Obama is still treating this problem as though it's a case of privacy vs security. The real issue is trust. U.S. citizens can't trust what private U.S. corporations tell them if the government has the power to coerce and then muzzle them. This is a poisonous environment to do business in. International business is going to go elsewhere, and domestic business will also choose to outsource to more transparent countries.
Well put. Trust has become the underlying issue here, everything else is semantics.
At the same time though, I think Obama is looking at a comfortable point where trust is traded off for security. Problem with such points is that they can shift in either direction depending on who is in charge - that's what's scary.
In parallel with the effect on business, there is likely to be an effect on culture, too.
I predict that a significant number of Americans will begin to treat the internet as something like a hazardous, but sometimes necessary and useful substance. Like weed killer. It might not be very dangerous but you sure don't rub it all over your body. Maybe internet will be something you keep in a certain room, and only turn it on when necessary.
That's a pity. It was nice to think "Let's try something potentially weird and intrusive but maybe valuable." I don't thank that will ever be thought of the same way.
True. I'd add that this is an issue of privacy, security, and trust--and the need of a people and its government to never violate privacy and dilute trust while achieving security.
It is a difficult task, and the government--as well as the corporations they have involved in the process--are egregiously failing.
Serious companies will do that, but for me it would be interesting to see how many individuals already moved away from those companies and their services.
the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
"...remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance."
If by "all men", the founders most definitely did intend to leave out blacks and women, why on earth would you assume they nonetheless intended to include foreigners?
See U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265-267:
"""
The Fourth Amendment provides:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That text, by contrast with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, extends its reach only to "the people." Contrary to the suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase "simply to avoid [an] awkward rhetorical redundancy," Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 12, n. 4, "the people" seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by "the people of the United States." The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the people." See also U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 ("Congress shall make no law. . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble") (emphasis added); Art. I, § 2, cl. 1 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the people of the several States") (emphasis added). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community. See United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 292 (1904) (Excludable alien is not entitled to First Amendment rights, because "[h]e does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law")."""
The framers were not "global citizen" radicals circa 2013. They were very conscientiously creating a social compact to govern a country of a well-defined set of people. It is entirely natural to assume, as has been assumed, that they did not intend Constitutional rights to be universal.
It could very well be that no US government agencies are spying on Americans. Think outsourcing the "grunt work" to foreign partners or subsidiaries. The CIA rendition flights to Jordan are a good example.
In which the President offers an amazing interpretation of what it means for a program to be transparent--i.e., that it allegedly goes through a secret court whose rulings are not publicly available.
This is not transparency. This is the regurgitation of obfuscating talking points.
Transparency: a secret court with secretly appointed judges who make secret rulings on requests whose details are kept secret from the judges.*
* I've seen allegations of this last bit, but not evidence. The claim was that it mostly goes on the word of the requesting agency/analyst and the judge has no real way of knowing whether it's a legitimate request or not.
I guess I'm used to a more technical definition of "can't" than politicians nowadays.
Apart from that, I'm German, and every time I read this "not to US citizens" excuse, all I understand is that they'll happily rape all my data without any questions asked.
Indeed, it is not at all reassuring; it is creepy that they think it ought to be reassuring.
My wife is not a US citizen, so the feds are apparently happy to admit they are spying on her, or could if they cared to. That's pretty bad in itself, but then consider the fact that more of my electronic messages go to or from her than any one else. They can't spy on her communications without spying on mine, too, and I am a US citizen. So are they spying on US citizens or not? Of course they are, en masse, no matter what denials they make about it.
Here's something interesting I found on wikipedia. According to the "General Data Protection Regulation", which is a data protection law and is supposed to take effect in 2016 in the EU:
the Regulation also applies to organizations based outside the European Union if they process personal data of EU residents.
Further in the section "Discussion and challenges":
The new regulation conflicts with other non-European laws and regulations and practices (e.g. surveillance by governments). Companies in such countries should not be acceptable for processing EU personal data anymore.
In related news, policemen also cannot break the laws.
But isn't it a good thing we have the public with their smartphones recording the police as they work? Isn't it great that there are multiple separate, public, open channels to provide feedback when the police go astray?
