

Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011 - sehugg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-had-restrictions-on-nsa-reversed-in-2011/2013/09/07/c26ef658-0fe5-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

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wyclif
Obama's presidency has been disastrous for the privacy of American citizens:

 _“The [surveillance] Court documents declassified recently show that in late
2011 the court authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless searches of
individual Americans’ communications using an authority intended to target
only foreigners,” Wyden said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Our
intelligence agencies need the authority to target the communications of
foreigners, but for government agencies to deliberately read the e-mails or
listen to the phone calls of individual Americans, the Constitution requires a
warrant.”_

The Obama admin hypocrisy on transparency is astounding. No public debate, no
checks by Congress on the authority to wiretap and collect enormous amounts of
data on US citizens. Yet the people who voted for him are still making excuses
for this admin.

~~~
devx
Impeach him. I'm sorry if you voted for him and you think it's a too "radical"
move, but I really think it's actually a very "proportional" and reasonable
move at this point.

More think he should be impeached if he goes to war with Syria despite a No
vote from Congress and despite UN saying no, and breaking international law. I
think the NSA thing is at least as big as that, and if he does both then it's
that much clearer that he's acting as a _dictator_ with unlimited powers that
needs to be overthrown.

He has no regard for the Constitution, no regard for human rights, no regard
for due process, and no regard for international law. Not doing it would just
send a message to other psychopaths running for president the next time, that
it's okay to blatantly lie to the electorate, and then do stuff at least as
bad as he did. Impeach him.

~~~
einhverfr
I would agree. However I think it is more important to impeach those in charge
of the intelligence community first and then work up to the President.

I am not sure the President is in the loop here. As far as I can tell he gets
most of his info in these areas from the same sources that we do.

~~~
charonn0
The NSA sets itself up as the Fourth branch of government but keeps it a
secret even from the original three?

~~~
yzhengyu
It will not be the first organ of the state to morph into "a state within the
state" though it is surprising to see it happening in a liberal democracy.

Or perhaps we were encouraged to look away from the curtain all this time.

------
triplesec
particularly galling pull-out para:

"Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s
authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority
from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions
of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The
enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach
to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later."

The Cheney administration was openly deceitful, as it were, a brazen set of
liars fronted by an idiot stooge. This turn of events - particularly given
Obama's rhetoric and the expectations of him - seems in many ways much more
insidiously dangerous.

~~~
protomyth
It's pretty hard to take your point seriously when your second paragraph is so
clearly wrong and more a SNL sketch than reality. No President in the modern
era has been stupid. The psychotic need to perpetuate this is one of the ideas
making politics in the USA worse than it should be. The evidence and
interviews with the former President show him to be very intelligent.

~~~
forkandwait
What evidence shows Bush Junior to be particularly bright or competent? His
grades at Yale? His running into the ground of multiple business? His
embarassing performance as President?

Don't get me wrong -- there are a lot of smart, competent conservatives I
think are sometimes wrong and or just on a different side of class interest
from me. Say, Dick Cheney, Bush Senior, Ronald, Nixon (off the charts smart,
really). But George Junior was, indeed, an idiotic stooge.

~~~
protomyth
The people who worked for him have pointed out he was quite a lot smarter than
them[1]. The interviews he gave during his library's opening. Dick Cheney has
said Bush is smarter than him. This SNL BS is seriously messing with how
people think. It's like the number of people who believe Ford was an
unathletic clutz.

1) one example
[http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/](http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/)

~~~
forkandwait
Cool. His friends like him and wrote a blog post about it ;)

I still think history will judge his administration as being 8 years of screw-
up, class warfare, and embarassment. Note that I am not saying that about his
Dad, Ronald, or Richard....

~~~
wyclif
If history will judge Bush poorly, how will they judge Obama in the context of
continuing Bush's policies? Embarrassment? Check. Screw-ups (including Syria)?
Check. Pressuring/intimidating foreign governments not to grant Snowden
asylum? Check. Drone striking children? Check. Sending admin flacks out to say
that Benghazi was caused by a YouTube video? Check.

BTW, the Obama admin has zero evidence in public of scientific samples or
intel proving use of sarin gas by the Syrian government:
[http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE98603A20130907?irpc...](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE98603A20130907?irpc=932)

Reality check: Obama and Bush are cut from very similar policy cloth. Both
warmongers and NSA expansionists who don't give a damn about the civil
liberties of the American public.

------
segacontroller
Why is this not perjury? Kinda serious.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ea3dBJAuI&feature=youtube_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ea3dBJAuI&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

>Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false
oath or of falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in
writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding.

