Are secret courts enough?

President Barack Obama today unveiled what his administration called the biggest reforms to U.S. surveillance programs since he took office.

Obama said he was ordering changes that will end the bulk collection of metadata “as it currently exists, and establish a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata.”

Obama said that intelligence analysts now will need approval from secret courts to go into phone records routinely stored by the National Security Agency.

The President also called on Congress to authorize a new panel of outside advocates to participate in “significant cases” before the secret court that handles intelligence collection issues

“Unless there is a compelling national security purpose,” Obama said, the U.S. won’t monitor the communications of foreign leaders.