
Obama’s Path From Critic to Overseer of Spying - mjstahl
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/us/obamas-path-from-critic-to-defender-of-spying.html
======
grandalf
The headline might as well be a more Onionesque "After gaining power,
politician turns out not to actually hold the strongly principled views he
expressed while campaigning".

I'd be surprised if Obama holds _any_ of the views he expressed during his
campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of
people in power.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of power holders agree that aggressive
spying is a good idea. This is closely related to their strong preference for
maintaining the status quo across the board. We should not be surprised that
Obama did not reverse any of Bush's controversial decisions _because they were
not actually controversial_ among those with power or with the potential to
gain power.

Generally speaking, when an issue is touted as being highly controversial
between the major parties, it consists of 98% solid agreement and 2% hyped up
disagreement. The disagreement and the "fray" are part of the choreographed
propaganda undertaken by powerful interests to create the illusion of dissent.

~~~
nsns
" _A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in
power._ "

You've just described the current crisis of representational democracy.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
It's not current and it's not a crisis. It's working exactly how it was
designed to work. We changed, not them. The Internet disrupted the popular
perception of democracy by creating a massive global communication channel
that is not under the control of the people in power.

~~~
adventured
It is fascinating how people lay blame.

The most common thing I see is my fellow Americans blaming politicians,
bankers, school teachers, lobbyists, cops, unions, almost anyone... except
themselves. The truth is, the American people are the problem, and they've
spent the last few decades doing everything possible to avoid personal
responsibility for the shape of the country.

~~~
aaronem
> It is fascinating how people lay blame.

Oh, yes, very much so! For example, you seem quite effortlessly to lay blame
on three hundred or so million people, and that's only counting those alive
right now, with no consideration for those who've predeceased us, at least
some of whom presumably could be expected, in your formulation, to have had a
hand in creating the situation you so readily decry.

But laying blame, while satisfying, rarely does anything to solve a problem.
In blaming "the American people" for the current state of things, you imply
that they, all three hundred million or so, could have acted, and presumably
could _still_ act, to improve the situation. What would you have us do? -- all
three hundred million of us, of course.

(For the sake of not seeing you wiggle out of the question that easily, assume
in your answer that some method, not intolerable to the modern American sense
of morality and ethics, exists of usefully coordinating the actions of almost
half a billion human beings.)

~~~
mcv
> What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course.

Vote. For for better people. That is the basis of any democracy. You don't
blindly follow your leaders, and you don't blame them for their mistakes and
carry on as if there's nothing you can do about it, because you _can_ do
something about it. You can vote them out, and vote better people in.

The fact that those three hundred million Americans haven't done that, is
entirely their own responsibility. It is the responsibility of the American
people is that they allow themselves to be lied to. That you allow every
single politician to break their promises, and re-elect them anyway. That you
keep voting for the same two parties.

And yes, of course the first-past-the-post district system makes it a lot
harder to have someone else win the vote. You'll have to mobilize a lot of
people. But you have to start voting for different people. People unrelated to
the big two parties. People who do politics in a different way. Find them and
vote them into office.

~~~
aaronem
A glib answer, to be sure. What do you recommend regarding the unelected civil
service bureaucracy which has such a large hand in how the United States are
administered? I can't imagine seeing any president take on the State
Department, for example, but having seen at least one senator do so, I suspect
I know who'd win.

~~~
dllthomas
One Senator wields 0.5% (ish) of the authority of a branch of government that
State Department officials and staff don't (directly) work for. The President
wields 100% of the authority of the branch of government that the State
Department officials and staff work for. I think these things are different in
both kind and degree.

------
nathan_long
OK: once he got in office, it turned out that watching everyone seemed like a
good idea.

But here's the thing: it's unconstitutional. It's illegal.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized".

Meaning: 1) You can't read my email without a warrant and 2) you need specific
suspicions of me to get one.

Any interpretation that says the grocery list in my pocket is covered by the
fourth amendment, but _every electronic communication I make_ is NOT covered,
is insane. "Houses, papers and effects" was the writer's way of saying
"everything I can think of belonging to that person." Email and phone metadata
and GPS location weren't imagined, but can you seriously say they would have
been excluded?

