
Obama’s Changes to Government Surveillance - 001sky
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/01/17/us/nsa-changes-graphic.html?hp
======
ck2
None. There are no changes. He is reviewing a transition to changes.

And remember, these are only executive changes, which means if the next
president is worse, well then the changes can be undone with the stroke of a
single pen by a single person (and they might even decide not to tell the
public).

The permanent bulk collection of data continues for future use by any
president or agency when the laws don't hinder them. It's a library they can
peruse now or 50 years from now.

ps. someone needs to do a mashup of his first campaign speech to end abuses,
arguing against this other person

~~~
panarky
Before the US invaded Iraq, when the President was talking about mushroom
clouds [0] and the Secretary of State delivered a PowerPoint about bio-weapons
to the United Nations [1], I gave our leaders the benefit of the doubt.

Surely the military, the CIA, the NSA, the NRO, and the President must have
secret information they cannot share with the public to justify the horrors of
war.

Turns out I was wrong. It was a pack of lies, half-truths and poorly-
substantiated rumors to justify a predetermined agenda.

After the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, when the President and the Secretary
of the Treasury threatened the end of the world as we know it if the richest
corporations aren't given direct cash infusions [2], I gave them the benefit
of the doubt.

Surely our elected officials would never directly transfer hundreds of
billions of dollars to the richest of the rich unless the alternative was
truly grave.

Turns out I was wrong. It was a pack of lies, half-truths and poorly-
substantiated rumors to transfer wealth from working people to the ownership
class on an unprecedented scale.

So when the President stands before us today and speaks for 45 minutes without
saying anything of consequence, without providing any evidence that the threat
is so dire, so imminent, so cataclysmic that we must relinquish our freedoms
to preserve our freedoms, I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.

No more vague threats. No more fear. No more intimidation. No more secrecy.
These are fatal to a political system that relies on an informed citizenry.

[0]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw9BJ_Kh7mE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw9BJ_Kh7mE)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_weapons_laboratory)

[2]
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/business/26bailout.html?pa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/business/26bailout.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

~~~
jaibot
The financial crisis was probably extremely dire.

~~~
moocowduckquack
I don't see how it is substantially improved by instituting a tax backed
financial insurance policy for gambling losses.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You mean the moral ideological alternative would have been better even if it
caused the economy to implode?

This is why I'll never vote libertarian.

~~~
AutoCorrect
So that is the price of your soul? Noted.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Yes, I'm much more for avoiding economic collapse than ideological purity. I
like not starving to death, while the tea partying libercrazians would destroy
the whole nation just to see out their distorted principles.

~~~
fredgrott
the punch line is thee was no threat to economic collapse..

The FEd had full powers to ask that any bail out remove current bank
leadership from power due to the threat of full Gov receivership of those
banks by Fed..we were sold the idea of giving a free get out of jail card to
banks based on lies

------
m52go
This is the same man who began an initiative called the Open Government
Initiative before any Snowden revelations.

"My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness
in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and estabish a
system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will
strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in
Government."

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/open](http://www.whitehouse.gov/open)

Believing anything Obama SAYS, particularly concerning this issue, is foolish.

Look at what he's DONE. Nothing is changing.

~~~
thebouv
Granted, believing anything ANY politician says on any issue is particularly
foolish.

~~~
m52go
That's what you would think, but somehow people always end up thinking the
next one will be different.

I find it particularly unsettling when people off the street justify Obama in
their own words.

They've truly been brainwashed--no other way to put it. Scary.

~~~
pekk
If someone disagrees with you, perhaps they were paying attention (to
different things) and not simply brainwashed.