~~~
kylec
Was he under oath to tell the truth at that press conference? If not, it's not
perjury, just ordinary lying.

~~~
charonn0
> If not, it's not perjury, just ordinary lying.

Even so, such a lie when delivered by PotUS might constitute a high crime
and/or misdemeanor.

------
mpyne
“If we’re validly targeting foreigners and we happen to collect communications
of Americans, we don’t have to close our eyes to that,” Litt said. “I’m not
aware of other situations where once we have lawfully collected information,
we have to go back and get a warrant to look at the information we’ve already
collected.”

Although I'm receptive to that argument in general, part of the whole idea
that _generic_ collection is authorized at all, is that pre-emptively
mirroring the data without looking at it (assuming that such mirroring is
required at all) is still at least not doing a search on that data.

While I understand the Administration has tried to go away from that argument
after it was first presented I see no other justification for capturing
traffic that isn't clearly crossing national boundaries (which is admittedly a
hard problem).

So the only way I could see for that argument to apply is if the data in
question comes up on a legal search of foreign traffic, but __not __a new
selector search into the entire pool of set aside traffic.

If you couldn't have legally run a search on the data as it came across the
wire due to lack of a warrant then it wouldn't become OK unless another legal
search window into that data opened it. It certainly doesn't become OK just
because you happen to have custody of the data, just like we don't let the
government open and read our mail without a warrant.

------
frank_boyd
> “The government says, ‘We’re not targeting U.S. persons,’ ” said Gregory T.
> Nojeim

And again, the foreigners' right to protection of their privacy is not even up
for discussion.

I'm tempted to say this is un-american. But thinking it over, it seems to
actually have become the new "american".

In any case, this kind of attitude can not come from nation that sees itself
as "the best country in the world".

~~~
Sagat
Americans believe their country has been chosen by God: ordained by divine
powers to be the leader of the world. So it's not surprising that they view
the rights of foreigners with contempt or at the very least lack of interest.

"Un-american" supposedly means against freedom (and a range of other positive
buzzwords) which is pretty hilarious given their behavior.

~~~
toyg
_Some Americans_. I do believe some actually _know_ they've just been lucky
enough to get a fairly resilient constitutional framework designed in an era
of Enlightenment, and then smart enough to be on the right side of history
during the three major conflicts that shaped the last century.

~~~
JshWright
Don't overlook geography. The fact that we have easy access to both major
world oceans is also a _huge_ part of why we have been successful as a nation.
It greatly simplifies both international trade and naval power projection.

We would have been on the winning side of those conflicts no matter which side
we chose.

------
chmike
Could this be explained by a secret deal to support health care prgram in
exchange of supportIng a security enforcement program ?

------
graycat
My reading of Obama is that he is nearly terrified about being blamed for
anything.

If the OP is correct, then this is some blame that might stick to Obama. In
this case, my reading is that he will rush to correct the situation.

So, first step, pin the blame on Obama, and then let him suffer with it until
he changes it.

~~~
prawn
May be more terrified of the next 9/11 and criticism that he didn't do enough
to stop it. (I'm not condoning their decisions.)

~~~
graycat
Yes, of course, but now for Obama that possibility of blame for not stopping
another terrorist attack can seem less important than the actual blame, now,
for the NSA spying on US citizens, that is, will so seem to Obama if enough
people raise heck over the NSA spying.

If I were the POTUS, then I'd have my staff draft a short statement and use it
to address the nation. The main point would be that the US actually is
vulnerable to an attack by terrorists, and even if we totally lock down our
country, turn the US into a 'surveillance' state and a police state, trash
most of the Bill of Rights, damage our domestic economy, shoot our
international trade in the gut, etc., we will still be vulnerable. We can't be
100% safe.

I'd mention that often there are several courses of action, with some safer
than others but none 100% safe. E.g., from B. Schneier, after 9/11 so many
people were so afraid of commercial air travel and drove cars instead that the
fact that cars are much less safe than air travel resulted in more deaths of
US citizens than 9/11 caused.

