person:ahmed shihab-eldin

Obama’s ’Tonight Show’ Domestic Spying Comments Contradicted By New York Times Story (VIDEO)
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/obama-tonight-show-domestic-spying_n_3727404.html

Trevor Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director and Electronic Frontier Foundation Director, told HuffPost Live’s Ahmed Shihab-Eldin Thursday that the news directly contradicts what President Obama told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” earlier in the week.

“There is no spying on Americans. We don’t have a domestic spying program. What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat,” Obama told Leno.

“That statement is just unbelievable and it reeks of this Orwellian newspeak,” Timm told Shihab-Eldin. “When he talks to Jay Leno later in the clip, he says we can’t listen to your phone calls or read your emails, and now we know with this New York Times story that is plainly not true. It is unfortunate that we have to parse through government statements a dozen times before we actually figure out what they are meaning to say. With all these questions that they get they are obfuscating and deflecting and deceiving the American public.”