So: balancing security with privacy is a hard thing. It is. But pooping on the
constitution isn't a solution.

You want to surveil everything? Say so openly, explain your case, and try to
repeal the fourth amendment. We're America: _we decide by voting_.

Secretly discarding the highest laws of the land is tyrannical, whatever the
justification.

~~~
rayiner
This has been debunked to death. The issue isn't "houses, papers, and effects"
not encompassing e-mail, but the "belonging to that person" aspect. Phone
metadata doesn't "belong" to you. It belongs to your phone company. They
generated it, they store it--you never even see it. It's also quite
questionable how much of say your Facebook data "belongs" to you. Or your GPS
location data. It's _about_ you, but much or all of it is generated by some
company and stored by that company, and you are often even not aware of it nor
do you have access to it. You have little to no recourse if they lose it,
destroy it, or misuse it. You can't even make them let you see it.

Indeed, I strongly agree with your use of the word "belong" because I think
the use of "houses" and "persons" purposefully puts the 4th amendment on a
strong property rights foundation.[1] But viewing the 4th amendment through
the lens of property rights (i.e. "everything I can think of belonging to that
person") makes most of what the NSA is doing quite legal! Things that are
_about you_ do not necessarily _belong to you_. If I write down every time my
neighbor enters and leaves his house, that's mine, not his. Is Facebook tracks
what you click on and your cellular company tracks your GPS location or your
phone company tracks who you call, that's their data, not yours.

[1] The prevailing Supreme Court view of the 4th amendment is broader than
this property rights view, but still embraces third party doctrine which makes
much of what the NSA is doing legal. And certain Justices seem partial to the
property rights formulation.

~~~
argumentum
This is all true, but what if the government _compels_ Facebook to hand over
it's data about you? Clearly _that_ is a violation of the fourth amendment?

~~~
rayiner
A subpoena requesting documents relevant to an investigation is presumed
reasonable under the 4th amendment. Generally, the government can compel you
to turn over information relevant to an investigation of someone else. The
subpoena power is very broad and also very old (predating the 4th amendment).

If the government hacked into Facebook's servers and took the data, that would
be a violation of Facebook's 4th amendment rights, but it still wouldn't be a
violation of yours.

------
mbateman
Everything that's wrong with the current intelligence approach in a sentence:
"And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush
administration."

This completely vindicates Snowden's point about the current system being one
of policy instead of law, and of enabling turnkey tyranny.

~~~
abvdasker
I think it's a symptom of corruption of the system's built-in checks and
balances. The executive branch is much more powerful now than it used to be,
and is the only branch that is composed entirely of a single party. The only
politically homogenous branch is now far-and-away the most powerful.

------
pixelmonkey
From the article: "Mr. Obama was acutely aware of the risks of being seen as
handcuffing the security agencies. 'Whatever reforms he makes, you can be sure
if there’s another incident — and the odds are there will be in our history —
there’ll be someone on CNN within seconds saying if the president hadn’t
hamstrung the intelligence community, this wouldn’t have happened,' Mr.
Axelrod said."

And so, the wheel keeps turning...

~~~
zephjc
If theres ever a time to do the right thing, it's in the President's second
term: it's all downhill, what the pundits say doesn't matter to re-
electability, since there is none (unless you plan on going to another office
later on...)

~~~
privong
> (unless you plan on going to another office later on...)

Just curious, has a president ever done that?

~~~
ForHackernews
Yes. William Taft went on to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after being
President:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft)

Reportedly, he hated being President and wished he'd never done it, but loved
being a judge.

------
wwwtyro
_“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said
David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser._

This strikes me as backwards. Seems that a president with a steely spine would
be strong enough to maintain the rights of citizens in the face of such
challenges.

~~~
mikepurvis
I wonder if the real answer is to simply reject that workflow. I can't imagine
functioning in an environment where I'm being daily bombarded with information
about dozens or hundreds of potential "threats" which never become anything.