Otherwise, everyone can accuse everyone of being brainwashed any time an
opinion they don't like is expressed

~~~
m52go
When you're convinced that fundamental concepts like freedom, due process, and
privacy are worth violating--for any reason--you've been brainwashed. No
excuses. Everyone knows better.

I didn't intend my comment to apply to politics at-large, just the privacy and
civil liberties topics currently at hand.

I think it's possible to make a case for the broader political spectrum, but I
won't attempt that here.

------
blisterpeanuts
Obama "acknowledges" Edward Snowden's role in triggering a public debate. Does
this mean Mr. Snowden is officially a whistleblower-hero, or still a traitor
who deserves life imprisonment?

As for the notion of requiring private telecomm companies to store data and
provide access to the gov't, although still just a hypothetical situation and
not yet policy, would this not simply shift the burden from the NSA to private
companies?

Obviously, they're already handing over the data, but making it all official
and open seems like a retrogressive policy that would in the long run backfire
as Americans turn to overseas hosted services not beholden to the NSA. Perhaps
even the domestic telecomm firms could get around it by offshoring their data
storage and transmission services, such that the only domestic components
would be the towers and switches, while the repositories of customer data
would be safely overseas under some other entity's control (also not ideal,
argh).

~~~
diminoten
What Obama said is pretty clear:

"The fact is, is that Mr. Snowden's been charged with 3 felonies. If in fact
he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he
can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case."

What Obama thinks Snowden "deserves" is irrelevant. Snowden's status as a
"traitor" is as yet undetermined, and until he stands trial for the crimes
he's being charged with, we won't know.

~~~
evan_
> What Obama thinks Snowden "deserves" is irrelevant.

Sort of. Obama has the ability to pardon Snowden, if he felt strongly about
it.

~~~
diminoten
Ignoring ethics for a moment (heh), one has to consider the ramifications a
pardon such as that would send. That's tacit endorsement from the president of
the US for everyone who _thinks_ wrongdoings are going on to come out and tell
the world, regardless of the chain-of-command, regardless of any oaths these
people have taken - it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the
government to start leaking privileged information.

I can't think of a way to pardon Snowden _without_ sending that kind of
message - you can't say, "Only do this if you're _really sure_ what's
happening is super bad."

So yeah, he _could_ pardon Snowden, but the consequences could be ruinous to
the US, even if it is "The Right Thing" to do.

~~~
dragonwriter
> it's basically carte blanch permission for people in the government to start
> leaking privileged information.

No, a pardon received by one person is not a promise of pardons to anyone
else. A pardon is an _exception_ , not a rule.

~~~
mpyne
The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of
classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.

Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed
officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear
photographic evidence of white ringleaders. White murderers knew that the
fiction of official non-recognition was not a _rule_ , yet the reality of the
precedent thus set led to many other mob lynchings.

All of this is to say that even though a pardon is not a rule and should be
recognized as such, that only helps matters if _every_ potential future leaker
sees it as an exception and not a new precedent.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The concern is with precedence, and the idea that sets in that some types of
> classified data leaks are "more equal" than others.

Some types of classified data leaks are more equal than others. The same is
true of violations of any criminal law. That's _why_ the pardon power exists
(and, in part, why jury nullification is important) -- because no law can ever
perfectly account for all edge cases.

> Lynching of black people in the Jim Crow South were often attributed
> officially to "unknown parties of a mob" even when there was clear
> photographic evidence of white ringleaders.

That _repeated pattern_ of _false portrayals_ to put a public face on a
decision not to prosecute is very different than a pardon that does not deny
that a crime was committed, and does not falsely assert ambiguity in the
identity of the responsible party, etc.

~~~
mpyne
But given that the pardon involves a wide swath of classified data
disclosures, only a minority of which have any obvious "American civil
liberties!" tie, how do our hypothetical future leaker determine that a pardon
might be appropriate for him, while a hypothetical future spy determines that
a pardon would _not_ be granted in their case (especially if they leak
something of public import simultaneously)?

A pardon sends a very mixed message here, precisely because Snowden has
crafted a very mixed message.

