Obama's Response To NSA Surveillance: Some Minor Reforms & Transparency; Still Lacking Justification

from the uh,-not-good-enough dept

Fri, Aug 9th 2013 12:52pm — Mike Masnick

President Obama just gave a press conference in which he announced a four step "response" to the public's concerns over the revelations of NSA surveillance. He continued to defend the basic program, even referring to his public record concerns back when he was a Senator. He further claims that prior to Snowden's leaks he'd already ordered a full review of these programs (of course that was all in secret) and Snowden's leaks merely "accelerated" the process (while also, Obama claimed, putting our national security "at risk"). However, he admits that -- while disturbed about Snowden's leaks -- he recognizes the public's concerns over NSA surveillance and the fact that there is a history of "abuses" when there are "great capabilities" for surveillance. As such, he's proposing a four-pronged plan to defend the programs, reform them slightly, and increase transparency to build up trust.

Consider some "reforms" of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and will reveal more details of the government's secret legal interpretation under Section 215 that allows them to hoover up all data on every communication. That document has been released, and will be discussed in a future post.
Improve "public confidence" in the FISA court (FISC) with greater transparency about FISC decisions and support for a civil liberties advocate playing a role in "appropriate cases" so that the judges don't just hear from one side. This reform has been suggested a few times and isn't a terrible one, but does have some logistical problems.
Set up a website to increase transparency. Yeah, sure.
Set up a group of "outside experts" to review the whole program. Seems a bit late for that.

That's about it. Note that there are precious few specifics. It's a lot of rhetoric about transparency, with a few random claims about how important these programs are. Separately, he continued to insist that we're better than some other countries (setting the bar low) and that we don't spy on Americans -- despite the evidence from this morning that this isn't true.

In answering questions, he insisted the two key programs being discussed, Section 215 of the Patriot Act and 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, were critical to finding important intelligence -- despite the fact that multiple Senators have insisted that there remains no evidence that Section 215 was necessary in any terrorist case.

All in all this seems like a PR scramble by the an administration that realizes it's on the losing side of the public debate. The promises seem pretty weak and hollow. The idea that he was already moving in this direction before the Snowden leaks is simply laughable. Section 702 was just renewed eight months ago and his administration fought very hard against any detailed analysis and any amendment to the law. Reality just doesn't support these claims.

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Filed Under: fisa court, fisc, nsa, nsa surveillance, partiot act, president obama, section 215, section 702, transparency

24 Comments

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Reader Comments

The First Word

“

Here's a question:

If Snowden's leaks merely 'sped up' something that was already going to happen, why has the USG been freaking out so much about them? They got a foreign president's plane grounded because Snowden might have been on board, and threatened trade sanctions against any country that offered him asylum.

If there is one thing I admire about the current administration, is that they can say such massive bullshit in public without once grimacing or laughing while doing so, something the very best actors would struggle to manage.

—That One Guy

”

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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:01pm

Here's a thought

You could improve "public confidence" in your secret court that handles secret laws for your secret police force

by not having a secret court that rules on secret laws for your secret police force

holy

moly

what an idea
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pixelpusher220 (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:02pm

Patriots?
I loved the line "people who have raised concerns about privacy and government overreach in a lawful manner are "patriots."

You mean the ones in prison because of following the legal routes about reporting such things?
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Alt0, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:03pm

Mr Obama
I'm still having trouble with the fact I voted for this guy (twice)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:09pm

Re:
And you can start by 1. Throwing out your preconceived notions and justifications of what the Constitution means and start over by actually reading what it says then working from there and then 2. Actually listening to what the people are telling you that they want and believe instead of trying to defend and twist it all to pretend like you are listening to them and try to convince them of the way you want things to be.
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Mark Harrill (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:10pm

Re:
Come on now, that's just crazy talk. No democracy can function without all these secrets!
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Mark Harrill (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:11pm

Re: Mr Obama
and you now understand what many people started thinking about Bush the younger in 2005:)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:11pm

Re: Patriots?
"people who have raised concerns about privacy and government overreach in a lawful manner are "patriots."

"Patriots" in the context of this sentence can be equated to

"Dodo"
"Bigfoot"
"Loch Ness monster"
"Unicorn"
"Honest politician"

etc...you get the idea.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:14pm

President Obama referring to his past history as a Senator isn't going to go over well, considering he has done an about face from what he stated as a senator and his actions as the President.

Quite frankly I don't believe him. All I see is more attempts to cover up and hide, while lying again.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:18pm

No comments on the constitutionality of these programs? Hmmm, I wonder why. Probably because they're unconstitutional. I don't remember reading anything about a 1,000,000,000+ ton hay stack in the Bill of Rights...
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Chris ODonnell (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:30pm

Given his track record on delivering "the most transparent administration in history" I'm not sure why anybody would take any of this seriously. it's window dressing to mollify the masses, and they won't even bother to follow through on it anyway.
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:31pm

Here's a question:
If Snowden's leaks merely 'sped up' something that was already going to happen, why has the USG been freaking out so much about them? They got a foreign president's plane grounded because Snowden might have been on board, and threatened trade sanctions against any country that offered him asylum.

