I'm saying that it would be easy for Bush to tamper with the NSA if the NSA had no objections to it.
Are you implying that the spy agencies do in fact follow the direct orders of the president? Or are you implying Bush did it?
Speaking of, much of what the NSA is doing comes from the Patriot Act. You guys did read that before you cheered its passage 12 years ago, right?
I'd love to see anyone show any instance of my "cheering" for its passage. It is an abomination, pretty much the perfect example of "those who would give up essential liberty for security..." It is about as anti-freedom as it gets, passed in knee jerk fashion after 9/11, and then happily continued by fans of government control.
Not even. If Obama actually did try to take any meaningful action with the NSA on this issue, the first thing that senior management at the NSA would do is to remind Obama that the NSAs charter and funding come from Congress. If Obama persisted, it would likely ruin his entire administration.
I find it hard to believe that anyone in the US actually thinks our government operates as you describe.
Let's assume Obama truly does have no meaningful power to order the NSA into submission. He does have one thing that you or I don't, and that is the fact that he's the president. People listen. If he used half the energy campaigning for privacy reform instead of gun control we would be having an entirely different conversation. He didn't get in front of the camera and tell the nation that this is a serious problem and we need to get serious about it. Edward fucking Snowden did.
Whatever he says will be a carefully worded lie designed to fool his supporters. That's really all you need to know. If he's talking, he's lying.
LOL +1Kennedy was killed by a squirmy little far left communist. Deal with it.
Um, no. The NSA was CREATED by Congress, but as with all Executive Branch offices it is fully under the authority of the President with Congressional oversight. Obama has full authority to set policy as long as that policy is not illegal. (Well, perhaps more illegal, in this case.) If Obama were truly helpless with anything whose "charter and funding come from Congress" he could not even decide what's for dinner.Not even. If Obama actually did try to take any meaningful action with the NSA on this issue, the first thing that senior management at the NSA would do is to remind Obama that the NSAs charter and funding come from Congress. If Obama persisted, it would likely ruin his entire administration.
I find it hard to believe that anyone in the US actually thinks our government operates as you describe.
I don't quite follow you. Except for a little token action after Sandy Hook to please the base, Obama has spent very little energy on gun control.
If you want my honest opinion on Obama and the NSA, I think he doesn't have the clout and is playing it safe (which is a shame). Keep in mind, if he were to make privacy reform a major issue, the GOP would certainly spin it that he's weak on defense.
Um, no. The NSA was CREATED by Congress, but as with all Executive Branch offices it is fully under the authority of the President with Congressional oversight. Obama has full authority to set policy as long as that policy is not illegal. (Well, perhaps more illegal, in this case.) If Obama were truly helpless with anything whose "charter and funding come from Congress" he could not even decide what's for dinner.
I fully understand what you're saying. My issue is that the lies get more and more frequent as well as bolder and bolder. Combine that with a sympathetic, highly biased media that practices hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil with politician's whom they support and where do we end up? We have to quit shrugging our shoulders and accepting this. We can't count on the media to ask pertinent questions even to candidates they don't support. For those they do, the biggest question on any given day may very well be 'boxers or briefs'?Is there such a thing as an honest politician?
My favorite Clancy line: " I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar. When I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops."
I'd say there are probably 94 who wouldn't...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/amash-amendment-roll-call-vote_n_3648737.html
Obviously Fox News would spin it that way... But that's a given and wouldn't surprise anybody. And who cares what the GOP thinks? He already thinks the GOP basically just voted against anything he did, so why would he care? He hasn't cared what the GOP has said so far... So then what? A large part of American think the NSA is overstepping (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/polls-continue-show-majority-americans-against-nsa-spying) as well. Congress hasn't felt that they were properly apprised of the NSA actions either, and there is bipartisan support in Congress for reforms (as witnessed by the Amash vote and numerous opponents, including the guy who drafted the PATRIOT Act). So outside of Fox news spinning it to be he is weak on defense, who else would? And once again, everybody knows that's what the Fox will say.
I fully understand what you're saying. My issue is that the lies get more and more frequent as well as bolder and bolder. Combine that with a sympathetic, highly biased media that practices hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil with politician's whom they support and where do we end up? We have to quit shrugging our shoulders and accepting this. We can't count on the media to ask pertinent questions even to candidates they don't support. For those they do, the biggest question on any given day may very well be 'boxers or briefs'?