~~~
dragonwriter
Pardons are purely discretionary acts of Presidents, not applications of legal
principles that any reasonable person can expect to be applied in future
cases; absent a pattern by multiple Presidents, no sane person would see a
past pardon as a reliable precedent—at most it's a source of hope that _if_ a
similar political situation is created as a result of the act that there
_might_ conceivably be a similar result.

------
Zikes
No stopgaps on data collection, only increased permissions to access the
stored data. No word on how difficult it is to acquire those increased
permission levels, could simply be an additional form to file.

NSLs remain nearly untouched. "Warrants" will continue to be issued with
negligible oversight.

> Create a panel of advocates to represent privacy concerns in significant
> cases.

Because the process remains secretive with no constant public advocate
presence, there's no reasonable way to initiate the process to determine what
is a "significant case". Just as before, we cannot contest breaches of privacy
if we are not aware of them.

~~~
rtpg
>NSLs remain nearly untouched.

this is the single most dangerous thing about current law enforcement. NSLs
completely subvert any recourse to the judiciary without immense risk to
yourself. Luckily most judges seem to agree on the ridiculousness of NSLs ,
and are trying to whittle down the power they have.

------
alecco

      > Third, the legal safeguards that restrict surveillance against U.S. persons
      > without a warrant do not apply to foreign persons overseas. This is not
      > unique to America; few, if any, spy agencies around the world constrain their
      > activities beyond their own borders. And the whole point of intelligence is to
      > obtain information that is not publicly available. But America’s capabilities
      > are unique. And the power of new technologies means that there are fewer and
      > fewer technical constraints on what we can do. That places a special
      > obligation on us to ask tough questions about what we should do.
    
    

Thanks. We, foreign consumers of american services and products, will sure
remember this one.

~~~
tomelders
Apparently all men are not created equal, many are created foreign.

Europe unite.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Europe unite.

"old Europe die hard"
[http://i.imgur.com/srtDWIX.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/srtDWIX.jpg)

Seen nearly 10 years ago in Cologne, sadly I don't know the name of the artist
(it was in a museum, he filled huge walls with such drawings). I know HN
frowns on images, but I don't have the eloquence to express what this picture
is saying anyway, so I'd rather post that instead of nothing. At least it's
not a meme - not yet, anyway. Here's hoping :P

~~~
PavlovsCat
> I don't know the name of the artist

Managed to find it out, it's Dan Perjovschi (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Perjovschi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Perjovschi)
)

------
hawkharris
A century or two from now, when other nations reflect on the rise and fall of
the United States, the Bush-Obama era will be one of the most striking because
of how it fundamentally changed civil rights and the relationship between
government and the press.

~~~
rtpg
Has the relationship between the government and the press really changed that
much? The pentagon papers happened before, and the gov't didn't much like
that.

Civil rights have definitely gotten worse in the past 15 years, but I'd say
they're still better than before 1978 (when FISA was written). Before things
like the FISA, the executive was pretty free to do almost anything (and did,
see Hoover). As a long term trend, civil rights have been increasing, not
decreasing. We've made mistakes that we need to roll back, but acting like
this is the fall of the United States as we know it is pretty myopic (people
have been predicting the fall of the United State since the 1800s), and not
putting much faith into our institutions (which aren't the worst).

------
x0054
Obama = Change. Change = same shit, different day.

Obama has basically said that he knew about all of this, and he was ok with
everything the government was doing. However, now that it's all public
knowledge, he thinks that we need changes. Have some testicular fortitude, Mr.
President. Either you are ok with what NSA does, or you are not. Don't make a
speech where you tell me that you were cool with what NSA was doing all the
way up to the point when it became public knowledge. And don't tell me in one
sentence that this is an important public debate, and in another condemn the
man who brought about this debate, Mr. Snowden.

Obama promised change, but Snowden just might actually deliver on that
promise.

------
lispm
For me as a German, all this does nothing. It was never and is still not
advisable to store data on US servers and it is not advisable to use US IT
services. Data is collected by the NSA and will be used by the US in arbitrary
ways (economic espionage, extortion, no-fly lists, physical attacks,
influencing political decisions, kidnapping, ...) without any international
control.