If there is one thing I admire about the current administration, is that they can say such massive bullshit in public without once grimacing or laughing while doing so, something the very best actors would struggle to manage.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:40pm

Re: Re:
And while your at it, take those pitbulls you have in the USAG's office and sick them on Clapper and Alexander for their crimes against the public and their illegal attempts to cover them up instead of sending them after Snowden.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:03pm

We need to re-establish an expectation of privacy
His legal interpretation relies heavily on the idea that we have no expectation of privacy regarding data willingly given to a 3rd party -(and this is the part that blows me away) even if there is an understanding that the 3rd party treat the information as confidential . The precedent being bank records where even though people assume those records are confidential, the courts have allowed them to be routinely obtained by the federal government.

I would think that meta-data information exposing who we associate with would be worthy of even greater protection (in light of the 1st amendment freedom of assembly) than financial records. (Though I'd like to see the warrant-less bank records access put back in the genie bottle as well).

We need congress to establish that, given the fact that we store everything wth 3rd parties, we do in fact have expectations of privacy with those parties.
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DrSam, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:15pm

We are supposed to believe a liar?
This guy got elected promising he would be the most transparent Prez to date. Liar, liar, your pants are on fire! Many scandals later along with multitudinous amounts of secret meetings closed to outsiders, he is talking about being more transparent... When will the people of this precious country learn to recognize an amazing "BS"er?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:17pm

Re: We need to re-establish an expectation of privacy
If the public doesn't expect this information to be kept private, then WTF does he think the public is so pissed off about? Or is it that he means that the public's being pissed off over this is unreasonable?
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Stan, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:39pm

Obama's Response: "Set up a website to increase transparency."
"Set up a website to increase transparency."

They've already started...it's call TORMAIL. Send questions to any account there...doesn't matter which one.

Stan.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:50pm

Re: Mr Obama
Every election these days is between a tremendous idiot and a colossal idiot, and voting is split based on whether people think "tremendous" or "colossal" is bigger.
From my perspective, the difference is negligible.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 3:04pm

no good making any changes unless they are adhered to particularly when the 'secret interpretations' can come in as and when needed so you can carry on doing whatever it is that you want anyway.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 3:28pm

Joseph Stalin...
... replaced the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power.

But he will always be remembered for instituting a campaign against alleged enemies of his regime called the Great Purge, in which hundreds of thousands were executed.

I wonder if President Obama hopes to be remembered for the Affordable Care Act?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 3:46pm

Re: Re: Mr Obama
And it's even worse than choosing between bad and also-bad.

Because they know they can still count on the 'the other choice is even worse' votes, they can get away with almost anything their voters are opposed to.
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JWW (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 6:07pm

Re: Patriots?
No, they mean the ones in asylum in other countries...
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JWW (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 6:18pm

Re: We need to re-establish an expectation of privacy
I absolutely loved the email I got from AT&T in mid June telling me how much the "respect" my privacy when it comes to sharing my data with other companies.

I couldn't believe it. I really could care less how they share anonymous data with other companies, I care about them giving all that identifiable information to my government so it can watch me!
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Anonymous, 10 Aug 2013 @ 5:42pm

Re: Mr Obama
So is the whole country, thanks to people like you.
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Jose_X, 19 Aug 2013 @ 3:53pm

Laughable?
Mike, you might have confused a review which has its details hidden from the public (and many believe that hiding is necessary to thwart attacks) with a public disclosing of the details of how the intelligence is gathered. The former is what Obama is talking about. The latter is something he (and many) are against (at least in the context of today).

These are different things. If one believes (as Obama does) that the intelligence details should be secret, that doesn't mean you can't put together a group of outside experts to independently analyze the details and report the results to the President, who may then have this further scrubbed of delicate information before presenting it to the public.

As long as this nation's laws (and its Constitution) support having national secrets deemed necessary to preserve and protect the nation, you are not going to get that wish (if that's your wish) of public disclosure of details of the programs on intelligence gathering. You will have to fight the President to have such a law passed to specifically detail certain things, and, even then, there might be a Constitutional fight. Not all Presidents might think that way, but Obama seems convinced.

Anyway, my point isn't to claim the change that you want is not possible. Of course, you will have to first convince many Americans if you expect the gov reps to follow. My point is to note that Obama is doing what he probably feels is responsible or at least smart. I don't see an inconsistency in calling for an independent group of outside experts to give their analysis to Obama (via the DNI contact).

BTW, the DNI does not control the details of any of these programs used by any of the various intelligence agencies. The DNI seems to be a central figure to help coordinate direction and serve as a focal point to the President.
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