
Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers. He was wrong - binarybits
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/15/remember-when-obama-said-the-nsa-wasnt-actually-abusing-its-powers-he-was-wrong/
======
dmix
> Now part of the reason they’re not abused is because they’re — these checks
> are in place, and those abuses would be against the law and would be against
> the orders of the FISC

Greenwald has been writing about the total ineffectiveness of judicial checks
on state power for over a decade, primarily since Bush vastly increased
executive branch reach and began using the state secrets privilege as a
protective shield, crippling the ability for courts to properly prevent
abuses.

See "Elimination of judicial check on executive power" on Wikipedia, citing an
article from 7 years ago (2006):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege#Elimin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege#Elimination_of_judicial_check_on_executive_power)

It seems people are just beginning to pay attention to what Greenwald has been
warning us about for a long time.

------
acqq
Senator Ron Wyden on NSA Surveillance and Government Transparency:

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/q-a-senator-ron-
wy...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/q-a-senator-ron-wyden-on-nsa-
surveillance-and-government-transparency-20130815)

 _When Congress wrote the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, I
suppose they could have found some way to keep its details a secret, so that
Soviet agents wouldn 't know what the FBI and NSA's authorities were. But
Congress made that law public, because it's a fundamental principle of
democracy that laws should be public all the time, and every American should
be able to find out what their government thinks the law means.

The FISA court is arguably the most bizarre court in the United States. This
is the only court I know of that is structured to hear essentially one side –
it comes from the government. A group of judges operating in complete secret
and issuing binding rulings based solely on the government's arguments have
made possible the sweeping surveillance authorities the public only found out
about [recently.] What's noteworthy is there has been nobody there to argue
the other side, and that is what we want to change. This court has to be
reformed to include an adversarial process where arguments for greater privacy
protections can be offered alongside the government's arguments for greater
surveillance powers. It should have a selection process that produces a more
diverse group of judges, and a process to ensure that its important rulings
are made public so that American people can understand exactly what government
agencies think the laws allow them to do. It was a lack of protections like
these that allowed secret law to persist for so many years._

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teawithcarl
The chief judge of the FISA Court says "ability of the FISA Courts to police
spying is limited".

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/court-ability-to-
poli...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/court-ability-to-police-us-
spying-program-
limited/2013/08/15/4a8c8c44-05cd-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html)

PHOTOS of the 12 FISA Court judges. 11 of the 12 were appointed to bench by
Bush or Reagan.

Only one man appoints judges to the FISA Court - Supreme Court Chief Justice
Roberts.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/meet-the-foreign-
inte...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/meet-the-foreign-intelligence-
surveillance-
court/2013/06/24/9c037ee6-dd16-11e2-9218-bc2ac7cd44e2_gallery.html)

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
It's about time one of them spoke up.

------
alan_cx
"At a news conference Friday, President Obama insisted that the threat of NSA
abuses was mostly theoretical:"

As are the vast majority of the "threats" we are suppose to give up our
freedoms for. We live in a "what if" society.

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ck2
I have a better question about that.

Was he just wrong because he just didn't know?

Or was it much worse in that he knew and was outright lying?

Because I would honestly like to really know.

~~~
j_baker
You know, I would have to imagine that if Obama were in full possession of all
the facts, he would have known that Snowden had those slides and kept his
mouth shut. Obama's just too smart to make a blunder like this.

~~~
steve19
I think that attitude is very naive.

Obamas actions in the near future will reveal all. If he was lied to and
deceived, he will apologize publicly and he will reign down vengeance on those
who lied to him (unless he is completely spineless and incompetent, which I
don't believe he is).

On the other hand, if he knew all along these revelations will simply be
played down and it will be business as usual in Washington, DC (although the
NSA will probably not make the "mistake" of tapping Washington DC calls
instead of Egypt again).

~~~
DannyBee
I think your viewpoint is very naive. He will choose the first option whether
or not he was actually lied to, if he believes it is his best move.

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onoj
Am I misunderstanding something here - surely the information Snowden revealed
is that the NSA is dumping EVERY electronic communication in a huge data dump
all the time. Then they are saying "sometimes" they search for the wrong
things in that archive? Isn't the issue that they are archiving everything we
do in the first place?

~~~
vidarh
Yes, but this specific article is simply a matter of hanging someone with the
rope they were given: Obama claimed abuses wasn't happening; NSA's own records
shows they are.

While on one hand it's a bit of a side show to argue about this, it's also far
more likely that people in general will see the problem if they see officials
repeatedly being wrong or outright lying about abuses than to get them to
accept there's an issue with "just" collecting the data.

The "just" collecting the data part of the problem is rarely seen as an issue
with those who largely trust the government, as it is hard to get them to
understand that even _if_ the current government is ok, things can go rapidly
downhill as they tend to write off any examples as too extreme or "can't
happen here".