What if the president simply told his advisors that he would take a weekly
instead of daily briefing on these issues?

~~~
seunosewa
He'll look bad when his failure to react to some threat on time leads to some
unfortunate incident.

------
fit2rule
What I'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect endure
that turns him into an alien lizard from hell?

I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-Presidentiality,
Obama was real. After-President'ness, he's become some obscure caricature of
all other Presidents who came before him..

So is there some sort of secret Presidential chamber that all the past
Presidents get to donate their DNA to, which gets injected into The New Guy,
to make him into some sort of transformed hybrid clone, or something? I
seriously wonder sometimes, if the enemies of the USA haven't realized that
the _real_ backdoor to infiltrating America and bringing it to its knees is in
the Presidential Training Program that goes on with newly elected victims. It
sure seems like the President of the USA gets a new skin, anyway .. I've only
been watching for the last 4 Presidents or so ..

~~~
Perceval
> _What I 'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect
> endure that turns him into an alien lizard from hell?_

A Truman-era bureaucrat coined the phrase, "where you stand depends on where
you sit."

When Obama was outside the executive branch and had only a year of Senate
experience before embarking upon his presidential campaign, he had a very
different set of interests and responsibilities. As a junior, back-benching
senator with no Washington DC experience, Obama had very few capabilities or
political capital. People who are weak decry the power of the strong and seek
to limit it.

When Obama became president and was given responsibility not just for
Illinois, but for the United States and its allies, he assumed a very
different set of responsibilities, interests, and capabilities. Obama entered
office with a tremendous amount of political capital and the full panoply of
executive branch powers at his disposal. The powerful do not generally seek to
limit their own power or to accept limits placed upon them.

This happens to every candidate-turned-president, but with some it's more
extreme than others. Some presidents enter office with executive branch
experience, e.g. Bush Sr. or Eisenhower. Some enter with tremendous political
capital and experience with DC politics, like LBJ a.k.a. the "master of the
Senate." The transformation is not so great with these presidents.

Some enter with almost no political experience whatsoever, like Obama. The
subsequent transformation is much more jarring, because the change in their
power is much starker.

> _I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-
> Presidentiality, Obama was real. After-President 'ness, he's become some
> obscure caricature of all other Presidents who came before him.._

On the contrary, pre-presidential Obama was fake. He was in campaign mode from
his entrance on the national scene in 2004 through 2008. You cannot honestly
believe that the campaign image of a politician is the "real" version of that
person.

Presidential Obama is the real Obama. Abraham Lincoln said, "Nearly all men
can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him
power." This is who Obama is. There's a reason why presidents seem to feature
greater continuity than change, and part of that reason is that the
responsibilities of the office don't change according to the president, rather
the president must change in order to perform the responsibilities of the
office. Many wildly different personalities can occupy the office, but the
office structures and constrains those personalities.

Idealists often have a consequence-free vision of what presidents _ought_ to
do (a "deontological" ethic). But politics does not work that way. Max Weber
contrasted the (deontological) "ethic of ultimate ends" with the "ethic of
responsibility" in his essay "Politics as a Vocation," which I urge you to
read. [http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-
vocation.pdf](http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-vocation.pdf)

Responsibility is a different ethical standard than what individuals on their
own would be held to. And what an individual _ought_ to do is very often
different from what someone responsible for the lives of others _ought_ to do.
And the actions a responsible political figure ought to undertake are often
morally repugnant to the private individual. But it is a mistake to judge the
leader by the standards one would use to judge a private citizen. Weber says
as much:

> _" It follows that as far as a person's actions are concerned, it is not
> true that nothing but good comes from good and nothing but evil from evil,
> but rather quite frequently the opposite is the case. Anyone who does not
> realize this is in fact a mere child in political matters."_

Isaiah Berlin in his famous article on Machiavelli
([http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-speci...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-special-
supplement-the-question-of-machiavelli/?pagination=false)) puts it even more
starkly:

