Translating President Obama's NSA Reform Promises Into Plain English

sandbagger writes "The cynics at the Register have picked apart Barack Obama's NSA reform promises. As to be expected, there's some good, some deliberate vagueness, talk of 'ticking bomb scenarios' and the politician's favourite 'promises to commit to future reforms'. Basically, it's a fig-leaf to kick the can down the road so the next president has to deal with it. He's promising bulk data will go to a third party so the NSA can't see it. Okay, who is this magical third party?" They don't seem to me nearly cynical enough.

Comments

If you like it

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it, period".

Why would you bother parsing what he said word by word. He lies, period. What he says means nothing.

Re:If you like it

[redemtionboy]

"If you like your privacy, you can keep it"

This is how power creeps. No one thinks they're evil. Each trust themselves to not abuse power. But even if this is going to a third party, it's still a violation of the 4th amendment. There are rules in place for a reason. This is asking to be abused.

Even worse, they still haven't proven or show any evidence that this is necessary. It's one thing if you were preventing terrorist attacks left and right and could make a utility argument, but they aren't even doing that. It's disgusting.

Re:If you like it

[homey of my owney]

What is important here is the appearance of doing something... At least as far as ANY politician is concerned. The suckers buy into it.

Re:If you like it

[YumoolaJohn]

It's one thing if you were preventing terrorist attacks left and right and could make a utility argument

No, it's not. Freedom is more important than safety. The people who are focused on the question of whether or not these programs stop terrorists are missing the point entirely.

Re: If you like it

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'd be ok with daily door to door home inspections because they might make you more safe?

I wear a harness at work because the danger is real and present. If I fall it will save my life. Now on the other hand the nsa spying on me will not make anyone safer because I have no intention of hurting anyone. They also have no evidence that I intend to hurt anyone. Now if they did have that evidence and used it to get a warrant then spy away.

people like you make me sick.

Re:If you like it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more than that -- Obama is basically telling the American public, "you're all too stupid to know what's best for you, you can express your outrage by signing an online petition and then you go right back to your Facebook and Twitter who are in fact the "third parties" collecting all this data. You're a bitch-ass chump, common American, and I'm going to patronize you for being the fat moron you are, and you're not gonna do a goddamn thing about it."

Then the common American hangs their head, chin cushioned by a comfortable layer of jowel fat, saying "Okay, I guess..." before waddling off to McDonald's to guzzle down a 64oz. soda and triple cheeseburger while using the wifi to bitch about it on Facebook and Twitter.

You disgust me, fellow Americans. You're a bunch of spineless, disgusting fat and vain blobs. You don't deserve to be free!

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:If you like it

[davester666]

This 'data will be held by third parties' thing is just about changing who pays for data storage.

Instead of giving tax money to the NSA to build large data warehouses, and hacking American companies to get the data, the American companies will be required to store ALL the data [data + metadata] indefinitely, at their own expense [which means consumers have to directly pay for it] and the NSA/FBI/DHS have to pay to access it [fee's will be approximately 98% profit].

This way, the NSA can focus their budget on hacking companies and gov'ts outside the US. So effectively, this actually increases how much data will be available to the gov't, because it will be 'everything the company gathers about you' instead of just what the NSA could afford to track/store.

Re:If you like it

[ganjadude]

to put it another way "the one guy cut off my arm, but the new guy only gut off my finger so he is better"

Re:If you like it

[DrJimbo]

so you never wear a safety harness, because your freedom is more important than your safety?

Saying freedom is more important than safety does not imply that safety is unimportant just like Saying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is taller than Shaquille O'Neal does imply Shaq is not tall.

Re:If you like it

[YumoolaJohn]

That's the same argument that violent people make to try to justify gun ownership.

And they are right. Freedom is more important than safety. I don't believe we should be punishing everyone merely because some people abuse guns.

What good is the Bill of Rights if you can take those rights if one of those gun owners can take all of those rights from us in an instant with a gun?

Have some principles, please; you're living in a country that's supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Some criminal could randomly kill you, but what does that have to do with the government violating everyone's rights? You act as if we must sacrifice all of our rights for safety.

Re:If you like it

[MrKaos]

I'll give you 50 bonus points for not quoting Franklin. I'll also subtract 100 points because you're an idiot.

Total points: -50

What about Kennedy? "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable"

Re:If you like it

[s.petry]

Really, so you never wear a safety harness, because your freedom is more important than your safety?

False analogy. In a survival situation, you need water before food. That does not mean that you never eat, and making such an implication is simply asinine.

Ok, so you don't like that way of analogy, fine, let's consider putting people in prison. Why do we do this? Isn't that impairing their freedom? How dare we!

Another false analogy, and horrible logic. Are you really trying to imply that if you believe in Natural Law, the US Constitution, or personal freedom that there can be no accountability for actions, no justice system, or that having a justice system makes freedom impossible? This is another asinine implication, no matter how it's viewed.

There is no possible way to debate anyone with logic this horribly broken. Yes, that is correct. It's impossible to debate someone that uses this level of irrationality.

Translating Obama's NSA Promises to TL;DR

[keyslemur]

Lol, no.

Plain enough.

[rmdingler]

Will this POTUS stop surveillance of citizens?

Nope.

Re:Plain enough.

[BrookHarty]

Bullshit. Potus has WAY more power than you think. He can ask the Justice department to investigate why the judges only rubber stamp, he can use presidential orders to direct departments or how to interpretation the law, he can fire US attorneys, he has his cabinet members he can fire, he could even fire the the head of the CIA/FBI and Homeland security for misconduct by asking the AG to fire them, and so much more powers.

Re:Plain enough.

[Kohath]

He could end the secrecy. The President can de-classify anything, anytime he wants.

Get a warrant

[EmperorOfCanada]

Quite simply there needs to be two things. One is get a warrant, and these warrants need go public in short order. Public with no redactions. My guess is that 99% of redactions are not to protect sources and whatnot but to avoid embarrassment.

Also these warrants need to go before real judges. If they can't trust the judges then how can they trust anyone?

Nothing

[DarkOx]

"I don't want to do anything; I don't plan to much; I don't know how what little I am offering will get done or when" -- Pretty much sums it up.

The interesting thing is, some of the statements Obama made directly contradict the congressional testimony. Is anyone getting charged with perjury this time? Or is CONgress just going to let being lied to go?

Re:Everybody Knows

[Richy_T]

Arguably corporations already have this data so all you need to do is have a law that mandates a retention policy. I still don't like it but it's definitely an improvement (of miniscule proportions)

Re:Everybody Knows

[russotto]

He's promising bulk data will go to a third party so the NSA can't see it. Okay, who is this magical third party?

The NSA under a different name, I would expect.

That's obvious

[Groo Wanderer]

"Okay, who is this magical third party?"

There is only one entity that could be trusted with the security and sanctity of such a trove, the TSA of course.

            -Charlie

Register's response is good.

[bussdriver]

The main issue that a lot of people are going to have is:
1) They denied everything until Snowden
2) What they fix, they'll deny until the next leaker.

Possibly) What Snowden didn't leak, they will continue to deny and have no need to fix it. Plus there is the "need to know" stuff, some of which POTUS doesn't even know.

Re:Everybody Knows

[Anonymous Coward]

One side effect of the speech is that the NSA declassified more documents yesterday. Included is the original "metadata" orders from the FISA court. Not sure if this is a comprehensive list, but there is enough in there about domestic data collection.
I was under the impression that this data is collected and retained forever, but it seems the order requires this data to be deleted after five years. It also says what metadata is collected, and I am not sure if any single corporate entity has this data. For example, if a Verizon user calls a T-Mobile customer, both records are collected and matched. Similarly, device IDs are collected, not just numbers. So pre-paid SIMs are tracked even if the user switches carriers (ie, move from TracFone to T-Mobile to AT&T etc. - all uses of the phone can be identified as a single device). The orders (that I read) are unclear on whether the geographical location is tracked.

make this an issue for the next POTUS election

[Dan667]

If people want to get the NSA reigned in they they should start now making this a big deal for the next election. It does two things. It will make sure the issue does not go away and force it to be an issue for Senate and House elections as well.

Re:make this an issue for the next POTUS election

[NoKaOi]

It was an issue in the election that Obama won in 2008. The problem is that he lied his ass off and wasn't held accountable in 2012, not because Obama was doing a great job but because the other guy would have been 10x worse. I'm sure whoever runs in 2016 will either lie their ass off or figure out a way to make it a non-issue.

Among other lies on the subject:
"That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient," Obama said in 2007.
Later:
"I take the Constitution very seriously," he said. "The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m president of the United States of America."

But either way, this won't be a huge issue in the next election. Ironically, it'll be the things Obama actually did right that the democrats get reamed for, like social services (since that costs money, albeit a teeny tiny fraction of what the wars are costing each year) that help a helluva lot of people,I didn't even know how much good they did until having a conversation with a relative who's a social worker, and healthcare reform (although implementation was half-assed, it is allowing a lot of people get insurance, and in the bigger picture it's a move in the right direction).

That interpretor's language is not Turing Complete

[VortexCortex]

What good is a lexical translator if the output doesn't compile? We've been incrementally compiling the language of ++BS (doubleplus bullshit) for quite a while, so let's just run what we've got now and see if there are any obvious errors.

The FBI and NSA have now both been tasked with maintaining "national security": This means maintaining the political, and socio-economic status quo despite the will of the people. It's a fact they have a long history of acting to silence civil rights activism, anti-war activism, and other activist groups. They claimed to stop the practice, but the NSA has now admitted it still entertains the idea of discrediting "radicals", via exposing porn habits, etc. Under the state secret label of "national security" they FBI and NSA won't have to worry about pesky FOIA requests revealing their programs like they did in the past, and can delegate enforcement to the state police agency: DHS. It doesn't matter where the data is stored online, or how encrypted it is, the NSA can and will get at it via exploits., so Obama is free to promise the moon and stars. Not like oversight ever stopped them from blatant constitutional violations before.

Here is a documentary / book presenting facts which can be easily verified in an attempt explain the practice of Disaster Capitalism. The gist is that through application of social, political and economic shock therapy you can bend the will of the people to your design and siphon a lot of wealth up into the upper echelon of private business. It's also a great way to force the privatization of public resources for corporate benefit. Anyone who objects or holds counter economic views is labelled a "radical extremist" of a "dangerous ideology" and rounded up in prison camps as examples of what happens if you disagree. The bogeyman of Communism or Marxism or Terrorism, etc. is thereby leveraged.

Warning: Cognitive Dissonance Detected.
    Assumption of inherent benign governance illogical: More evidence for Null Hypothesis against this stance exists.

This article examines the Pentagon's preparation to implement the round-up of those having "radical ideologies" in the wake of a Disaster Capitalism event, (essentially following the predicitons and warnings of the prior linked documentary) and explains how the PRISM system is apparently connected to it.

Error: Expected Event "Future" not found.
    Democratic Republic execution model is not consistent with economic ruin and despotism.

So, there we have it. It would be crazy to think anyone could benefit through economic ruin, so everything's probably OK. It seems our government is just run at the behest of rich corporations, and is wearing tinfoil hats in preparation of ensuring our continued acquiescence just in case they're ever able to strip more power from the people than is bearable. However, it's probably nothing to worry about unless they plan to let some "unforseen disaster" happen, like a Stock Market Crash, Pearl Harbour, 9/11, Energy Crisis, etc. or our ability to influence the government via the democratic vote has been hacked.

TL;DR: Obama's Promises are merely legitimization and fulfilment of The Nightmare Eisenhower Tried to Warn Us About.

We should learn from Obama's lies

[Taco Cowboy]

Why would you bother parsing what he said word by word. He lies, period. What he says means nothing.

I respectfully disagree.

Obama is not the first president of the United States, and I hope that he is not the last one either.

Similarly, Obama is not the first president of the United States who was caught lying.

What I am saying is, we should learn from Obama's lies.

We should learn a lesson on how the POTUS lies, what kind of lies POTUS utters, under which circumstance(s) and what kind of benefit the POTUS reaps with his/her lies.

We should learn that because it would benefit us, the people, to better recognize lies from this and all future POTUS.

It is our duty, as citizens of the United States of America, to keep our nation in order. If the POTUS wants to lie, it falls to us to make sure that the POTUS' lies won't put our nation in jeopardy.