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Former Head of NSA Calls For Obama To Reject NSA Commission Recommendations

Posted by Unknown on from the not-what-you're-thinking dept.

An anonymous reader writes that USA Today reports "Retired general Michael Hayden ... called on President Obama Monday to ... reject many of the recommendations of the commission he appointed to rein in NSA surveillance ... 'President Obama now has the burden of simply doing the right thing,' ... 'And I think some of the right things with regard to the commission's recommendations are not the popular things. They may not poll real well right now. They'll poll damn well after the next attack ...' ... The commission ... said the recommendations were designed to increase transparency, accountability and oversight at the NSA. Hayden ... oversaw the launch of some of the controversial programs ... He defended them as effective and properly overseen by congressional intelligence committees and a special court. 'Right now, since there have been no abuses and almost all the court decisions on this program have held that it's constitutional, I really don't know what problem we're trying to solve by changing how we do this,' he said."

15 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Lame duck President by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He has no incentive to change anything. How it 'polls' is irrelevant. Someone with 2016 aspirations will need to make this their issue.

    1. Re:Lame duck President by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It took a very brave man, Edward R. Murrow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R_Murrow ), to have the courage to stand up Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt. Obama just isn't the man to do that. But you really can't blame him for that. Not everyone can be a superhero, and that is what the country needs to restore the NSA to what it once was. Old Cold War NSA retirees probably cry themselves to sleep every night when they think about what the NSA has now become. The NSA used to be very discrete, effective and restrained. Now they have gone entirely overboard and out of control. They need a military style stand-down to take an assessment of themselves. Discretion is the better part of valor. I'd like to see an NSA that we could be proud of again . . . not afraid of.

      Take a look at the Navy SEALS . . . the best fighting force in the world . . . but the US Army command does not send them off everywhere at a whim. And most of their operations we probably never hear about . . . because they are used very discretely and restrained. The NSA has expanded their surveillance to a point that the world is bound to discover what they are doing . . . because they just can't keep such massive operations secret any more.

      If the Navy SEALS came under the command of the NSA, the NSA would deploy the SEALS everywhere to shoot up everyone. And instruct them to search through the dead bodies, to see if any of the dead were, in fact, terrorists.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:Lame duck President by morari · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All very true, unfortunately. Obama has been little more than a continuation of Dubya's reign. It's too bad the American people are so divided, so beholden to their preferred "team", or else they might notice how thoroughly they're being fucked regardless of which party is in power.

      And here I was, sincerely hoping for a Socialist, non-Christian president. If only Fox news were correct now and then. :(

      --
      "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
    3. Re:Lame duck President by Deep+Esophagus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's too bad the American people are so divided, so beholden to their preferred "team", or else they might notice how thoroughly they're being fucked regardless of which party is in power.

      My kingdom for mod points! Amen, preach on! As a centrist, I manage to piss off my friends on the right and left just about every day when I point out the fallacies in their partisan logic. My Facebook profile lists my political preference as "They are all lying weasels, every last one of them".

      Our country's fondness for sports has made team affiliation creep into everything. Mac or Windows? Republican or Democrat? Plastic or paper? Die, heretic! We just aren't happy, apparently, if there isn't a "them" for "us" to oppose. And when there is a "them", we'll do and say anything, however outrageous, to bring "them" to utter destruction.

    4. Re:Lame duck President by AJH16 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's a little more insidious when you realize that is intentional and that both media and politicians fight to keep it that way. They intentionally use the most divisive issues possible and make their careers by making people as extreme as possible. It's horrible for the country, but great for accumulating power and wealth.

      --
      AJ Henderson
  2. This just in, spy wants spy rules to stay by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They'll poll damn well after the next attack

    The next attack will happen with or without illegal, unconstitutional domestic spying. I don't want you magic tiger protection rocks sir.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:This just in, spy wants spy rules to stay by WolfgangPG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have to agree. The NSA may or may not have stopped any attacks with this snooping. They can of course point to attacks they claim to have stopped, but sadly we can't verify any of that. Instead we can point to the Boston Marathon Bombings where the US Government was informed by other countries to watch out for these guys and we still did nothing.

      We also have the Fort Hood shooting. Where any Army person was using army computers to contact terrorists and went on to shoot up an army base. Where was the NSA there?

      "Days after the shooting, reports in the media revealed that a Joint Terrorism Task Force had been aware of e-mail communications between Hasan and the Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who had been monitored by the NSA as a security threat, and that Hasan's colleagues had been aware of his increasing radicalization for several years. The failure to prevent the shootings led the Defense Department and the FBI to commission investigations, and for Congress to hold hearings."

    2. Re:This just in, spy wants spy rules to stay by compro01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Besides that, regardless of what the NSA does or doesn't do, your average American is about 15 times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a terrorist.

      Hell, on the roads, every month is September, 2001. Roughly a 9/11 worth of people die every single month in vehicle accidents.

      --
      upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
  3. That is the guy.... by jimpop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..who was on guard duty before 9/11.... why should anyone listen to him?

  4. His argument is false by bazmail · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He argues that it is legal because it is useful. Using that logic, I should be allowed use claymore mines to protect my property from intruders. Indiscriminate, illegal but probably effective. He should remember, if you subvert the constitution, you corrode the very fabric of the nation. We're becoming just another regime.

  5. Re:The key word is... by Desler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    His claim about there being no abuses is a bald-faced lie. Why should anyone believe anything in that sentence after the first major lie?

  6. Record of Prevented Attacks by Phoenix666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The record of prevented attacks, according to the official report, is zero. The surveillance programs the NSA runs have prevented no attacks. They have, however, fundamentally undermined our Constitution and the entire rule of law in the United States of America. The citizenry has been watching, stunned, while the Congress, Whitehouse, and courts in DC have been wiping their collective behind with our foundational document, and are now looking at each other, waiting to see who's gonna pick up the gun and put the mad dog down. The criminals in DC and Wall Street misread the apparent lack of reaction with acquiescence or agreement. It's not. It's the entire mass of the country, who already have their hands full with many, many deep problems, discovering this massive systemic betrayal and trying to process what the best course of action is. If DC does not act now to channel things into productive reform, they will explode to the detriment of all, but especially to the detriment of DC and their masters on Wall Street.

    --
    Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
  7. After the next attack? by Dunbal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "After the next attack"

    Wait a second - you mean that you admit the NSA is not able to prevent the attacks? OK, so explain again why it is a necessary, nay, "vital" government agency?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  8. Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looking at it from the outside, i.e not being a US citizen:

    1. You piss of everybody else on the planet, so do not expect any goodwill.
    2. There were abuses, please do google loveint.
    3. Snowden walked ot of NSA with *all* their goodies, so how says that that did not happen before ? He was just the first to go public with the abuses.
    4. How can any US citizen still talk about the "land of the free", that is totally ridiculous and hypocrite at the same time.
    5. You do have the best democracy that money can buy

  9. No abuses? by godless+dave · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Right now, since there have been no abuses..."
    NSA employee spied on nine women without detection
    NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds
    No abuses, General?

    --
    "If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -