You apparently missed the fact that the Obama administration had a full scale Democratic congressional revolt on its hands yesterday - a majority of congressional Dems voted to defund the NSA collection of bulk call records under FISA - the White House was seriously afraid the Amash Ammendment would pass - it only failed narrowly - 217 to 205. So in objective terms, the response has been far worse than the administration expected. And this policy tussle isn't over yet.
Obama says the congresspeople are all briefed up. They say they aren't. So they brief them up. Then they're confused.
The NSA would have been better off not trying to keep the whole program secret, since no one in Washington seems to be able to figure out what's going on even when they're told.
The whole thing has gone from shocking to sad to just plain pathetic.
If this was their strategy, it would be an extremely risky one from a political point of view.
The NSA's endless budget expansion is now at risk, while almost half of the House of Reps voted to nearly shut the program down last week.
No doubt, the next mid-term cycle will be dominated by people on the left and right, campaigning on the promise to shut down these insane programs. The next campaign for President will likely turn out the same.
From Obama's perspective, this is a complete nightmare. His legacy as President will be tarnished, with even the true believers now deeply disillusioned.
Obama can update the EO's for the NSA without congress[+].
[+] EFF: "Future reform must include significant changes to ... Executive Order 12333, and to the broken classification system that the executive branch counts on to hide unconstitutional surveillance from the public."
He just doesn't want to stick his neck out.
So this bill was a distant 3rd choice for the country.
1) pass a good law
2) administrate the NSA into compliance
3) pass muddled legislation in a lame duck session
I do agree that the Obama administration doesn't seem to throw such accusations lightly. But Obama and the entire Democratic party didn't necessarily have their ass on the line when the NSA leaks happened.
What a sham. "Oversight and transparency" is not good enough. The government kicks you in the teeth and then lies about it, now they promise next time not to lie about it. Anyone else feel underwhelmed?
Oversight and transparency are a big pile of nothing if all it means in practice is that government officials engaged in unjustifiable surveillance have to work in pairs to "oversee" each other. The government should not be engaged in mass surveillance. How about you identify a specific suspect and get a warrant, Mr. President.
> "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people," Obama said.
"America" is not interested in spying on ordinary people, the trouble is the NSA seems quite keen on it.
> Obama said his administration and the NSA is only interested in preventing another terror attack.
> "We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that," Obama said.
For example, no interest in providing exculpatory evidence to those they falsely accused. That seems fair, right?
I dunno. On the civil liberties front, the EFF was complaining by April 2009 that Obama was worse than Bush regarding state secrets privilege. The NSA issues are things that appear to have accelerated under Obama as well.
Sure Congress bets some blame, but you can't blame the opposition in Congress for Executive abuses of power. That we are out of Iraq was despite Obama's best efforts to the contrary. That we got some transparency in civil liberties vs the war on terror have occurred despite Obama's war on whistleblowers.
That's unrealistic, because we simply won't put up with mass casualty events. The key is to focus the response productively and avoid mission creep. It's the potential if not inevitability of the latter that makes the current NSA et. al. stuff so bad.
This is different, this is a president who's cut from the same cloth as Nixon, in everything from being the first one since him to refer to his political enemies as "enemies" to this new model of the Plumbers ... except the establishment and media hated Nixon with a passion starting in the late '40s, 1950 at the latest. Obama hasn't been subjected to that level of feedback, e.g. note how many on the Left are happy with or at least excusing his Administration's suppression of the TEA Party et. al., which is one of the things that casts the NSA's extreme data gathering---not "collection", you must understand...---in sharp relief.
Hang on there. If you're going to count amendments crapped on by congress, at least count it on both sides.
A lot of Obama supporters here on HN seem to be hesitant to call him out, but I'm going to. None of the bad stuff you cite congress as doing could have happened without the co-operation of Obama and a senate controlled by Democrats. They are all crapping on our rights.
Hardly unexpected. On technology, this administration has been as stupid and uninformed as any and all before it. When does the time come when the people have had enough and we stop listening to luddites and idiots and start listening to educated people who understand technology? We are at the brink of an economic collapse if the FBI gets its way and yet we're concerned with the work phone contents of a simple murderer? Obamacare and any other achievements Obama has so far won't fucking matter if we can no longer conduct any transactions online which is exactly where this administration and the shameless and incredibly fucking stupid and useless FBI are pushing us to.
