Making You « Comfortable » with Spying Is Obama’s Big NSA Fix

The president is [lying]: The NSA debate wouldn’t have happened without Snowden
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/09/the-president-is-wrong-the-nsa-debate-wouldnt-have-happened-without-

At Friday’s news conference, President Obama was asked by Chuck Todd whether the debate that has arisen in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations made Snowden a patriot. Obama disagreed.

“I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” the president said. “I called for a thorough review of our operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think the American peoples’ preferences would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws.”

Yet the Obama administration showed little interest in subjecting the NSA to meaningful oversight and public debate prior to Snowden’s actions. When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year , the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected.

In March, at a Congressional hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper answered “no sir” when Wyden asked whether the NSA had collected “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.” We now know his statement was [a lie].

Making You “Comfortable” with Spying Is Obama’s Big NSA Fix | FP Passport
▻http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/09/making_you_comfortable_with_spying_is_obamas_big_nsa_fix

The President offered no proposals to fundamentally change the surveillance programs, because as far as he’s concerned, they don’t need to be changed.

OBAMA SAYS PHONE SPYING NOT ABUSED, WILL CONTINUE-
▻http://bigstory.ap.org/article/obama-new-oversight-no-change-spying-power

“The NSA says phone records are the only information it collects in bulk under that law. But officials have left open the possibility that it could create similar databases of people’s credit card transactions, hotel records and Internet searches.

Obama said he welcomed the debate, but his national security team also said it never intended to tell Americans about the highly classified phone program, which it falsely denied existed.”

American #surveillance
The #Snowden effect
▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/08/american-surveillance

THERE was something surreal, in a #Kafkaesque sort of way, about Barack Obama’s press conference on August 9th. Aiming to ease concern over the government’s surveillance programmes, the president announced reforms that seem both obvious and overdue. Then he criticised the man whose actions set those reforms in motion.