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
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.
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 think this is to wash away the NSA stuff while making it look like Obama cares about your privacy - even though this law only applies to private companies, not himself/the government.
If he really cared about privacy he'd at least try to reform the ECPA.
I don't understand. President Obama seems to be a great friend to the NSA, and I understand the NSA has greatly expanded powers under his administration. President Obama threatened openly in a press conference to punish whistleblowers after the Snowden fiasco blew up.
Why should we put any faith in President Obama and lobby him to do the right thing now? The opacity, doublespeak and contempt shown to the people by this administration ranks it at the bottom in my book.
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.
Lack of any targeted surveillance is not the alternative.
The alternative is to have to get individual warrants that are targeted, specific, limited. The political machine that Obama is part of hates this alternative.
This post may be a little confusing. Do you mean to suggest that Obama has reached beyond executive authority, circumventing the legislature to establish a new SOPA? or is that unintentional?
Because when you say this EO is a watered-down version of a bill, and CISPA was a watered-down version of that, and say that what Obama likes is 'worse' than CISPA - what many people are going to hear is that this EO is the super-mega-SOPA that will take away all their freedoms, and this time sneakily enacted by Obama alone - not that you just think these measures are ill-conceived because they do little to improve security.
You do realize that all government agencies, especially those under the DoD, serve at the pleasure of the POTUS, right? Obama has had close to two full terms to tell NSA what he wants done and how he wants it done. He could shut the whole joint down tomorrow. He has not. He is very aware of exactly how NSA operates, and he has not changed a damn thing.
Blame NSA, or whoever, all you want. They serve at the pleasure of their customer.
Exactly. The title and article frame this inaccurately. Obama could and should have shut it down or at least reduced the surveillance state that he inherited but it was created during the Bush years.
- save taxpayers dollars : looks like this was rejected just yesterday by the Congress. Who cares about taxpayers dollars anyway?
- whistleblower laws : did Obama ever do anything in that regard apart from public speeches as a candidate?
- abuse of authority : Obama himself clearly abused authority in the Snowden case in what he said and in the threats he placed on the guy.
- full access to court and due process: yeah, isn't Obama the one who agrees to keep secret court secret in the first place, and protect them from monitoring ?
Obama is not wrong. He's just lying. Who actually believes he would've started any kind of reforms without this, when he commanded over this program for five years? Not to mention that none of these "reforms" seem too serious anyway. The only reform that is needed is to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. Then we can start the debate from scratch, rather than trying to win inches in this debate from the privacy point of view.
Come on, if this wasn't a bold-faced lie, it follows that the President is either incompetent/derelict, or not in control of the NSA; in which case the President is a dupe/stooge, and the NSA is acting of its own accord outside the defined bounds of its authority. Let's hope the President is merely lying.
Half-measures are often incoherent and worse
than the status quo.
See: banking & healthcare
You just lock yourself into a disaster.
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
reply