Evidence of massive NSA spying on US citizens that recently leaked was less surprising than the reaction of some of my friends on the left overly focusing on President Barack Obama's responsibility, even advocating for impeaching Obama, when focus on the all 3 branches of government, especially lobbying and litigating for change, are more useful reactions, as I show in this video.
This ban was made possible by the last administration. Obama set it all up, in multiple ways. Few seemed to care when he did it. This sudden outrage is the worst type of hypocrisy. Had these people protested Obama's terrible policies, it would have helped the current situation; Obama might have at least listened to his own voters.
Liberals will also suddenly re-discover that they don't like the NSA's vast, intrusive spying powers, after the Democrats in the House and Senate barely said a word against Obama's 10x expansion of such over his eight years. Now that all of that power is in Trump's hands, the protests to come are trivial to anticipate.
I would assume that by using "Obama administration" in this context it was meant to be purposefully vague. The Executive Branch is massive. This could be anyone from the Pentagon, CIA, DHS, to many others who just happen to eventually report to the President. Many of these organizations have the motivation to maintain their current legal powers.
"Many members of Congress, the President's own review group on NSA activities, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board all agree that the use of Section 215 to collect Americans' calling records must stop."
It could be possible that the President overruled his own policy review group. But I find it unlikely given his propensity for consensus.
Obama's presidency has been disastrous for the privacy of American citizens:
“The [surveillance] Court documents declassified recently show that in late 2011 the court authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless searches of individual Americans’ communications using an authority intended to target only foreigners,” Wyden said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Our intelligence agencies need the authority to target the communications of foreigners, but for government agencies to deliberately read the e-mails or listen to the phone calls of individual Americans, the Constitution requires a warrant.”
The Obama admin hypocrisy on transparency is astounding. No public debate, no checks by Congress on the authority to wiretap and collect enormous amounts of data on US citizens. Yet the people who voted for him are still making excuses for this admin.
I'm crossing my fingers on this one. I have hoped from the get-go that Obama was trying to do some political jiu-jitsu to get the House to fight against him on the NSA thing by pretending to support it. People attack him for talking all loftily about most topics and then not getting anything done, so I found it strange that he basically didn't even pretend that the NSA scandal was bad. Keep in mind he didn't start the program; maybe he never really supported it. Everything he's tried to do has resulted in congress opposing him, so trying to change his tactics seems like the logical thing to do.
They were warned last year, too, with the FISA renewal, and they passed it 93-7 or something. They don't care. In fact it may be exactly what they want. Sen. Feinstein, also on Obama's behalf (her words), pushed it heavily at the time, and tried to shoot down any criticism or chance of real debate.
Funny how the administration got the drone program through and sheltered the NSA without any problems though.
At least you have the ACA, where the administration had to fight tooth and nail against a hostile right to get what they wanted. Oh wait, no, they compromised on almost everything and still passed it without a single Republican vote.
Weird how that narrative doesn't actually hold up when you examine the issues.
Part of the issue is that the dragnet activity the NSA/FBI have been conducting -- and their new moves to share this data with local law enforcement in violation of previous promises -- has destroyed anyone's trust in the social contract. People rightfully do not trust that any powers granted to government via any form of key escrow or backdoor system would be used only in conformance with the law.
Obama himself has acted in such a way as to destroy anyone's trust in him. He promised to be on the side of 'transparency,' but as near as I can see he's no better than Bush II in this regard. He has no credibility on this issue at all.
... and it's also important to note that we in Western democracies are developing and deploying tech that is going to be used in far less liberal countries with far less rule of law. Any backdoor/escrow system that we create is also going to be made available to dictators who want to persecute and kill. If it's bad for us, it's going to be deadly to the unlucky souls who live under much less civilized regimes.
Well, if we get really pedantic and nit-picky, the alarming news that the president was responding to was actually that a tremendous percentage of phone calls are being recorded, IIRC. Strictly speaking, it's actually impossible for NSA employees/contractors to "listen to" more than a tiny fraction of them, there simply aren't enough human-hours to do that. Nobody seriously thought that the NSA actually had a human being snooping on every phone call.
So the people say "You're recording our calls!" And the official answer is "Well we're not actually listening to them. We analyze the crap out of the metadata, though."
I'M MAD AS HELL...AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!
“This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining the Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing but protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. It is not who we are. It is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA Court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers and that justice is not arbitrary. This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not. There are no short cuts to protecting America.” - Obama
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