Simple Question: How Could President Obama Not Know That Ed Snowden Had The IG Report That Showed Widespread NSA Abuse?
from the absolutely-incredible dept
Among the many stunning things in the report from Barton Gellman and the Washington Post last night was the fact that it totally debunked President Obama's statements from less than a week ago, arguing (1) that these programs were not abusedIf you look at the reports, even the disclosures that Mr. Snowden’s put forward, all the stories that have been written, what you’re not reading about is the government actually abusing these programs and, you know, listening in on people’s phone calls or inappropriately reading people’s e-mails.And yet, the Inspector General's report shows that just in the DC area alone there were thousands of violations and abuses, and some included intercepting
What you’re hearing about is the prospect that these could be abused. Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against the orders of the FISC
Now, I know that some will take the cynical stance that politicians will just lie with abandon and not care about it. But the fact is that while many (perhaps all) are less than truthful at times, they very, very rarely will bumble into making a major statement like this that can be shown to be flat out false in black and white like this in a setting where the remarks were carefully scripted. So here's the thing I don't understand: by this point, the government must at least have some idea of what documents Snowden got, even if they haven't quantified all of them. They had to know that this Inspector's General report was out there and there was a high likelihood that Snowden had leaked it as well.
So I honestly can't figure out what the White House was thinking in having Obama make such a statement. You can argue that he offered a lie for convenience, and hoped that the truth wouldn't come out, but the White House had to know that there was a very high probability of him being proven a liar very soon after making those statements, which then would undermine the entire purpose of the press conference. Yes, politicians lie, but they lie for strategic reasons, and here it seems like the White House can't even think one step ahead in this chess game. Without last week's press conferences, the disclosures from last night would still be stunning and damaging, but coming so soon after the press conference, they're devastating.
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Filed Under: abuse, barack obama, ed snowden, lies, nsa, nsa surveillance, surveillance
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If Obama actually does that then your theory may be right. Of course even if he does it may be too late to save him from going down in history as one of the worst presidents ever.
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He already did that with Obamacare.
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free birth control and physicals and basic health stuff at a level that the entire world has a higher standard on than we do (US is far from a leader for healthcare) is a good thing.
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At BEST opponents to it would mumble something and gesture wildly at the 10th amendment.
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Its called secrecy.
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Re: Its called secrecy.
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Re: Its called secrecy.
He's also probably unwilling to start hammering the NSA over stuff that was pretty much in place before he was president. Especially as if he started hammering them on it, he'd start getting hammered by the Republicans for "being soft on terrorism", or "letting the terrorists win".
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Re: Re: Its called secrecy.
Not to say this capability shouldn't remain under continuous scrutiny, since, like all power, it can be abused. But so far, there's no justification for the lather that the press keeps stirring up to suggest a fiendish governmental conspiracy to invade the population's privacy.
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Re: Re: Re: Its called secrecy.
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Or having hot steamy phone sex, as was revealed a few years ago... but... details.
They couldn't be more eager to exclude all the superfluous content from private citizens. It seems easier for people to delude themselves that defense organizations actually eavesdrop on over a trillion conversations a year, rather than supposing that they really interested in thwarting real dangers.
More seriously you're totally missing the point here. Of course the NSA isn't interested in everyone's everyday calls, but that's not what people are concerned about. It's the possibility of serious abuse that becomes a problem. This could be in the form of if you ever did come into the cross hairs of the government for any reason -- such as Aaron Swartz being arrested for downloading gov't funded research -- the ability to delve into someone's background and find "other" violations becomes way too easy in an overcriminalized era.
Not to say this capability shouldn't remain under continuous scrutiny, since, like all power, it can be abused. But so far, there's no justification for the lather that the press keeps stirring up to suggest a fiendish governmental conspiracy to invade the population's privacy.
Sentence one and sentence two contrast each other. There is no continuous scrutiny. That's the concern. What this is revealing is the complete failure of scrutiny.
No one is arguing that the government was directly spying on this person or that person, but that they shouldn't even have the ability to do that. Yet they do and denied it. What we know and you don't seem to recognize is that sooner or later this power gets abused. The evidence is pretty much all of human history.
So some of us believe that the protections provided to us under the Constitution should be obeyed to prevent that kind of abuse. It's only the truly foolish who argue that "well, sure, it might be abused, but let's not worry until then." You are incredibly naive.
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More than just the government will want and gain access to this stored data.
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That's true to a certain extent, but there's *no way* that the administration didn't know about the details of the IG report.
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Lesson from Clapper
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Besides, due to Republican action against unions, you'd quickly be replaced. Union-bashing has already demonized them to such a degree that if they got involved in this national strike you're proposing, they'd have "terrorist" added to the list of things they're accused of being.