I have never listened to any speech any president has given since I was old enough to vote which was a long, long, time ago. It's all bullshit. But this guy we have now is a pathological liar and I have nothing but contempt for liars of this caliber no matter what position they hold. It's one facet of arrested development for which I just won't give any quarter.
Well then, why isn't Congress taking action? I would jump up and down for joy if they did.
A new paper published Monday by the New America Foundation demonstrably destroys the US government claim that bulk metadata collection is useful. (Three US senators made the same claim back in November 2013.) The paper’s lead author is Peter Bergen, a journalist and terrorism analyst who famously interviewed Osama bin Laden for CNN in 1997.
The 32-page document (PDF) closely examines the 225 cases in which terror suspects were:
…recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrat[ing] that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal.
Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined.
. . .
Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group.
“[The Bergen report] is additional evidence of the question of the ‘efficacy’ of the surveillance program, a factor that weighs heavily when one balances security against liberty,” Ruthann Robson, a law professor at the City University of New York, told Ars. “If the program does not provide security, then its weight on the scales is minimal.”
Other legal scholars have reached similar conclusions.
"Until the NSA provides additional information regarding how the information is used (other than to claim broadly that it’s used to stop terrorism), the inferences drawn in the report from the available data are at least reasonable," Clark Asay, a law professor at Penn State, told Ars. "If the government wants to provide additional details disproving the report’s conclusions, I think most would consider that a most welcome development."
So which case out of all of the 225 constitutes that 1.8 percent?
It’s the sticky case of San Diego cab driver Basaaly Saeed Moalin and his three associates. Moalin, a Somali immigrant, was convicted in February 2013 on five counts, including conspiracy to provide material support (that is, $8,500) to a foreign terrorist organization, Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab, in 2007 and 2008.
The case is under appeal on the grounds that the National Security Agency unconstitutionally abused its authority to target Moalin. Coincidentally, Moalin is represented by Joshua Dratel, also the defense attorney for Ross Ulbricht, accused of heading up the notorious Silk Road online drug marketplace. Ulbricht remains in federal custody.
SECRET COURT DECLASSIFIES OPINION PROVIDING RATIONALE FOR METADATA SHARING
FISC relies on a 1970s-era case that established "third-party doctrine."
As Ars has reported previously, the government’s response (PDF) to Moalin’s request for a new trial, filed on September 30, 2013, is a heavily redacted brief arguing that when law enforcement can monitor one person’s information without a warrant, it can monitor everyone’s information, “regardless of the collection’s expanse.” Notably, the government is also arguing that no one other than the company that provided the information—including the defendant in this case—has the right to challenge this disclosure in court.
Government prosecutors argued that Moalin had no standing to challenge the collection of telephone metadata from his phone provider, citing the third-party doctrine.
As Ars has described before, in 1976, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Smith v. Maryland that when someone calls a telephone number, that number has been disclosed to a third party (the phone company). Therefore, the Supreme Court held, it is not private (because it was disclosed through the act of making the call), and the government can have easy access to those call records—this is the origin of the third-party doctrine.
Changes afoot?
Many legal advocates hope that this legal theory will be increasingly challenged in the courts.
Some of the Supreme Court justices, notably Justice Sonia Sotomayor, seemed to indicate in the 2012 United States v. Jones decision that they would be amenable to review of the entire third-party doctrine. “More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties,” she wrote.
But as Bergen and the paper’s other authors now conclude:
Even granting the government’s explanation of the case, the Moalin case does not provide a particularly convincing defense of the need for bulk collection of American telephone metadata. The total amount going to a foreign terrorist organization was around $8,500 and the case involved no attack plot anywhere in the world, nor was there a threat to the United States or American targets. The four individuals involved in the plot make up only 1.8 percent of the 225 cases we identified.
The White House has not made any direct statements in response to the Bergen report.
But President Barack Obama is expected to make a public statement this coming Friday concerning what surveillance and intelligence reforms the White House will implement in the wake of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies’ report.
However, according to the Los Angeles Times, anonymous administration officials have said the metadata program isn't going anywhere.
