Obama on Surveillance: "We Can and Must Be More Transparent"

Today President Obama held a press conference to address the situation surrounding the NSA's surveillance activities. (Here is the full transcript.) He announced four actions the administration is undertaking to restore the public's confidence in the intelligence community. Obama plans to work with Congress to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to give greater weight to civil liberties, and to revisit section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which is the section that allowed bulk collection of phone records. (Of course, "will work with Congress" is a vague term, and Congress isn't known for getting things done lately. Thus, it remains to be seen if anything substantive happens.) Obama is ordering the Dept. of Justice to make public their legal rationale for data collection, and there will be a new NSA official dedicated to transparency efforts. There will also be a new website for citizens to learn about transparency in intelligence agencies. Lastly, a group of outside experts will be convened to review the government's surveillance capabilities. Their job will include figuring out how to maintain the public's trust and prevent abuse, and to consider how the intelligence community's actions will affect foreign policy. In addition to these initiatives, President Obama made his position very clear about several different aspects of this controversy. While acknowledging that "we have significant capabilities," he said, "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people." He added that the people who have raised concerns about privacy and government overreach in a lawful manner are "patriots." This is in stark contrast to his view of leakers like Edward Snowden: "I don't think Mr. Snowden was a patriot." (For his part, Snowden says the recent shut down of encrypted email services is 'inspiring.') When asked about how his opinion of the surveillance programs have changed, he said his perception of them has not evolved since the story broke worldwide. "What you're not seeing is people actually abusing these programs." Obama also endorsed finding technological solutions that will protect privacy regardless of what government agencies want to do.

Comments

Re:Experts

[PPH]

I nominate Edward Snowden to head the group. He's about as far 'outside' as one can get right now.

Good Timing

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now that it is politically imperative, we must do the thing, and the other things. We must have the courage, the tenacity, the morale fortitude, to do whatever it is that will make me popular again. This is not about right or wrong, but about the morale certainty that of what is the right thing to do, which is that course of action that I now advocate. And I will continue to advocate, using great speeches and the soaring power of words, whatever it is that will cause applause. In fact I will continue, tirelessly, night and day, to talk my out of this, and the other things. So pay very close attention, to my words. Nothing else, just what comes out of my mouth. Thank you, good night, god bless America, thank you all, and god bless America."

Re:We Can and Must Be More Transparent

[phantomfive]

In the same interview, he also said, "The odds of people dying in a terrorist attack obviously are still a lot lower than in a car accident, unfortunately".

Re:We Can and Must Be More Transparent

[PopeRatzo]

Obama is plenty transparent. You can see right through him.