EFF's position (from the CNET article): "The evidence shows that the NSA seeks a warrant only after the communication is initially acquired and analyzed by computers according to algorithms designed by humans, placed in a government database, and reviewed by an analyst."
I think this interview perfectly illustrates the distinction Snowden mentioned between technical capability and policy.
Note that the president says "if you're a US person the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls" instead of saying "if you're a US person, the NSA isn't recording your phone calls".
The word "cannot" in this context means "they aren't supposed to", not "it is technically impossible".
He's saying that listening to your phone calls is "against the rules" but that doesn't mean this data isn't still being captured and put into an NSA data warehouse somewhere, in case circumstances change.
Two elements of the government rhetoric surrounding this issue really bug me.
First, they use phrasing like "listen to calls" which is nonsensical in the modern world. If a computer observes all packets traveling across a fiber line, transcribes VoIP traffic into text, and then only persists counts of keywords to magnetic storage medium -- does that count as "listening"? If they do this proactively, but no human ever looks at those counts unless a warrant is pulled, does it count as listening? When we conduct the debate around outdated language, it is impossible to be specific about what is taking place.
Second, the government tends to regurgitate the law, rather than existing practice.
What I find a bit more insidious is that "listening" is being discussed in the public sphere in the way it is expected to mean--that is, as a real-time, present-tense, current action. In practice, what is occurring and actually under debate, but being evaded because of the language employed, is "listening" in the context the government is doing it--that is, as a retroactive, past-tense, stepping-back-in-time action.
Lets assume everything said in the interview is true. This would only serve to reassure the public that the state is not proactively looking for threats among U.S. citizens. That's a good thing.
However, as my only other comment on the leaks indicates, I still think it's appalling that the infrastructure exists to 'passively' collect the content of U.S. citizens' online communication in the first place. From my experience working with 'big data', the step of collecting information is the difficult part. Mining the data is relatively trivial and can be 'switched on' at any point.
So my original concern still stands: there is no reason to assume that power won't be abused in the future. What happens when a terrorist threat born and bred in the U.S. successfully attacks a target? I'm willing to bet these statements about not actively monitoring U.S. citizens would quickly be forgotten and new rationalizations would be put into place instead -- e.g. the state only searches for key phrases in citizen generated content, like 'hate government'
Clapper: "the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails"
Obama: "the NSA can't listen to your calls"
The denial I would like to hear: the NSA does not collect your e-mails, phone calls or internet traffic. The lack of a denial is looking very suspicious, and a careful reader is forced to act as if it's all being vacuumed up.
Their promises only relate to when that data may be used.
No... Collect has a very specific meaning to the NSA. Collect means when data have "been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence [that is, NSA] component in the course of his official duties" http://atsdio.defense.gov/documents/5242.html
"Acquire" or "intercept" or "intake in any way" would be better. The language is very slippery here.
> I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.
I think there are actually quite a lot of people who do expressly argue that point in nearly those exact words. The point of contention is arguing we are demonstrably less free or more inconvenienced not because of the checkpoints per se, but because of the invasive procedures forced upon the public's expectations of privacy and the protection thereof.
This--invasive violation of public expectations of privacy & protection--is becoming a bit too much of a constant theme.
> [W]e don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security. ... That's a false choice. ... To say there’s a tradeoff doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom.
The President is an intelligent man with a solid grasp of language and its intricacies of usage. To admit there is a tradeoff is to implicitly assent to the sacrificing of freedom for said tradeoff (this, the achievement of security).
The bit about this being a false choice is interesting. The President invokes the fallacy of the false dilemma, which raises the expectation that there are additional options available--but not considered--where the goal of protecting freedoms and achieving greater security intersect ... and then does not offer any alternatives or exposition on what other options may be (or have been) considered. I'm left quite unsure of how he then considers sacrificing freedom to achieve security a false choice.
Moving on, this statement
> ... the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not.
directly contradicts the followup statement:
> ... if you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it’s not targeting your emails unless it’s getting an individualized court order.