"This capability was put in place after 9/11 for a good reason," said a senior administration official who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive deliberations. "The question we have to examine is whether the perception of privacy intrusion outweighs the operational value. It's possible we could get that same information … in other ways, but it's slower."
I am really very worried that us conservatives are going to have a periscope shoved up our asses.
Oops, looks like to forgot to post this on one of your alt-accounts, Moonie. That or you had your account highjacked. ^_^
I don't think he does get to decide what's for dinner, quite honestly.
For the record, I used to say similar comments about Bush when he was in office. The Presidency today is largely a figurehead. The top salesman, if you will. Or the guy who gets to take all the blame, if you prefer to look at it that way. But actual power? Not since Reagans 1st term, if then.
Edit : also, to address your point directly, we don't know what's in the NSAs charter. It's classified. In addition, the NSA might say that legislation they are required to comply with (ie Patriot act) trumps executive direction if they choose to.
Anyone here who has worked for a megacorp and has had to push something interdepartmental should surely be able to understand.
President Obama is making major changes to the NSA's phone record surveillance program Friday — the one first unveiled last summer by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and what kicked off months of controversy. Here, in plain English, is what will happen next.
The NSA won't get to decide when it pulls information from the phone records database.
Until now, intelligence analysts have been able to "query" the database so long as they've determined a given phone number is subject to "reasonable, articulable suspicion." Critics have said that gives the NSA too much power to snoop on people. So Obama is going to require that whenever an analyst wants to query the database, they'll have to get permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first. The FISA court has not previously been in the position of approving individual requests.
When the NSA does query the database, they can't go as far.
Given a certain phone number, the NSA is currently allowed to look at any phone number that is connected to the first, any number that is connected to that number, and any number that is connected to that number. It's what people in the industry call the "three hops" rule, for the three degrees of separation from the original number. Effective immediately, however, analysts will now be limited to making just two hops. It'll limit the range of people who will potentially fall under the NSA's gaze.
The phone records database may be put in the hands of a third party.
This is a longer-term change that won't take effect immediately. President Obama's advisers are going to have 60 days from Friday to recommend how to move the database away from government control. There are a few ways this could happen: 1) The data are held by the phone companies rather than being handed over; 2) the intelligence community relies on "existing programs and capabilities [...] to map terrorist connections," as a senior administration official put it Friday; or 3) some other idea.
It's not clear whether the second idea would mean getting rid of the database entirely. A cynic might worry that the database simply gets handed to another government agency. But officials Friday seemed to indicate otherwise.
"The bottom line is, we are ending the program as it currently exists," a senior administration official said. "The government will no longer hold this telephony metadata."
Obama will ask Congress to convene a panel of public advocates to represent consumers before the FISA court.
The members of this panel, to be drawn from civil liberties, technology and privacy advocates, will be given security clearances and other benefits. Their job will be to represent Americans, but only when the FISA court faces "novel issues of law," according to a senior administration official. In other words, those advocates will become involved when the FISA court encounters a question or type of data it hasn't dealt with before. But officials Friday weren't clear about whether they would be called in by the court or if they could weigh in of their own volition.
What don't these reforms cover?
These reforms are narrowly targeted at the NSA's phone metadata program under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. They don't cover other programs the government carries out under Section 215, such as the reported scraping of financial information by the CIA. They don't address the NSA's counter-encryption activities or any geolocation information that the NSA may have or may be collecting. They also don't address other programs like those conducted under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, which is the authority under which PRISM operates. Some of the reforms, both on the telephony metadata surveillance and others that the President is announcing today, require an act of Congress, and given the Senate's general support for the NSA throughout the controversy, it's unclear how much traction these proposals will get. Much of the spying that happens internationally will also remain untouched.
Additional reforms aside from those affecting Section 215 include: Deciding not to spy on "dozens" of foreign heads of state or heads of government. Some protections applied to U.S. citizens abroad will also now be applied to foreign nationals. And companies will be able to make more disclosures about government data requests, including on National Security Letters, which will no longer be secret "indefinitely."
Speech over! The details:
Washington Post - Everything you need to know about Obama’s NSA reforms, in plain English
This appears to be the video archive of the speech.