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The National Security Agency has decided to halt a controversial surveillance program, but this was just the tip of an iceberg of government abuses of privacy and due process.

The NSA said recently that it will no longer engage in warrantless spying on Americans' digital communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target, referred to in the intelligence community as "about" communications. The agency had claimed the authority to engage in such surveillance under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows it to target non-U.S. citizens or residents believed to be outside the country, although Americans' communications are oftentimes swept up as well.

"NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target," the agency announced in a statement. "Instead, NSA will limit such collection to internet communications that are sent directly to or from a foreign target."

"Even though NSA does not have the ability at this time to stop collecting 'about' information without losing some other important data, the Agency will stop the practice to reduce the chance that it would acquire communications of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target," it continued.

The agency's decision is certainly welcome, though we must make the perhaps generous assumption that it will do -- or not do, in this case -- what it says it will, and that it will not simply change its mind in the future.

We are reminded of the public testimony of then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper at a March 2013 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. At one point, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Clapper plainly, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper then lied to his face, and the faces of all Americans, saying, "No, sir," and then, "Not wittingly." Within a matter of months, news stories based on information from the Edward Snowden leaks would reveal the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone metadata and internet communications.

Then there is the matter of the "backdoor search loophole," by which the FBI or other agencies may search NSA databases for information about Americans collected under Section 702 without having to go through all that pesky business of obtaining a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment is quite clear: Government searches require a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause and describing the specific "place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." New technology may make our communications quicker and more convenient -- as well as more easily recorded -- but it does not alter that fundamental principle.

-- By the L.A. Daily News editorial board, Digital First Media

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EDITORIAL: NSA halts one abuse, but many remain - Lowell Sun