This strikes as more talking points rearing their head without substantive difference in an effort to shape public opinion and discourse. If it is said that the NSA cannot target emails and listen to phone calls, that is going to etch itself into the public consciousness that the technological apparatus required is not present. But the follow up clarifies in nearly identical language that the NSA is not listening/targeting "unless it's getting an individualized court order." So now we are at the opposite side--the NSA can target your emails and listen to your phone calls, despite the aforementioned clarification they cannot. The talking points are keeping things intentionally muddled where they could easily make it more plain. So, barring other intricately worded explanations, this pretty much makes it sound like the NSA can indeed listen to your phone calls and target your emails, but only--as long as the existing rules are being followed--if they secure an "individualized court order" after good old-fashioned probable-cause seeking.
Of course, this is an even more bizarre clarification for the President to make when he later turns his attention to the phone records program. The 2015 Program:
> Program number one, called the 2015 Program, what that does is it gets data from the service providers like a Verizon in bulk, and basically you have call pairs. You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names. There is no content in that database. All it is, is the number pairs, when those calls took place, how long they took place.
Okay, so admission that bulk call data is there, as Snowden alleged with his leaks. Once again, the talking points that this is all metadata--without explicitly using that particular word, though. And yet, it is trivial to connect a phone number to its owner. So, your call data is there in the database with all the information required to identify you specifically should intelligence agencies deem necessary.
The President further clarifies the nature of the reporting in that he says "[a]t no point is any content revealed", a perhaps unfortunate, unintended admission that the content is there. I know the President likes to be very clarifying when speaking and interviewing and somewhat sidetracks mid-sentence to clarify a specific phrase or term (note all the em-dashes littered throughout the text of the interview), but this one is particularly interesting because it reads as if he caught himself mid-un-truth when he jumps mid-sentence to say that if the FBI wants content, they then have to go to the FISC to ask for a warrant to get the content.
Any rational person should, therefore, conclude the content is indeed there to be interrogated, regardless of what the policy for such interrogation may be.
His comments on the 702 program are nigh-unintelligible for such a careful speaker as the President usually is. He tries to disqualify concerns about it by saying it "does not apply to any U.S. person", then describes it as a program that produces "essentially [but not actually] a warrant" that compels private companies who hold communications to turn over the content. Then again, the clarifier that this does not apply to U.S. persons and is only in "narrow bands" of criminal/terrorist activity by foreign agents. He further attempts to posit constitutionality and authority by saying "the process has all been approved by the courts"--but these are not publicly accountable courts whose decisions are made available to we the People.
> ... if people are making judgments just based on these slides that have been leaked, they’re not getting the complete story.
Nevermind that we are only getting a partially complete story--being hidden behind curious clarifications and dubious assertions of state secrets privileges--because of leaked slides.
The big kicker:
> It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court ... My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?
So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee — but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.
This is more informative than most everything else in the interview. The President clarifies that--despite much of what campaign rhetoric made people believe he thought--his concern is not whether we should be enacting these intelligence gathering programs that target everyone and attempt to hide behind policy rules, not laws. His concern is the erection of checks and balances that appear good enough, but none of which actually are explicitly in the way of public discourse and notification.
He relies on a "federal court with independent federal judges" that operate in secret and whose decisions are de facto classified, as well as statistically shown to be rubber stamp decisions.
The biggest allegation is that all of Congress had this information available to them before the last reauthorization of the programs, information that told Congress "exactly how this program works".
Either the President is lying, or Congress is putting on a sham of shock when they were already aware of all of this, or the President is throwing them under the bus for not bothering to read and understand the information before reauthorizing--thus making a move to avert public outrage toward their representatives, all of whom allegedly had this information and ignored it when reauthorizing. Or something else.
I still feel like this interview offers a depressing amount of talking points winning over actual disclosure, and yet another advance of creatively assigning words like "transparency" to programs that are clearly not.
It's interesting that they would bandy around the word "transparency" -- with secret unapproachable courts, not all committee members being read into programs, and so on.
That's gotta win for me the "political doublespeak" award for the week. Better to have made a case that the structures were needed (which he feebly does, incongruously), than simply call one thing something else over and over again.
