This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 14, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The National Security Agency's overreach is now widely acknowledged,

but if President Obama and Congress followed the advice

or the President's hand-picked reform panel, the NSA may come out with a significant and

unexpected policy victory.

Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, explains.

The President, despite some evidence to the contrary, says that he welcomes this debate over

the proper role of the NSA. that he's appointed a

proper role of the NSA.

He's appointed a group to look into it.

One of the concerns that you have is that the NSA might actually get a policy victory out of their horrible

mismanagement?

I suppose so, yes.

And the issue is data retention.

Since before the President's review group looked into the NSA's

activities and came out with their report, I've been hearing from people, good-willed people on

Capitol Hill, for example, who think maybe there's a way to split this baby and we could have the telecommunications companies hold on to the data and then it could be queried when appropriate.

That would be a protection.

That's a measure of protection from the NSA, isn't it?

Well, what they're talking about is a data retention regime.

And that's a debate that actually ended some years ago,

...