> _If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you
> morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are, to
> use Ritter’s word, “erschreckend,” too frightening, Machiavelli has no
> answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a
> morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of
> your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the
> lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect
> to be ignored or destroyed._

> _To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterize, to
> amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop halfway because
> of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique, is
> a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst of both
> worlds. And there are at least two worlds: each of them has much, indeed
> everything, to be said for it; but they are two and not one. One must learn
> to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back._

> _There is more than one world, and more than one set of virtues: confusion
> between them is disastrous. One of the chief illusions caused by ignoring
> this is the Platonic-Hebraic-Christian view that virtuous rulers create
> virtuous men. This, according to Machiavelli, is not true. Generosity is a
> virtue, but not in princes. A generous prince will ruin the citizens by
> taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that
> meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the
> citizens and so add to public welfare. A kind ruler—and kindness is a
> virtue—may let intriguers and stronger characters dominate him, and so cause
> chaos and corruption._

------
equalarrow
Sigh, I guess this is nothing new. Obama's the ultimate (in my mind) say one
thing, do another. At least with Bush we knew he was just a bad guy that
didn't give a shit for anything other that war, greedy buddies, and a good
walk on the ranch.

With Obama, yah, he came in as the 'outsider' (typical of all candidates I
suppose) with all these things he would 'Change' (Shepard Fairey anyone?). But
alas, it's been one disappointment after another. Net neutrality, spying,
_real_ universal healthcare, not going after politicians of the Bush area that
blatantly broke all kinds of laws, etc. All a sham.

It's playing out like a sci-fi story where anyone can be an enemy of the
state, just choose your own adventure: leaker, no fly list, dissident,
downloader, photographer/videographer; the list goes on and one.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as this isn't really a democracy anymore.
Every law, decision pretty much has to have some 'but what about
business/economy?' question. Excessive lobbying makes sure these
decisions/rules will never change short of revolution. The fact that
corporations are 'people' and that they have no donation limits anymore,
pretty much ends what the founding fathers fought for - we the people.

The message of the 21st century america: get rich. Get above the law and above
the fold of the 99%. Go where the rules don't apply to you. Go where you make
the rules for everyone else.

~~~
afterburner
"At least with Bush we knew"

The vast majority of people took Bush at his word for a long time, especially
on matters of war. The recognition of the deceit in the mainstream came long
after.

------
wmeredith
“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said
David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there
every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that
would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

That's the whole problem. The NSA spying is being sold as if it stops
terrorist attacks. It does not. They have not cited a single incidence.

~~~
jasonlotito
I'm agains the NSA spying as well, but saying they haven't cited anything
isn't the same thing as proving they haven't stopped terrorist attacks.

Please don't read more into this than what I said.

~~~
wmeredith
The NSA existing in a state that doesn't stop terrorist attacks is the status
quo (it's the same as them not existing at all). It doesn't need proving.

If they want to spy on everyone in the world all the time and their reasoning
is that it makes Americans safer, then the burden of proof is very much on
them.

~~~
sliverstorm
_the burden of proof is very much on them_

But who do they have to prove it to? The public, or the people they actually
report to?

~~~
wmeredith
They're salaries are paid in tax dollars. The public is who they report to.

~~~
sliverstorm
Indirectly, yes, but you are oversimplifying.

------
eof
My heart sunk when Obama won the election the first time; not because I wanted
McCain to win, or that I had any actual hope that one of the third-parties
could win; but because everyone was so happy.

I was in Burlington, VT; about as liberal a town as you will find in the USA;
and there was a strong anti-war movement. That anti-war movement bought
Obama's promises hook-line-and-sinker and the same people that were out
holding signs and going to rallies were canvasing for Obama. There was a march
through the streets when the counting was done; people cheered as if we were
finally turning a new leaf.

I hope, so deeply, that people will have learned their lesson; that, if some
politician you have never heard of suddenly starts getting a ton of press and
magically enters your consciousness; he is being tapped by big players to do
so. Obama, more than any other public figure in the last twenty years is proof
positive that there does indeed exist a shadowy cartel that are fucking with
us for power.