> I'm often asked the question, "What's more important – civil liberties or national security?" It's a false question; it's a false choice. At the end of the day, we must do both, and they are not irreconcilable. We have to find a way to ensure that we support the entirety of the Constitution – that was the intention of the framers of the Constitution, and that's what we do on a daily basis at the National Security Agency.
I wish he had then been asked how they determine if someone is a U.S. citizen. From other sources we've heard that they only need 51% confidence that they are a non-US person.
They invented a device that can discern the US-Citizenship-status of anyone merely by knowing the phone's local usage details and privacy-respecting information about the data transmitted.
Well, not really, but that's what would be necessary for such a claim to hold any water.
Every story on this subject from the government uses very specific technical qualifiers. "Listen" in this case. Likely there is some kind of natural language processing done to each call - either to give a complete (written) transcript or a categorical summary. In both cases the verb is not 'listen' - but in both cases the action is similarly egregious.
Why should we believe him? When companies are legally required to lie on behalf of the government, i find it hard to trust the government to tell me the truth directly.
This. Applied to both parties--the corporations and the government agencies/branches/actors.
I find it very disturbing and dangerous to the healthy operation of a free society when any individual or collective entity is required to lie about receiving legal orders to turn over information to the government.
I haven't thought through all the ramifications of that sentiment, of course, but it is very unsettling.
In Obama-speak, "can't" means "we have a law that says they cannot, so they certainly must not be doing it."
In human-speak, "can't" means, "do they have a system capable of letting your average NSA analyst do this easily without oversight?" I suspect we'll never get the answer to this question unless it is leaked.
Let's at least take a wider view and recognize this is not Obama-speak, but is general political doublespeak. Obama is not the first to employ such language, nor will he be the last. Politicians, pundits, and the general media are working off the talking points we heard about earlier, and everyone is using the same words in the same way. As the executive, Obama is merely putting himself out there as another political actor joining in the shared deceptions, and all ought to be held accountable for this.
It comes down to trust. No one trusts Government anymore. They can get up on stage with pretty pictures and screenshots of "proof" that they're not listening to calls. It won't matter. No one believes them anymore. They have to fix that first and the only way to do that is to vote the lifelong Politicians out of office and get some fresh meat in there. Senators and Congressman need to have term limits. They collectively have more power than the President yet they can stay office for life. Checks and balances? Nope!
It is interesting how violating the privacy of a US person can be considered some kind of issue, not that big, but still a bit of a problem, on the other hand if you are a non US person everything is fine because your life doesn't matter anyway.
This is exactly the kind of thought I hoped the internet would break, and I have worked quite hard to help it happen, the day of the feuds are over, no more lords to came and lie to us telling that people who lives on the other side of that river want bad things to happen us, no more divide and conquer, the middle ages is over, is it?
The President really has no credibility here - it's like asking a CEO if his company is engaged in illicit behavior - even if it is, it's his job to say it isn't (or that he isn't aware of it).
I suppose we have to read it like this: Bush says "It is illegal for us to torture, therefore whatever we are doing cannot be torture"... Obama says "It would be illegal if we spied on US citizens, so, whatever we are doing isn't spying on US citizens".
[+] [-] beloch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namank|12 years ago|reply
At the same time though, I think Obama is looking at a comfortable point where trust is traded off for security. Problem with such points is that they can shift in either direction depending on who is in charge - that's what's scary.
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
I predict that a significant number of Americans will begin to treat the internet as something like a hazardous, but sometimes necessary and useful substance. Like weed killer. It might not be very dangerous but you sure don't rub it all over your body. Maybe internet will be something you keep in a certain room, and only turn it on when necessary.
That's a pity. It was nice to think "Let's try something potentially weird and intrusive but maybe valuable." I don't thank that will ever be thought of the same way.
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
It is a difficult task, and the government--as well as the corporations they have involved in the process--are egregiously failing.
[+] [-] popee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gasull|12 years ago|reply
- Edward Snowden
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-n...
[+] [-] famousactress|12 years ago|reply
"...remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-n...