------
kungfooey
Wow, I love how this is presented. Kudos to the NYT for creating new ways for
us to consume this information.

------
aryastark
Who is going to trust Obama? Then, who is going to trust the NSA?

Only fools. James Clapper lied about what the NSA was up to, to Ron Wyden, a
member of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper has still
not been charged with anything.

There is no way to oversee an organization that only has to tell you _whatever
it wants to_. Do people really not understand such a basic concept as this?
Congress does not have special insight into what the NSA is doing. Everything
Congress knows is whatever the NSA _wants_ to tell Congress. It's all a sham.
Kangaroo courts and pretend justice. As fake as all that crap North Korea
shows tourists. As fake as Saddam's elections in Iraq.

------
snake_plissken
Secret courts, secret opinions, NSLs and government sanctioned lists of
"undesirables".

Am I the only one who sees shades of: -Nazi Germany -The USSR -(Cultural
Revolution) China -Insert random eastern European cold war regime

~~~
dobbsbob
You forgot the Disposition Matrix (newspeak) which is the Pentagon list of
people to summarily execute.

------
mindslight
Amazingly, both its subject and this "article" itself are covered here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7077982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7077982)

~~~
wittyphrasehere
which for some reason is being kept off the front page...

~~~
jey
Stories with "NSA" in the title get an extra penalty applied to them.

------
aragot
Big up to the NYTimes. I'm impressed with US newspapers' willingness to speak
up despite what they know about the surveillance. Those journalists can expect
to be investigated and any wrongdoing will take them to jail. They're brave.
We should thank them.

To the people who make those newspapers.

------
jcutrell
> Do not "subvert, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable generally available
> commercial encryption" or standards.

I wish so bad that there was at least some kind of address for this. I highly
doubt it will hit mainstream attention anytime soon again unless some kind of
publicly accessible (read: marketable) scandal occurs to bring the news media
around again.

~~~
sliverstorm
I figure that one is way too abstract for him to address in a speech anyway,
so I'm not surprised to see it wasn't mentioned. (This article specifically
discusses his speech)

~~~
aetherson
It is absolutely not "too abstract" to address in a speech. He could have said
something like, "This administration regards the technologies of public
cryptography as a crucial piece of modern life, and an underpinning of liberty
on the internet. As such, I am directing the NSA to under no circumstances
attempt to weaken such standards."

If JFK could say, "We're gonna go to the moon, I have no idea how," then Obama
can say, "The NSA will not undermine cryptography standards."

~~~
sliverstorm
_If JFK could say, "We're gonna go to the moon, I have no idea how," then
Obama can say, "The NSA will not undermine cryptography standards."_

You don't see the difference between those two statements?

Every American can dream about traveling to the moon and the ambition that
represents. There's probably not 1% of the country that even understands what
cryptography is, let alone how it might be undermined.

------
benmathes
No reason to trust, no way to verify.

------
gaius
I expected this to go to a 404.

~~~
peterkelly
304 Not Modified

~~~
coldcode
I made a connection to the whitehouse.gov requesting to get change.html and
all I got was a 304 error.

------
diogenescynic
"Changes" but it will all be in secret, so we'll have to take their word for
it. Uh huh.

------
WalterSear
Just enough to make it look like he's doing >something<.

------
gremlinsinc
i voted twice for Obama, i feared for society if we had to deal with more
leaders like Bush. to see a hero of mine fall so hard. I personally feel
betrayed... i will never trust a republican, but now i can't trust democrats
either. the fact is we need to do git clone github.com/germany/pirateparty.git
usaTechParty.

A party that upholds the desires of its supporters, even giving thema voice
and instituting some form of liquid democracy.