If you believe Obama started out pure-at-heart and was 'corrupted' after
becoming president; you are naive beyond all comprehension. Remember early,
early when Obama was asked about marijuana? One of the easiest, most obvious
blatantly fucked up policies our government carries out.. something that every
single non-political marginally liberal person is absolutely crystal clear on
should be legal for adults: he laughs derisively like it's a terrible idea.

Why? What is it about Obama being so full of hope and change and feel-goody
liberalness that makes him laugh at marijuana? Talk to 50 non politician
democrats and you will find 49 think it's obvious to legalize marijuana. But
talk to 50 politician democrats, and you will find _maybe_ half of them. The
higher up you go, the less likely they are to be pro legalization. Why?
Because their interests aren't _yours_.

If you think that there will be _ever_ be a 'main stream' candidate that will
represent _your_ interests over the 'shadowy cartel' of government interest
and lobbyists, you are sorely mistaken; and we all pay the price.

~~~
dllthomas
So, if your analysis is correct... what do we do about it?

~~~
eof
vote third party only

~~~
dllthomas
In the shortest term, voting third party makes little to no difference for
structural reasons. That's not necessarily an immediate condemnation of the
policy, though - a pattern of people voting third party could eventually flip
things if only enough people sign on... However, once third parties start
getting some clout, what stops the Powers That Be from co-opting them just as
effectively as they have co-opted the major parties? How do you see this
actually fixing things?

------
mcone
What's interesting is that the article suggests that Obama himself did not
know extent of the NSA's activities. ("At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama
was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden... just how far the
surveillance had gone.")

If that's true, it seems to indicate that Obama is not an overseer at all.

Have our worst fears been confirmed? Is the NSA an unstoppable organization
that reports to nobody except itself?

~~~
adventured
The military industrial complex has been running the United States since WW2.
It's best to take Eisenhower's speech as the acknowledgement of that. It was a
sitting President issuing a dire warning of what can only be described as a
coup to a free Republic.

The political power, the money, the might, the lobbying, the military budget
slush fund, the endless scandals, the wars. It's pretty clear the military-
industrial combination has done the most to shape the last five or six decades
of America's existence.

------
pessimizer
>Mr. Obama was told before his inauguration of a supposed plot by Somali
extremists to attack the ceremony[...]. _Although the report proved
unfounded,_ it reinforced to Mr. Obama the need to detect threats before they
materialized. “The whole Somali threat injected their team into the realities
of national security in a tangible and complicated way”[...]

So a non-existent threat was what made Obama decide that the surveillance
state was necessary. Great decisionmaking here.

------
Sambdala
_“He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these
powers more than he did the Bush administration,” said the former Obama aide_

Okay, so given the trend of these powers is to increase, and he's not going to
be in power after 2016, does he trust the next guy with even more powers, or
the guy after that with even more than that?

 _When civil liberties advocates visited to press him to do more to reverse
Mr. Bush’s policies, Mr. Obama pushed back. “He reminded me that he had a
different role to play, that he was commander in chief and that he needed to
protect the American people,”_

The role of President isn't to follow through on the platform you were elected
on?

------
gumby
There is an interesting case of regulatory capture nobody seems to be
discussing. From the article:

`"But they said his views have been shaped to a striking degree by the reality
of waking up every day in the White House responsible for heading off the
myriad threats he finds in his daily intelligence briefings.

`“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said
David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there
every day who are plotting....'

and then:

`Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden...[we all
know what]'

Every morning the president gets a propaganda dose from the very people he
needs to reign in. OF COURSE they are going to tell him the sky is falling in
and that they are the only ones holding it back. And since it's exciting and
secret there is no cross check or balance.

He should be seizing the example of Snowdon's releases to realize that the
books are being cooked. Instead he's been completely taken in by the briefing
books. It's really no different from Joe Barton being taken in by BP.

Back in the Reagan era Alan Kay told me about his very short time as a white
house advisor. Reagan's briefing book wasn't even a book, it was a three
minute video. I'm sure it REALLY played up the Soviet threat, yet the security
apparatus was as astonished as anyone else when the USSR collapsed.

