National Security Agency should not be a single official.”