Obama's Response To Too Much Secrecy About Surveillance... Is More Secrecy
from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept
Anita Kumar, a reporter at McClatchy, has a good article highlighting how, for all the talk by the Obama administration about how it needs to be more open and transparent about what the NSA is doing, in actuality, the administration has built up the walls even higher, increasing the levels of secrecy... including secrecy about how he's responded to everything:Obama has been gradually tweaking his vast government surveillance policies. But he is not disclosing those changes to the public. Has he stopped spying on friendly world leaders? He won’t say. Has he stopped eavesdropping on the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund? He won’t say.As is noted in the article, the administration, which likes to pretend it's the most transparent in history, is actually one of the most secretive. Its attempts at transparency have almost exclusively been focused on where it can get the most political bang, not for what areas people expect the government to be transparent about -- such as how it interprets the laws that allow the government to spy on everyone...
Even the report by the group Obama created to review and recommend changes to his surveillance programs has been kept secret.
What's incredible is that it appears that no one high up in the administration seems to recognize how this is a strategy that will almost certainly make things worse, not better. It may be how the administration is used to functioning, but it makes it much more difficult to believe anything that is said about a supposed "vigorous public debate" being held on the surveillance activities. It also means that as more leaks come out revealing more questionable practices, the constant backtracking and excuses will just destroy whatever credibility the administration has left on this issue. If, instead, it were to actually be transparent and simply reveal things like how it interprets the law, and allows for a real public discussion on these matters, that would actually result in some frank discussions that the administration seems terrified of actually having.
Extreme secrecy may seem like the easier short-term strategy, but it's just digging an ever deeper hole that the administration is going to have to try to climb out of in the long-term. Hiding reality from a public that's going to find out eventually is just making the problem worse.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: nsa, secrecy, surveillance, transparency
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Obama's legacy...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Obama's legacy...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's always the same "look at what this reported has reported about someone else talking about something else".
it's never originally sourced, you never write "look at what this person said", it's "look at what I have googled about this reporter saying something"..
here I will copy/paste it for you!!, after all its so much easier than doing your own work !!
why respond to a report who is responding to his/her opinion of what someone else things that is going on.
Do you not have access to what Obama has publicly stated, or are you just lazy ?
do you not see how this strategy almost always makes things worse and not better !!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I find that disappointing, its not hard to search google for 'terms' and quote what other reporters are saying. It's harder to actually do your own work, and report on things first hand.
It's not masnicks fault, if he does not have those skills fair enough..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
It's not your fault, your parents probably dropped you a few times when you were little.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Have you read what he writes? You will notice how critical it is of the people he reports on. How would he ever get any access to them?
Journalism has evolved into the art of sucking up to the right people to get the "exclusive" stories. It is a kind of soft corruption in the "you be good to me, I be good to you"-department. Not sure "skills" are that much more important than the freedom to write without having to face those restrictions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: you always write about reporters, and not the facts they reported !!! why is that ? lazy ?
I dont care anymore about the actual stories, only whether or not the truth is being told.
Techdirt/slashdot tell me the ending of the story in a way I am willing to believe. The original story has no value to me anymore, I dont care about why obama is a piece of crap, I already know that.
A lie from the president is a lie from the president, I dont give a crap anymore what the lie was about and I dont need the lie quoted or sourced for me. I only want to know if that idiot has been lying about stuff again.
Credibility (techdirt and slashdot) means you dont have to prove anything anymore because people know your telling the truth from your past actions. Something the president doesnt understand.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Face it, you have no creditability. That's why you are constantly seeing your posts hidden by the community through the report vote. Speaking of which, have another.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
There is little point in debating Mr Masnick about what someone else said, or their opinion. If I wanted to do that I would debate from the source of the original article.
If Masnick cant form his own arguments, he should not expect people to argue what others are saying and masnick is parroting.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
On many occasions he has put forward his opinions and out right demolished your arguments in the comments section. Just grow up already.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
israeli spies are part of hollywood
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
probably only because nixon didn't have the means, but, yes, worse than nixon's.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obummer
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Obummer
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Obummer
Or do you think FDR was a bad president?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Obummer
People/history only tend to remember the big bang of the dam letting go, not the trickling leak that eroded it from the inside in the first place.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Obummer
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Obummer
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Obummer
He very clearly lied about many things i am not even going to try to go into them here, secrecy is one thing he has created more of and not less which is what he stated very clearly he would not do.
But this is something Obama inherited and something he is being very foolish about.
Saying all of that Obama has an opposition that very nearly took the country into a second great depression than what Bush created. Remembering that the Republicans stated very clearly that they would not allow him to do anything that mattered from the day he was elected the first time, and that they decided that was more important than the country and the people that live in it.
With this threat hanging over his head i am not surprised he dug in and has not been transparent, but he should have gone the other way...although saying that how much would it have destroyed his ability to actually monitor the organizations that wanted or want to harm the country.
I dont put all the responsibility of this on the republicans heads i believe Obama is clever enough that he could have released all the details now and this could have been fixed and not become his legacy.
Sadly he is going the wrong way for some reason and becoming less transparent , not that he has been very transparent to start with, and he is making a very big mistake that i am sure somewhere along the line in the next few years the republicans will use to damage him more than they have already.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It's become standard for things to mean the exact polar opposite of what is said.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why
Like you said that would cause a debate on policies.
But since Obama is always right their is no need for that debate and therefore no need for transparency.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
His intention of a debate ended when he stated he was willing. To actually get him in one will be dragging him out into it because he can no longer ignore it as damage control.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
p.s. won't change a thing
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
To quote Terry Pratchett's 'The Truth'
'Do you think I have others?' said Lord Vetinari. 'My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.'
Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obama the lying bitch
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well, there's that, but then ....
So, ALL the politicians from the Bible Belt, as well as several other States, are going to attack him however they can, and I think he is "gun-shy".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Well, there's that, but then ....
He's just as bad as Nixon regarding his character. Unfortunately, he has vastly more power than Nixon had, and government and judicial branch are far more mottled with systematic endemic corruption than Nixon's were.
Nixon resigned before he could get impeached because breaking numerous laws.
Obama would not get impeached, the laws are in such a sorry state that he did not have to break all that many, and the Department of Justice is corrupted to the core (with its head Eric Holder running illegal arms deals and lying about it to congress under oath, and just getting a slap on the wrist for that) and more interested in blackmailing small guys ("plea deals") than going after the big ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Digging
When you are at the bottom of the hole, STOP DIGGING.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
True
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: True
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
increased secrecy might not be comforting to the world, but the red button of nuclear holocaust must never see the light of day, and so you must hide it from everyone, including the good and the bad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]