In Surveillance Debate, White House Turns Its Focus to Silicon Valley - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/us/politics/white-house-shifts-surveillance-debate-to-private-sector.html
Now, by expanding the debate to what America’s digital titans collect, Mr. Obama gains a few political advantages. He is hoping to reinvigorate legislative proposals that went nowhere in his first term. And now that the revelations about the N.S.A. have tapered off, at least for a while, his aides seem to sense that Americans are at least as concerned about the information they entrust to Google and Yahoo.
In Silicon Valley, there is a suspicion that the report issued on Thursday by John D. Podesta, a presidential adviser, is an effort to change the subject from government surveillance. Mr. Podesta insists it is about expanding the discussion about how information is used.
(…)
The question is whether restrictions placed on the N.S.A. — and public resistance — will spill over to regulation of the private sector, and conversely whether new norms of what companies can collect will begin to affect the intelligence world.
At the N.S.A., there is grumbling about the continuing disclosures of material stolen by Mr. Snowden, but comparatively little complaint on the new limits Mr. Obama has proposed. In some cases, the N.S.A. gained some access to data even as it lost some autonomy. For example, its program to collect metadata missed a large percentage of cellphone calls. Under Mr. Obama’s plan, if it becomes law, the N.S.A. would have to leave that data in private hands, but when the N.S.A. does get it, under court order, the agency should have access to a lot more than it does today.
“It’s a pretty good trade,” said one senior intelligence official who has been working on the issue. “All told, if you are an N.S.A. analyst, you will probably get more of what you wanted to see, even it’s more cumbersome.”