Might also mention that a goal of UBL was not to defeat the US via force but
just to trick the US into a response so absurd and wasteful that the US would
bankrupt itself, and here UBL has had a lot of success.

Then I'd ask the US citizens to go to a special, nationwide referendum on what
to do, (1) return to the US as it was before 9/11 with some prudent and legal
improvements to stop terrorists or (2) trash much of what is great about the
US and still be vulnerable to terrorists. In this choice, we have to notice
that the terrorists are not totally stupid and will avoid confronting the
defenses we do put up and, instead, exploit ways in which we are still
vulnerable.

A review of the track record of just what good all our anti-terrorism hysteria
-- NSA, 'militarization' of local police, trashing the Bill of Rights, the
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the TSA trashing our domestic
transportation industry, excesses by our Customs units, the money, etc. --
actually accomplished.

E.g., we should note the Boston bomber -- the NSA, etc. didn't stop him.

Then let the US citizens decide.

Good way for Obama to play CYA and also get the US back to a sane country away
from some national neurotic hysteria from a few wackos with airline tickets
and box cutters.

~~~
prawn
I wonder if it's possible that the NSA did have awareness of the Boston
bombing in advance but couldn't stop it preemptively without giving up the
info that they were tracking anything and everything. Remember the security
detail looking guys Reddit excitedly found when scouring photos? Perhaps they
wanted to catch the bombers in action but failed?

~~~
graycat
The real situation was much worse than that: The Russians nicely enough told
us that the guy was a dangerous wacko. So, the Boston police investigated and
then dropped the matter. The NSA could likely have had a really tough time
using their electronics to get a lead as solid as that the Russians gave us.
Net, the NSA electronic data is just not very effective against such a wacko;
our police departments aren't either.

Maybe the hope of the NSA is catching another UBL planning another 9/11 and do
so by grabbing cell phone data. Well, the terrorists know now to assume that
telephones and e-mail are not secure; knowing that, the NSA will be even more
useless than now.

The NSA is just a bureaucracy gone totally out of control because no one with
authority wants to say "Stop" and then risk being blamed the next time
something goes "Boom!". Any reasonable evaluation of costs and benefits would
say that the NSA should be cut way back, say, to their original mission of
arranging secure communications for the State Department. Then, maybe let them
try to listen in on efforts to make loose nukes. Otherwise, save the money and
the US Constitution.

------
bsullivan01
I don't blame the NSA for this, their rationale is "lets collect as much as
possible and then see, gathering intel is in our mission...". After all it's
all legal as far as they are concerned.

I don't even blame the Exec branch that much since they have a LE mentality of
"if you have nothing to hide...protect lives...blah blah"

I do however blame the courts, they could've stopped or at least not-rubber
stamped this. The judges also have lifetime appointments, yet they let this
happen. And no, the Congress cannot order the courts to ignore the Bill of
Rights, regardless of what any legislation says.

~~~
notdrunkatall
I blame them all, but even more so, I blame the people. Snowden isn't the
first whistleblower to emerge; google William Binney, Mark Klein, and Thomas
Drake. This knowledge has been within earshot of the public for nearly a
decade now, yet people just don't seem to care enough to do anything about it.
There seems to be some kind of implicit collective trust in the government,
that whatever they're up to is for our own good. I don't think it's ignorance;
I think that people generally have known that the government was spying on
them for years, they just never really cared, and now that we have full-blown,
concrete evidence that it's been happening, the majority still doesn't care.
It's strange.

~~~
orblivion
I think it comes down to rational ignorance. The whole thing is a negative
feedback loop, nothing about it should be surprising. Breaking out of it is an
uphill battle. Blame everybody, the NSA, the executive, the courts, and the
population.

~~~
notdrunkatall
Should we also blame ourselves? As the informed, as the people with the
capability to explain these technical issues to the masses, with the
capability to foment a movement if we so desired, what blame should we place
on our own shoulders, if any?

~~~
mpyne
Even if you 'foment a movement', will it simply end up like the teetotaller
movement which managed to foist Prohibition on a public that didn't want it?

The American people have for a long time been _extremely_ 'tough on crime'
(e.g. the ongoing 'war on drugs'), and the reason people don't seem to care is
that this is an extension of the same philosophy.

