Just as a court has approved of two of President Obama's reforms to limit the use of phone records by the National Security Agency, a report has come out showing that the NSA's phone record collection has actually already been somewhat limited -- simply due to being overwhelmed by information.

Obama's Reforms

President Obama proposed some reforms to the NSA's spying programs in January -- some of which could take effect immediately.

Those quick fixes included limiting the NSA's metadata (or phone records) searches to two "hops," or degrees of separation, between a known terrorism target and U.S. citizens' phone numbers connected to it. Previously the NSA was allowed to search three degrees of separation.

The second quick fix is that, except in cases of a "true emergency," the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) must approve every NSA use of the metadata database beforehand, based on clear, reasonable, suspicion.

These two limitations proposed by Obama have been approved by the FISA court, according to the Verge, in a secret decision that may be released later this month. The stamp of approval ostensibly means these are now the rules of the road for government surveillance. Other proposed reforms, like taking the metadata database out of the NSA's hands, are still in bureaucratic processes.

NSA's Limitations

As these two limitations on the extent of NSA surveillance were approved by the FISA court, a new report out of the Washington Post has revealed that the agency's collection of American citizens' call records is already effectively more limited than previously thought: the NSA is actually "collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans' call records," reports WaPo, based on input from anonymous U.S. officials.

This is simply due to an inability of the NSA to keep pace with the mushrooming pace of cellphone adoption over the past few years. In 2006, according to the unnamed officials, the NSA was capable of collecting nearly all metadata of from U.S. wireless companies. But as more consumers left the landline behind and begin using cellphones, and more wireless companies began to crop up to serve the needs of those consumers, the government's collection dropped to less than a third by last summer.

Part of the drop in collection is due to new wireless companies in the marketplace and the slow pace of bureaucracy: many wireless companies are simply not yet under any court order that compel them to hand over records to the NSA. "Landlines are going away, and new providers are entering the field," said one person familiar with the program to the Wall Street Journal. "It's hard to keep up."

The metadata collection began with landlines, so, for example, wireless companies that deal in the legacy technology like AT&T are currently under court orders. But other carriers -- even big ones like Verizon Wireless's general consumer network and T-Mobile U.S. -- are not yet.

That, plus the technical challenges of handling such a magnitude of metadata, have limited the NSA's ability to reach 100 percent coverage, or even half, recently.

Limited but Not Waning

However, don't expect the "less than 30 percent" metadata collection figure to remain true, even less for it to decline further. The NSA is still focused on reaching 100 percent collection. The agency is preparing to seek new court orders to cover companies that have slipped the NSA collection so far. And the NSA's technicians are preparing the database for the influx of cellphone metadata that will come when those court orders take effect. As defender of the NSA's collection, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, previously said, "If you're looking for a needle in the haystack, you have to have the entire haystack to look through."

The NSA still wants the whole haystack. Whether collecting the whole haystack -- or any part of it -- is Constitutionally justifiable, or even effective, is still up for debate between National Security review panels, Federal privacy watchdogs, and civil rights organizations.

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