President Obama Surpasses Exceptionally Low Expectations On NSA Reforms, But Reforms Are Still Very Weak
from the you're-no-paul-revere dept
As expected, President Obama this morning gave his speech concerning his plans to "reform" the NSA. Similar to the original task force report, for which the White House first leaked claims that the recommended changes would be "cosmetic"... and then presented something a little more powerful, to try to win people over by beating low expectations. The same is true here. Earlier this week, the White House leaked out reports of cosmetic changes with little in the way of real reforms. Then, this morning, the President announced more significant reforms than expected. He did, in fact, propose a few major changes. You can read the full speech here. Among the things he announced:- A judge will have to approve each query for data on the metadata collection from Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.
- The "three hop" dragnet will be reduced down to two hops. That does, in fact, limit how far the NSA can search by quite a bit. That last hop is quite big.
- The NSA should no longer hold all of the data, meaning that the telcos will be expected to hold onto it (though, he leaves it up to Congress and the DOJ to figure out how to do this). He calls this a "transition" away from the Section 215 program, but that's hardly clear.
- National Security Letters (NSLs) will no longer have an unlimited gag order on them. The Attorney General will need to set up guidelines for a time in which gag orders expire, with the possibility of extending them for investigations that are still ongoing.
- Companies will be given slightly more freedom to reveal data on the NSLs they get (though I don't think he indicated the same thing for Section 702 orders.... which is a big concern).
- The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence will review annually FISC rulings to figure out what can be declassified.
- He promises to "work with Congress" to look at changes to the FISA court
- He is adding some very limited restrictions on spying on people overseas. It should only be used for actual counterterrorism/crime/military/real national security efforts.
- A State Department official will be in charge of handling "diplomacy issues" related to these changes on foreign spying.
- An effort will be started with technologists and privacy experts over how to handle "big data and privacy" in both the public and private sectors.
Bulk data collection will still continue in some form, despite the fact that it appears that bulk data collection is rarely useful, compared to targeted surveillance. There will be slightly more oversight, despite the fact that oversight in the past has failed. There will be no effort to stop trying to compromise the technology of American (and foreign) companies leading to serious questions about our tech industry's ability to do business overseas (and at home).
Yes, this is better than it could have been, but only by a tiny degree. The President claims that he is open to further changes, but the fact that he is clearly resisting the major overhauls that are clearly needed does not provide any confidence that he's actually moving towards fixing the overreaching surveillance state. The speech sounded lofty, and talked about American ideals and the necessity of protecting civil liberties, but only moved the ball a very slight way towards getting there. Further, it leaves open plenty of ways for the intelligence community to claw back whatever he's making them "give up" through other means.
Update: Embedded the Presidential Directive that he signed today to put all of what he discussed into effect. You can read it below.
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Filed Under: barack obama, nsa, reforms, section 215, surveillance
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Really?
Really? So no more spying on, for example, foreign military? I somehow doubt it.
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Re: Really?
Yeah, that should have been in there as well. I edited that sentence. Had meant to add a bit more to it, but forgot to finish it off when he moved on to the next thing.
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Re: Re: Really?
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Foreigners, screw you
At least they are clear the US government doesn't care about our rights to privacy.
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Re: Foreigners, screw you
Examples:
DropBox - OwnCloud
Amazon WebService - VirtMin
RackSpace - VPS.net, Tata's instacompute.com
Almost everything you use probably has an OpenSource or non-US alternative.
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Re: Foreigners, screw you
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Re: Foreigners, screw you
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Team America: World Police
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Re: Foreigners, screw you
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I smell bullshit from Obama
...Which tells me that the staff who leaked the intended reforms earlier this week did so intentionally in order to lower everyone's expectations so that Obama would get praise and avoid more stinging criticism when he discussed his reforms today.
In other words, keep raising hell and pressuring him until he actually makes significant changes and doesn't leave reforms up to the incompetents in Congress or the shady "making-things-up-as-we-go" types at the DOJ.
The NSA is under the Executive Branch, so the head of the Executive Branch should be the one to put the organization's feet to the fire, not Congress.
Just my two cents.
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Only two hops from suspected terrorists?
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Re: Only two hops from suspected terrorists?
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Re: Re: Only two hops from suspected terrorists?