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
See U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 265-267:
""" The Fourth Amendment provides:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
That text, by contrast with the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, extends its reach only to "the people." Contrary to the suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase "simply to avoid [an] awkward rhetorical redundancy," Brief for American Civil Liberties Union et al. as Amici Curiae 12, n. 4, "the people" seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by "the people of the United States." The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms," and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the people." See also U. S. Const., Amdt. 1 ("Congress shall make no law. . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble") (emphasis added); Art. I, § 2, cl. 1 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the people of the several States") (emphasis added). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community. See United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 292 (1904) (Excludable alien is not entitled to First Amendment rights, because "[h]e does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law")."""
The framers were not "global citizen" radicals circa 2013. They were very conscientiously creating a social compact to govern a country of a well-defined set of people. It is entirely natural to assume, as has been assumed, that they did not intend Constitutional rights to be universal.
[+] [-] markvdb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
This is not transparency. This is the regurgitation of obfuscating talking points.
[+] [-] LoganCale|12 years ago|reply
* I've seen allegations of this last bit, but not evidence. The claim was that it mostly goes on the word of the requesting agency/analyst and the judge has no real way of knowing whether it's a legitimate request or not.
[+] [-] moreentropy|12 years ago|reply
Apart from that, I'm German, and every time I read this "not to US citizens" excuse, all I understand is that they'll happily rape all my data without any questions asked.
[+] [-] marssaxman|12 years ago|reply
My wife is not a US citizen, so the feds are apparently happy to admit they are spying on her, or could if they cared to. That's pretty bad in itself, but then consider the fact that more of my electronic messages go to or from her than any one else. They can't spy on her communications without spying on mine, too, and I am a US citizen. So are they spying on US citizens or not? Of course they are, en masse, no matter what denials they make about it.
[+] [-] MisterWebz|12 years ago|reply
the Regulation also applies to organizations based outside the European Union if they process personal data of EU residents.
Further in the section "Discussion and challenges":
The new regulation conflicts with other non-European laws and regulations and practices (e.g. surveillance by governments). Companies in such countries should not be acceptable for processing EU personal data anymore.
What are your thoughts on this?
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
But isn't it a good thing we have the public with their smartphones recording the police as they work? Isn't it great that there are multiple separate, public, open channels to provide feedback when the police go astray?
The use of "cannot" here is very problematic.
[+] [-] drcode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
The talking points are winning here, and language is being abused to signify the opposite of what it actually means.
[+] [-] declan|12 years ago|reply
EFF's position (from the CNET article): "The evidence shows that the NSA seeks a warrant only after the communication is initially acquired and analyzed by computers according to algorithms designed by humans, placed in a government database, and reviewed by an analyst."
[+] [-] drcode|12 years ago|reply
Note that the president says "if you're a US person the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls" instead of saying "if you're a US person, the NSA isn't recording your phone calls".
The word "cannot" in this context means "they aren't supposed to", not "it is technically impossible".
He's saying that listening to your phone calls is "against the rules" but that doesn't mean this data isn't still being captured and put into an NSA data warehouse somewhere, in case circumstances change.
[+] [-] jsz0|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eob|12 years ago|reply
First, they use phrasing like "listen to calls" which is nonsensical in the modern world. If a computer observes all packets traveling across a fiber line, transcribes VoIP traffic into text, and then only persists counts of keywords to magnetic storage medium -- does that count as "listening"? If they do this proactively, but no human ever looks at those counts unless a warrant is pulled, does it count as listening? When we conduct the debate around outdated language, it is impossible to be specific about what is taking place.
Second, the government tends to regurgitate the law, rather than existing practice.
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphilip|12 years ago|reply
However, as my only other comment on the leaks indicates, I still think it's appalling that the infrastructure exists to 'passively' collect the content of U.S. citizens' online communication in the first place. From my experience working with 'big data', the step of collecting information is the difficult part. Mining the data is relatively trivial and can be 'switched on' at any point.