------
supersystem
Just seems like a worse version of
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all)

By the way if your getting most of your updates on this subject from HN,
you're most likely out of the loop. Since a lot of the insightful content
doesn't make it. IIRC there's even a penalty on this subject on HN.

------
forgottenpaswrd
It is not probably a good idea surround yourself with the people you need to
control.

Obama spends most of his time going to eat-dinner with the same rich people
that benefit from printing money. The rest of the time it is with the
praetorian guard that "protects" him.

Anybody believes he is going to make the same people he surrounds most of the
time furious? The same people that put him in charge?

This people are the eyes and ears of the "king of the world". He is living in
a bubble.

------
mildavw
The mere hand-wringing that current leaders are doing over this is so
disturbing to me because of where I see it taking the country. It's not hard
to imagine, say, Carl Rove or his ilk giving someone at the NSA a wink and a
nod that they'll be taken care of if their candidate wins office. The NSA
leaks or hands off information that tilts the election their way. Given that
collection of all of this data is A-OK, no step in this process is blatantly
illegal anymore. If I were Ron Wyden, this is what I'd be saying. "Do you want
your representatives picked by the NSA? Because that's the logical path we're
going down."

The ability read/listen to all electronic communication without warrants gives
the NSA too much power for this not to happen.

------
yew
Mr. Obama hasn't changed more than would be expected over several years and,
while I can't speak with certainty, I would be very surprised to find out that
he was lying about his views during the presidential campaign (I don't know
about his _promises_ ).

 _He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these
powers more than he did the Bush administration._

Even postulating some revolutionary secret information seems to me to be
unnecessary.

Obama has always trusted himself. Most people do. What's changed is that the
president is now someone who is trusted by Obama. Everything that's happened
up to this point falls nicely out of those circumstances.

------
discardorama
If this thinking, that "we will do anything to prevent another terrorist
attack, including give up our liberties", is acceptable, then why isn't giving
up guns acceptable to prevent the next school massacre?

~~~
mpyne
What if I told you, that there is a large gulf of possibility between "doing
anything" and "doing nothing"?

------
RyanMcGreal
> At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by
> Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how
> far the surveillance had gone.

If this is meant to be taken at face value, and it's at least plausible given
how the US government seems to operate, how can Obama not follow it up with
_at least_ a strong commitment to making the American security apparatus more
clear and transparent?

~~~
mpyne
Probably because unlike crypto, this is one of those areas where "security
through obscurity" really _is_ an aid. That has always been the tension
between intelligence agencies and public oversight, it's not like NSA
originated the problem.

------
socrates1998
I just don't get why people don't believe politicians.

We are lied to all the time by them.

We don't need the US Congress. We don't even need the President in it's
current version.

We can vote on legislation ourselves. We can approve a budget ourselves. We
can veto stupid and corrupt laws.

We do everything else online, why can't we govern online?

The people in power don't want this to happen, so they convince us they are
actually doing something.

------
rummikub
His administration's descent on this issue has been disappointing. I mean how
is the quote any different than something that would have come out of the
previous administration?

“There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we
would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to
fathom.”