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Re:
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Re: Re:
The House of Representatives must first pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Upon passage, the defendant has been "impeached". Next, the Senate tries the accused. In the case of the impeachment of a president, the Chief Justice of the United States presides over the proceedings. For the impeachment of any other official, the Constitution is silent on who shall preside, suggesting that this role falls to the Senate's usual presiding officer. This may include the impeachment of the vice president, although legal theories suggest that allowing a defendant to be the judge in his own case would be a blatant conflict of interest. If the Vice President did not preside over an impeachment (of anyone besides the President), the duties would fall to the President pro tempore of the Senate.
Short version:
1. Get Congress to agree to impeach him
2. Get the Senate to try him
3. Get ready for President Biden
4. Stop laughing for a moment and say the words with me: President. Biden.
That's not the reason he's not being impeached; Congress has its filthy fingers deep in the MIC pie. Many of them own businesses that profit from the surveillance state and that'd all come out in the wash. Since they're not obeying the law now, holding impeachment proceedings would simply bring down a spotlight on the conflicts of interest on both sides of the aisle.
As long as surveillance is considered to be a government thing rather than a private industry + FUD-driven thing, they can continue the charade.
Basically, if Obama goes down, most of the Intelligence Committee will go down with him and Joe Biden will be president.
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Still worthless!!!!
Will believe something has changed when the hammer drops or the heads start rolling. It is the only way... its just human nature to break the rules and push the limits.
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Scumbag President
It's the same old, same old. The only "change" is the bone thrown to big business by letting them bid on housing data, which they already do!
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Bottom of page 2
this directive shall apply to signals intelligence activities conducted in order to collect communications or information about communications, except that it shall not apply to signals intelligence activities undertaken to test or develop signals intelligence capabilities.
It's all done to 'test or develop intelligence capabilities'. The NSA can just call there tools 'beta' forever and they may continue as they like.
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Re: Bottom of page 2
"We regret to inform you that your privacy died on a training mission. Take this flag in appreciation and recognition for your privacy's service."
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If not, these folks are definitely breaking that law...
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Room full of Monkeys
- it has not stopped a terrorist attack
- it has not contributed to stopping activity
- everything used to date could have been obtained at least as well with targeted surveillance
- at best, it may provide useful data in the future.
Now, you could fill a room with monkeys and let them type for 10 years. It is highly likely that the output from Monkey typing would have provided precisely the same benefits - no more, no less. Whenever this is true, it is clear that whatever you are doing is pointless.
Unfortunately, this pointless activity which has massive financial and social costs, has not been stopped... why on earth not?
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Re: Room full of Monkeys
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Re: Re: Room full of Monkeys
Holder himself is a criminal (Fast and Furious gun walking).
The whole thing is not going to end right for everybody.
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Two-Degrees of Suspicion
If I follow an account associated with a known hacker collective, which then follows and is followed by known hacker activists- is the requirement met to target my activity?
What about restaurants on social networks? If Bob's Bacon-Wrapped Bacon and an internally recognized terrorist follow each other, then has the requirement for targeting been met for everyone who follows Bob's Bacon-Wrapped Bacon?
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The actual speech
"He talked for an hour. Didn't say anything, but kept talking anyway."
That's the gist of it all.
You wanted reform? With the wolves in Washington? No thank you very much! Not gonna happen in that town, that's for sure!
He's one person, in charge of the entire country. If he can't get the balls to shut down the NSA, we're fucked. All it would take would be an Executive Order, and the NSA is done.
Notice that he didn't do that. Sure, he did a small one to address some small piece of business, but that's window dressing for all of us who want something, anything done.
Now run along like good citizens. Remember this:
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!"
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Dodging the main point
Such wording avoids the core issue about all the data-gathering, and shifts it away from 'they shouldn't be doing it at all', to 'well now someone else holds onto the data'.
Basically it's 'redefining' the problem, in the hopes that people will focus on who has the data, and ignore the fact that the data is being gathered in the first place.
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It's still unconstitutional, and still violates the 4th amendment of constitution. Judicial "approval" falls far short of the "probable cause" enshrined in the 4th amendment in the Bill of Rights.
Make no mistake. We're still on the road towards totalitarianism. We the taxpayers are also funding the construction of this new road.
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Slo-Mo weekend. In the world of TMI, most should move on to next stories by Monday, instead of looking at details.
Second: prerequisite to change is to put in prison known criminals, such as Alexander and Clapper.
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Side note: I'd love to see if any of the lawyers around here agree with me that teleco immunity doesn't appear to apply to disclosures not authorized by law (a.k.a. abuse); if they've suddenly got to protect themselves from liability by pushing back on sketchy requests, that would be nice. Of course, they might reasonably believe that any such case would never be legally disclosed, so no-one would ever have standing to sue them.
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