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Comment by cmiles74 | Hacker News Reader

Personally, this was one of my biggest disappointments from the Obama administration. Before he became president, he was critical of the Patriot Act and seemed legitimately concerned[0]. After election he signed a four year renewal[1].

[0]: http://obamaspeeches.com/041-The-PATRIOT-Act-Obama-Speech.ht...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

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This has to be my number one gripe with Obama. I was so for him repealing the Bush Era Surveillance. I wanted more checks and balances. I wanted the secret courts to be dismantled.

Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surevellience on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.

Let's not even get into the fact that he dropped a bomb on average every 20 minutes of his presidency. The is just 2016[5]

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill... [5] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-presiden...

For better or worse, I can imagine that once you become POTUS and see all of the information it becomes very hard to stand by your privacy principles. This is by no means giving a pass to anyone, and I'd like to think I'd pick privacy every day of the week, but I'm also human. If I was POTUS I may end up doing everything in my power to avoid another attack on the US, no matter how unlikely.

Something to ponder.

I think the other part is that after lightening surveillance any terrorist attack that gets through will be used as a political cudgel no matter what to show that you were soft on terrorism. This felt kind of inevitable in the jingoistic atmosphere when the Patriot Act first passed.

Yeah. I'm so disappointed every time I watch this video of candidate Obama debating president Obama on government surveillance... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8

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