------
coob
What is it, do you think, that causes former critics of spying to become
'overseers'? The Presidency is limited to two terms, so it's not like it's
being used to weild power. Are there honest intentions related to safety, or
is it all about money/lobbying?

~~~
Spooky23
The Federal government is a byzantine web of regulation, conflicting rules,
agendas and actions.

Big programs have tentacles so intertwined into things, it's
difficult/impossible to unwind and even figure out what they are doing. Think
of it from the President's perspective -- getting someone whom he trusts in a
position to actually know anything about the programs probably takes a year.

Say you have someone on top whom you trust and the President says "dismantle X
program". The bureaucracy is awesome and effective at slowing things down.
Keeping up the pressure to do something that the bureaucrats don't want
requires alot of energy. And with something like Intelligence, attacking the
people running those programs means that they won't be motivated to make the
President look good.

So from the President's perspective, you have to invest massive energy, take
body blows when things don't go well and distract yourself from whatever it is
that you ran for office for. It's a high cost, and the benefits are minimal --
nobody is going to carve your head into the side of a mountain for shutting
down some Top Secret program that nobody knew about anyway.

------
audiodude
Reminds me of this comic: [http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-
Darkness-B...](http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-Darkness-
Bind-Them-112729303)

------
dleibovic
_Mr. Obama was angry at the revelations, privately excoriating Mr. Snowden as
a self-important narcissist who had not thought through the consequences of
his actions._

I could not disagree more with that sentiment.

------
ck2
Like anyone ever in any kind of law enforcement position:

 _" it's okay when we do it"_

------
lasermike026
The big lie is that surveillance has to do with nation security. It doesn't.
You build a surveillance system to suppress political descent not stop
terrorist attacks. Business has big plans and they don't want some republic to
vote and screw things up for them. They have world to conquer. Follow the
money.

------
redknight666
It is also good for the press, if he is going to do anything is another
matter.

------
rfnslyr
What is honestly the point of even concerning ones self with politics anymore?
There has been nobody I've talked to in real life that has their head in the
game completely, who knows what they are talking about, myself included.

Nothing is going to change, it's a big boys club, debating it, writing about
it, all fruitless.

~~~
brown9-2
This seems like a really sad and poor way to concern yourself with how our
society governs itself.

~~~
rfnslyr
There's just no way to do it from the bottom. All these protests, all this
(sl)activism, it doesn't do anything.

You either need to dedicate your life to politics and get into the club and
start working from the inside, and pray some holy fucking deity that there are
others like you, or nothing will change.

Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening.

There isn't enough time in the day to concern yourself with shit that matters.
Nobody wants to come home after working 8 hours with a two hour commute to dip
their head into politics, _just to even begin to know what 's happening_.

Where do you go? The mainstream media? Where do you inform yourself?

The reality is people just want to go home, flick the TV on, spend some time
with the kids, and maybe if they're lucky, devote a few extra hours to a hobby
every week. This scenario occurs in the poor, it occurs in the rich.

It takes a very very special type of person to run a country. You need people
who are basically insane. Who have no problem getting up every day and just
doing that one thing they do, all day, every day. That isn't 99% of the
population. If the top tier of our government is run by similar people at the
bottom, we're screwed.

~~~
rayiner
> Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening.

I always find this sentiment (or various forms of "wiping the slate clean") to
be quite amusing. It is historically more likely for a society to be less free
after violent revolution than the opposite. Radicals who believe in a cause
strongly enough to engage in revolution also tend to be ideologues who, once
in power, want to remake society in the mold of their own viewpoint.

The historically successful revolutions have been conservative ones. For
example, the Glorious Revolution in which Parliament asserted its supremacy
over the King of England. In another example, modern democratic Spain arose
with the restoration of the monarchy!

~~~
rfnslyr
World War I and II were settled over some whiskey and a game of poker right?

It's difficult to objectively say whether violent revolt works, because every
single revolt has been in a very different context then the next.

The amount of people, artillery, the strength of the opposition, the cause,
the location, the current government, the time.

You can't say whether a violent revolt is the way to go or whether it's not
the way to go. It's not a black and white issue at all.

If my brothers and sisters see that giving up their lives for our country is a
necessity, then I will dedicate my life and fight along side them.

It hasn't gotten bad yet, the moment it starts to really affect your day to
day life, people will do something. Right now, to most people, if their
instragrams and facebooks work they don't care.

~~~
rayiner
> World War I and II were settled over some whiskey and a game of poker right?

It's interesting that you mention that, because at the meta level World War I
and II were Germany's attempt to violently overthrow the status quo in Europe
(which had long tried to maintain Germany as a divided non-power). The
revolution failed and the status quo won.

> It's difficult to objectively say whether violent revolt works, because
> every single revolt has been in a very different context then the next.

Sure, but you can see patterns. From France to China to Russia to Afghanistan,
etc, etc, violent internal revolutions are more likely to result in oppression
than freedom.