------
puppetmaster3
_Newspeak_

Step 1: We are not listening [http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/politics/nsa-data-
mining](http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/07/politics/nsa-data-mining) Step 2: We
will not listen: [http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/nsa-phone-
program-1023...](http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/nsa-phone-
program-102307.html)

Am I doing this right?

------
excellence24
blah blah Obama just talking, trying to keep us on the edge, give the dogs a
bone.

These government people move way to slowly, how long does it take with todays
technology to communicate and figure out what needs to change? The longer we
just keep 'talking', the longer they can continue with their scraping of data
and secrets.

Someone or something is going to have the data; there's nothing that can be
done about that. Marketers have been doing for a long time, the NSA just got
CAUGHT. Marketers use it to make money by making sure you see the best ad for
you, the NSA uses it to make money by 'stopping terrorists'. But what if all
the data was free and the programs turing it into useful information were
open-sourced? That would change the market entirely. Anyone could see the most
important scraped news of the day, whether its a terrorist threat or just
thrending news. It could be like a social network that everybody has already
joined. Privacy would be interesting. Maybe you could only see from others
what you choose to share yourself. But thats too long to get into here...

Clearly what needs to be done is this: the data that the NSA collects should
only be accessible by the program. It needs to be fully autonomous. The
biggest concern with the vast collection of data and secrets is the human
element. So we should simply take the human element out of it. Make an open-
sourced program and algorithm that reads the data when it needs to and
automatically gets the results to those who need to see it. The code could be
posted on github and master pulls can be voted on by the whole world, but we
can start with just America maybe at first.

All of America shuts down for simple things such as football and the
superbowl, dead peoples birthdays, religious holidays. I think we could
dedicate a day or two to a simultaneous conversion about important things
happening in our country moderated by artificial intelligence and by the end
of the day take action on what we agreed upon. Gallup releases 'polls' so
quickly, how come nothing comes from those?

But if we don't trust an artificial intelligence then WHO can we trust? Obama?
Clapper? The Pope?

We could physically implement this system ourselves if we needed to, after we
figure out what we as a nation/world want. There's a data center in Utah. We
could literally go there and take control. but how many people would a
'protest' like that require? and if we come to the conclusion that thats the
only other option, we should hurry before the military and Google finalize the
perfect humanoid robot. Or else all hope might be lost. The people vs armies
of drones and robots. Elysium here we come.

------
kabdib
Doesn't address reduction or elimination of technical means, and therefore is
unacceptable. This can be turned evil with the stroke of a pen.

------
puppetmaster3
He is a gifted speaker. He talks, sounds like he said something, but analyze
and nothing.

------
glasz
for months everybody is leaning back, watching information we already knew
being unveiled. comfortably everybody is waiting for somebody to do something.
for politics to correct itself. now politics reacts, everybody is kind of
outraged because, you didn't guess it, they don't do anything instead of
lamenting utter bullshit and discussions rise again. endless, as you should
know by now, useless discussions pointing out this and that but nobody, in the
middle of all confusion, reaches the simple conclusion:

you are fucked. we are fucked. we'll get fucked forever if we go on like that.

but i guess it's too hard for us tech people, supposedly highly educated with
great intellect, to wrap our head around this. code, business and money are
more important.

better go back to sleep, sheep!

------
zoom
Without serious disclosure nothing he says matters.

------
Istof
it doesnt matter if the government agency that collects that data is not
called the NSA... they still would have it.

------
emocakes
The US is the "worlds only superpower", “We will not apologize simply because
our services may be more effective”..

In other words, nothing is changing, and bad luck if you have an issue with
it.

I can honestly say I'm looking forward to China rising.

~~~
refurb
_i 'm looking forward to China rising_

How is China going to help? You think they are going to stick up for privacy
and other human rights? Jeeze.

I get the sense a lot of westerns don't know how good they have it even though
there system isn't perfect.

~~~
emocakes
not at all. I just feel it is time that someone else takes the role of world
tyrant for a while. Very sick of USA belting out that holier than thou crap.

