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Comment by Zirro | Hacker News Reader

As a non-American I just have to ask, as I see his name thrown around a lot, is Obama really the one making these decisions? Are there not people on a lower level signing some of these? It seems to me, essentially impossible for one man to be able to handle all things brought up recently, not to mention all the non-tech questions I'm sure are debated just as much in other places.

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Bills passed by Congress and enacted into law are literally signed by the President; somewhere there is a physical piece of paper that Obama marked with a pen -- except in a few cases where it was a robotic pen: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/11...

And the other decisions mentioned above come directly out of the office of the president, which is to say Obama and his cabinet and staff. The executive branch is the president's instrument to wield; I think everyone would agree that the president has responsibility for the actions of his appointees and White House staffers. And the key documents like executive orders are, again, literally signed by Obama's hand.

Or, as the sign on President Harry S. Truman's desk famously proclaimed: "The buck stops here."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Buck_Stops_Here)

And it's the President's decision to allow or encourage his Justice Department to pursue the idea that email left on a server after six months is considered abandoned and therefore free game for the government to warrantlessly peruse. Like, you know, that 7G of email you have on gmail. Not his law, but he's using it, and certainly not trying to turn it back.

I wonder how many of his campaign supporters feel betrayed, and how many just give him a pass like Apple gets for Foxconn.

Do you have a link for this? I have not heard of this provision before.

Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-em...

> As a non-American I just have to ask, as I see his name thrown around a lot, is Obama really the one making these decisions?

Would you have asked that question while Bush was president or if McCain had won?

FWIW, Obama campaigned against some of those things. (McCain also campaigned against some of these things, albeit different ones in some cases.)

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