The best way of reigning this in, is unfortunately to focus on any too close
for comfort abuses. E.g. if one found NSA staff stalking ex'es would likely
get a far more furious response than NSA staff collecting data about large
swathes of the population.

------
danenania
Interesting to see that "wrong" and "mistaken" have now become synonyms for
"powerful government official lying through his teeth".

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Come on, if this wasn't a bold-faced lie, it follows that the President is
either incompetent/derelict, or not in control of the NSA; in which case the
President is a dupe/stooge, and the NSA is acting of its own accord outside
the defined bounds of its authority. Let's hope the President is merely lying.

~~~
roc
Or the US Government is just like any other large organization, and when low
level employees screw up, or a report looks bad, everyone at every level on
the way up tries like hell to bury, burn or spin it, so that it doesn't
reflect poorly on them.

Which does imply a troubling level of ignorance and/or misplaced trust, but is
not necessarily on par with the NSA gone rogue or the President being a dupe
or stooge.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Okay then, the NSA is incompetent/untrustworthy, and the gov't is
incompetent/derelict in its oversight duty. I'm going to consider this
possibility to be less likely, unless the President makes decisive corrective
action. If the President can't denounce/correct such a failure, then he owns
it.

------
millerc
> interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a
> programming error confused U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international
> dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review

Oh please give me a break. This is the worse they could come up with, a
typographical error that produced large swaths of unusable data for analysts?
Seems like a normal part of any computer systems: a typo _will_ cause
unintended consequences.

Sensationalist reporting and blatant exploitation of minor plot twist
shouldn't make it to any serious news outlet, let alone HN. Let's keep it
serious guys.

~~~
JshWright
The issue wasn't the fact that an innocent mistake happened; the issue is that
a major breech of privacy for some large number of US citizens wasn't reported
to the groups tasked with judicial and congressional oversight of the NSA.

The reason it occurred is meaningless. The _fact_ that it occurred should have
been reported.

------
jonnybgood
Obama may not be wrong at all if these are unintentional violations. However,
Obama may well be wrong if they were intentional actions in accordance with
NSA standard of operating procedure (SOP). So, the NSA isn't actually abusing
its powers, just as Obama stated. Just an awful NSA employee who is not
following the SOP.

I think that's an important distinction and perhaps the point Obama was
making.

~~~
codex
Agreed; the headline has been intentionally worded to be more inflammatory
than is warranted. What use is a free press, I wonder, when all they print is
propaganda, and when the populace swallows it hook, line and sinker?

------
nu2ycombinator
Hey.. Please understand the Obama's position too. You never know what secrets
of Obama NSA has. :)

~~~
junto
It might well explain the flip-flop. All of those privacy bills and NSA
constraint bills he pushed, voted for and in some cases put forward, appear to
be a complete reversal to his position now. Why?

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shirederby
Was he "wrong" or was he lying?

It's possible that he was misinformed by his advisers and indeed did not
actually know. But I am not optimistic about that notion.

~~~
rhizome
Let's go back 50 years: Plausible Deniability.

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

------
jaekwon
This strategy of slow trickling information is working out pretty well. Good
job, team.

------
ry0ohki
It seems super suspicious the "202" to "20" mistake occurred for more than a
single call, and it just so happens your political enemies are in the area
code mistaken?

~~~
Terretta
I think it's interesting what his incident says about _scope_ and
_capability_.

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northwest
Was he "wrong" or was he lying? I'd say that's secondary, in some way.

The first thing that matters is _the result_. And it continues

a) to be unacceptable, and

b) to not be addressed

------
DHowett
I would argue that a world wherein the NSA is not abusing its power is a world
wherein that power was already granted them.

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JonSkeptic
I read the title and I think, "Obama says lots of things."

[http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-
obama/](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/barack-obama/)

------
sparticvs
He said that because he wanted them to do that

------
alexeisadeski3
Yes we can!

------
codex
Wrong. This isn't abuse. The audit found only unintentional spying--in other
words, mistakes. No organization is perfect; bugs do exist, especially in
software. It's pretty amazing to see the detail at which these incidents were
logged, however.

~~~
j_baker
According to Google, abuse means the improper use of something. Regardless of
whether it was accidental or intentional, abuse is abuse.

~~~
codex
Oh, come now. The definition of the verb is "use (something) to bad effect or
for a bad purpose; misuse". That implies willfulness. Accidents and bugs are
not abuse; were they, we wouldn't have separate words for them.

Or, put another way: I hear you inadvertently spilled water on your wife at
the dinner table last night; tell me, for how long have you been abusing her?

~~~
samweinberg
That's a bad analogy. Spilling water on your wife and domestic violence are
very different things. Both the inadvertent (and arguably unconstitutional)
collection of Americans' data by the NSA and the willful abuse of power by the
NSA are pretty horrendous acts, whichever you choose to believe happened.

