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Nsa Surveillance Under Obama Administration

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The former director of the US National Security Agency has indicated that surveillance programs have "expanded" under Barack Obama's time in office and said the spy agency has more powers now than when he was in command.

Michael Hayden, who served most of his tenure as NSA director under George W Bush, said there was "incredible continuity" between the two presidents.

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Hayden's comments came as the debate around the extent of government surveillance in the US and the UK intensified on Sunday. In Washington, some US senators demanded more transparency from the Obama administration. Libertarian Republican Rand Paul said he wanted to mount a supreme court challenge.

The British foreign secretary, William Hague, announced he would make a statement to parliament on Monday after the Guardian revealed that UK intelligence agencies used the US Prism system to generate intelligence reports.

Hague said it was "fanciful" and "nonsense" to suggest that the British monitoring service, GCHQ, would work with an agency in another country to circumvent restrictions on surveillance in the UK.

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The issue dominated the Sunday talk shows on both sides of the Atlantic. On CNN, senator Mark Udall, one of the prominent Senate critics of US government surveillance, called for amendments to the Patriot Act, the controversial law brought in after the 9/11 attacks, to rein in the NSA's powers. "I'm calling for reopening the Patriot Act," Udall said. "The fact that every call I make to my friends or family is noted, the length, the date, that concerns me."

Udall, who has been privy to classified briefings about NSA data collection programs, said it was unclear to him that the surveillance initiatives had disrupted terrorist plots, as the administration has claimed.

He called on Obama's administration to make more information about the programs

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