So my original concern still stands: there is no reason to assume that power won't be abused in the future. What happens when a terrorist threat born and bred in the U.S. successfully attacks a target? I'm willing to bet these statements about not actively monitoring U.S. citizens would quickly be forgotten and new rationalizations would be put into place instead -- e.g. the state only searches for key phrases in citizen generated content, like 'hate government'
[+] [-] ipsin|12 years ago|reply
Obama: "the NSA can't listen to your calls"
The denial I would like to hear: the NSA does not collect your e-mails, phone calls or internet traffic. The lack of a denial is looking very suspicious, and a careful reader is forced to act as if it's all being vacuumed up.
Their promises only relate to when that data may be used.
[+] [-] declan|12 years ago|reply
"Acquire" or "intercept" or "intake in any way" would be better. The language is very slippery here.
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
> I don’t think anybody says we’re no longer free because we have checkpoints at airports.
I think there are actually quite a lot of people who do expressly argue that point in nearly those exact words. The point of contention is arguing we are demonstrably less free or more inconvenienced not because of the checkpoints per se, but because of the invasive procedures forced upon the public's expectations of privacy and the protection thereof.
This--invasive violation of public expectations of privacy & protection--is becoming a bit too much of a constant theme.
> [W]e don’t have to sacrifice our freedom in order to achieve security. ... That's a false choice. ... To say there’s a tradeoff doesn’t mean somehow that we’ve abandoned freedom.
The President is an intelligent man with a solid grasp of language and its intricacies of usage. To admit there is a tradeoff is to implicitly assent to the sacrificing of freedom for said tradeoff (this, the achievement of security).
The bit about this being a false choice is interesting. The President invokes the fallacy of the false dilemma, which raises the expectation that there are additional options available--but not considered--where the goal of protecting freedoms and achieving greater security intersect ... and then does not offer any alternatives or exposition on what other options may be (or have been) considered. I'm left quite unsure of how he then considers sacrificing freedom to achieve security a false choice.
Moving on, this statement
> ... the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not.
directly contradicts the followup statement:
> ... if you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it’s not targeting your emails unless it’s getting an individualized court order.
This strikes as more talking points rearing their head without substantive difference in an effort to shape public opinion and discourse. If it is said that the NSA cannot target emails and listen to phone calls, that is going to etch itself into the public consciousness that the technological apparatus required is not present. But the follow up clarifies in nearly identical language that the NSA is not listening/targeting "unless it's getting an individualized court order." So now we are at the opposite side--the NSA can target your emails and listen to your phone calls, despite the aforementioned clarification they cannot. The talking points are keeping things intentionally muddled where they could easily make it more plain. So, barring other intricately worded explanations, this pretty much makes it sound like the NSA can indeed listen to your phone calls and target your emails, but only--as long as the existing rules are being followed--if they secure an "individualized court order" after good old-fashioned probable-cause seeking.
Of course, this is an even more bizarre clarification for the President to make when he later turns his attention to the phone records program. The 2015 Program:
> Program number one, called the 2015 Program, what that does is it gets data from the service providers like a Verizon in bulk, and basically you have call pairs. You have my telephone number connecting with your telephone number. There are no names. There is no content in that database. All it is, is the number pairs, when those calls took place, how long they took place.
Okay, so admission that bulk call data is there, as Snowden alleged with his leaks. Once again, the talking points that this is all metadata--without explicitly using that particular word, though. And yet, it is trivial to connect a phone number to its owner. So, your call data is there in the database with all the information required to identify you specifically should intelligence agencies deem necessary.
The President further clarifies the nature of the reporting in that he says "[a]t no point is any content revealed", a perhaps unfortunate, unintended admission that the content is there. I know the President likes to be very clarifying when speaking and interviewing and somewhat sidetracks mid-sentence to clarify a specific phrase or term (note all the em-dashes littered throughout the text of the interview), but this one is particularly interesting because it reads as if he caught himself mid-un-truth when he jumps mid-sentence to say that if the FBI wants content, they then have to go to the FISC to ask for a warrant to get the content.
Any rational person should, therefore, conclude the content is indeed there to be interrogated, regardless of what the policy for such interrogation may be.
