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WASHINGTON President Obama's new plan for the National Security Agency would significantly curb its authority, ending its vast collection of Americans' telephone records, but at the same time give the spy agency access to millions of cellphone records it currently does not reach.

The compromise, which would require Congress' approval, won praise Tuesday from prominent lawmakers, including leading defenders and critics of the agency. But it faces a lengthy legislative process during which the agency will continue to collect and store the records of millions of U.S. telephone calls.

At a news conference in The Hague, where he took part in a world meeting on nuclear security, Obama said the Justice Department and intelligence agencies had given him "an option that I think is workable" and that "addresses the two core concerns that people have" about the most controversial surveillance program revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Photos: Hacking victims

The first concern, Obama said, was that the government not control a vast archive of U.S. telephone call data. Currently, the NSA collects records of virtually all land-line telephone calls in the U.S. and stores them for five years.

Under the administration proposal, the government would no longer keep that archive. Instead, all telephone companies, including cellphone providers, would be required to keep call records for 18 months, the current industry standard.

The second concern, Obama said, was that the NSA be allowed to search only those phone records under a specific court order. Previously, a blanket court order required telephone companies to turn call records over to the NSA, but no judge scrutinized analysts' decisions about which numbers to look at.

In February, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved Obama's request to require judicial approval for each search. The new proposal would write that requirement into law, with an exception for emergencies.

U.S. intelligence agencies have to "win back the trust, not just of governments but more importantly of ordinary citizens" around the world, Obama said. Doing so is "not going to happen overnight because I think that there's a tendency to be skeptical of government and to be skeptical, in particular, of U.S. intelligence services," he added.

The new plan should help make Americans more comfortable with the surveillance program, he said. Obama repeated his belief that "some of the reporting here in Europe, as well as the United States, frankly, has been pretty sensationalized," and he said that U.S. intelligence analysts had exercised their authority judiciously. But such power could be abused in the future, he said.

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Obama's NSA compromise plan wins initial praise