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And its a great strategy for the Washington Post and Guardian to take. The president and other members of the government can't not talk about this lest they lose in public opinion due to sheer silence. These news organizations just wait for them to say something stupid and dig through the treasure trove of information provided by Snowden to refute everything the government says.
It's like a simple game of trading punches. But, right now, the Washington Post and Guardian have bigger fists.
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You'd think if they lied to enough people they'd run out of people defending them.
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Who cares? -- So long as you're OFF the NSA crimes?
Masnicking: daily spurts of short and trivial traffic-generating items.
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Re: Who cares? -- So long as you're OFF the NSA crimes?
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Either
The President must be pissed. What ever secret keeps him restrained must be a doozy.
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and
given the general ineptitude of most US news outlets, why would Pres Obama expect to be challenged on this?
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Re: why would Pres Obama expect to be challenged on this?
So Politicians lie about secrecy. So what? Its the economy, stupid!
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Re: Re: why would Pres Obama expect to be challenged on this?
Readers of WaPo and the Guardian tend to be folks who vote against both the Repub and Dems (the parties who support surveillance abuse)?
I'm not so sure about that.
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Snowden "was bothered by technology companies"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/15/usa-security-snowden-dell-idUSL2N0GF11220130815
RE-FOCUS on NSA crimes facilitated by corporations, Mike! You have rumped the shirk. (Or whatever that phrase is.)
Now, I want to explicitly hedge that won't surprise me if Snowden's backstory soon collapses so that his "revelations" are discredited!
Really? Changed jobs and went to Hawaii for access, there found a hot stripper girlfriend, then threw it all over to be international fugitive in THREE months? Man, that's some idealism.
And then there's the "trove", which if exists, Russia now has? -- Though Russia appeared reluctant to take him? Pffft!
I don't believe it's much of a stretch from those wacky "facts" to guess that part of the Snowden flap is to gin up a new cold war with Russia, partly over Syria, as seems in progress...
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OOTB you confuse me. You hate corporations so much and wear your tin-foil hat with a strange pride. Yet you rant against the person that is exposing a lot of the corporations cooperation with the government.
You have every right to speak your mind!! And I have never once voted your posts to be hidden as everyone should see how an insane person can make articulate arguments to the world with inarticulate information.
But really your mind seems to be a place of conflicting rants and one of very little substance.
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OoTB has shown over and over and over, that while he may say he hates 'all' corporations, with the exception of google, which he has a fixation on, he cannot jump in and deflect criticism from corps and the government fast enough when they get caught doing something wrong.
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Either way it looks bad, if he knew and it is being dishonest or by incompetence the government couldn't look at everything that Snowden has taken to prevent this kind of thing from happening it just shows that this government is not to be trusted.
This is exactly why strong, meaningful oversight is always a good thing, not this crap, not this crap.
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And that in and of itself is very worrying. Not because of Snowden but because it also means that they might not know what information that people intent on harming America might have.
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OBAMA
The NSA is in total control here/
The fact that they did not come out and tell congress the truth and tried to cover up some of the leaks as being lies until they were proven correct is a very big warning to all that this s much much worse than it has been said to be.
For Obama to have come out and said what he did means one of two things in my mind. He was either lying knowingly or he was lied to.
The only way for this to be resolved is if the NSA is audited by a completely independent organisation. Where all the lies are removed, where if the NSA does not provide all the documentation available and another leak proves it then the head of the NSA must be questioned under oath in a public hearing for the interest of the country, forget state secrets if anyone thinks they are above congress they need to be shown they are not, even if it means that some methods they use are made public.
No secret is big enough to remove oversight and the fact that the NSA has probably been doing things they should not be doing is beyond disgusting.
I mean what is to say that they have not been monitoring all calls made in the tea-party group, what is to say they have not been monitoring all communications between republican representatives and their grass roots supporters.
Or that they have not been monitoring communications between big business and politicians. The NSA has gone way over what they are supposed to be doing and I have a feeling not even OBAMA knows the worst yet.
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Worse than you think
What is more disturbing is that in the Washington Post article it states that they had been in contact with the NSA about this document before the story came out and they have been working on it for awhile. Since these articles are being extensively vetted by the Post's lawyers before they are being published, it is fairly safe to assume that the contact was over week ago.
It is not that the NSA didn't know that this was going to be released, they did and that information did not make it through to the President's office. Unless, of course, the public response is being written by people who do not have security clearances and are not being given the information.
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No new daily show
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The simple answer to your question
The result, they screwed the pooch on this one, and popcorn sales have gone up.
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They don't need scandalous information. The elected officials already know that not protecting these programs would jeopardize their future careers as consultants/lobbyists/CEOs for defense contractors.
Scandals are ephemeral. Money is eternal.
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Simple
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Their hope is that the bulk of the public will rally behind the protective authoritative officials and ignore the obscure person in a far off enemy land telling them stuff they prefer to deny.
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Obama not knowing what Snowden has
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