His comments on the 702 program are nigh-unintelligible for such a careful speaker as the President usually is. He tries to disqualify concerns about it by saying it "does not apply to any U.S. person", then describes it as a program that produces "essentially [but not actually] a warrant" that compels private companies who hold communications to turn over the content. Then again, the clarifier that this does not apply to U.S. persons and is only in "narrow bands" of criminal/terrorist activity by foreign agents. He further attempts to posit constitutionality and authority by saying "the process has all been approved by the courts"--but these are not publicly accountable courts whose decisions are made available to we the People.
> ... if people are making judgments just based on these slides that have been leaked, they’re not getting the complete story.
Nevermind that we are only getting a partially complete story--being hidden behind curious clarifications and dubious assertions of state secrets privileges--because of leaked slides.
The big kicker:
> It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court ... My concern has always been not that we shouldn’t do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?
So, on this telephone program, you’ve got a federal court with independent federal judges overseeing the entire program. And you’ve got Congress overseeing the program, not just the intelligence committee and not just the judiciary committee — but all of Congress had available to it before the last reauthorization exactly how this program works.
This is more informative than most everything else in the interview. The President clarifies that--despite much of what campaign rhetoric made people believe he thought--his concern is not whether we should be enacting these intelligence gathering programs that target everyone and attempt to hide behind policy rules, not laws. His concern is the erection of checks and balances that appear good enough, but none of which actually are explicitly in the way of public discourse and notification.
He relies on a "federal court with independent federal judges" that operate in secret and whose decisions are de facto classified, as well as statistically shown to be rubber stamp decisions.
The biggest allegation is that all of Congress had this information available to them before the last reauthorization of the programs, information that told Congress "exactly how this program works".
Either the President is lying, or Congress is putting on a sham of shock when they were already aware of all of this, or the President is throwing them under the bus for not bothering to read and understand the information before reauthorizing--thus making a move to avert public outrage toward their representatives, all of whom allegedly had this information and ignored it when reauthorizing. Or something else.
I still feel like this interview offers a depressing amount of talking points winning over actual disclosure, and yet another advance of creatively assigning words like "transparency" to programs that are clearly not.
[edit: spelling/grammar mistakes. sorry]
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
That's gotta win for me the "political doublespeak" award for the week. Better to have made a case that the structures were needed (which he feebly does, incongruously), than simply call one thing something else over and over again.
[+] [-] samolang|12 years ago|reply
> I'm often asked the question, "What's more important – civil liberties or national security?" It's a false question; it's a false choice. At the end of the day, we must do both, and they are not irreconcilable. We have to find a way to ensure that we support the entirety of the Constitution – that was the intention of the framers of the Constitution, and that's what we do on a daily basis at the National Security Agency.
http://www.nsa.gov/about/values/core_values.shtml
[+] [-] badclient|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LoganCale|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
It's not like anyone is gonna find out or held them accountable at the listening level.
[+] [-] SilasX|12 years ago|reply
Well, not really, but that's what would be necessary for such a claim to hold any water.
[+] [-] toufka|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] declan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
I find it very disturbing and dangerous to the healthy operation of a free society when any individual or collective entity is required to lie about receiving legal orders to turn over information to the government.
I haven't thought through all the ramifications of that sentiment, of course, but it is very unsettling.
[+] [-] gfodor|12 years ago|reply
In human-speak, "can't" means, "do they have a system capable of letting your average NSA analyst do this easily without oversight?" I suspect we'll never get the answer to this question unless it is leaked.
[+] [-] diminoten|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobwaycott|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pla3rhat3r|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boi_v2|12 years ago|reply
This is exactly the kind of thought I hoped the internet would break, and I have worked quite hard to help it happen, the day of the feuds are over, no more lords to came and lie to us telling that people who lives on the other side of that river want bad things to happen us, no more divide and conquer, the middle ages is over, is it?
[+] [-] Oletros|12 years ago|reply
If you're a foreign living, studying or for holidays in the USA there is no problem that the NSA spies you.
[+] [-] r00fus|12 years ago|reply
Obama (2013): We don't spy on citizens
The President really has no credibility here - it's like asking a CEO if his company is engaged in illicit behavior - even if it is, it's his job to say it isn't (or that he isn't aware of it).
[+] [-] marssaxman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksherlock|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IsTom|12 years ago|reply