Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
“The [surveillance] Court documents declassified recently show that in late 2011 the court authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless searches of individual Americans’ communications using an authority intended to target only foreigners,” Wyden said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Our intelligence agencies need the authority to target the communications of foreigners, but for government agencies to deliberately read the e-mails or listen to the phone calls of individual Americans, the Constitution requires a warrant.”
The Obama admin hypocrisy on transparency is astounding. No public debate, no checks by Congress on the authority to wiretap and collect enormous amounts of data on US citizens. Yet the people who voted for him are still making excuses for this admin.
More think he should be impeached if he goes to war with Syria despite a No vote from Congress and despite UN saying no, and breaking international law. I think the NSA thing is at least as big as that, and if he does both then it's that much clearer that he's acting as a dictator with unlimited powers that needs to be overthrown.
He has no regard for the Constitution, no regard for human rights, no regard for due process, and no regard for international law. Not doing it would just send a message to other psychopaths running for president the next time, that it's okay to blatantly lie to the electorate, and then do stuff at least as bad as he did. Impeach him.
I am not sure the President is in the loop here. As far as I can tell he gets most of his info in these areas from the same sources that we do.
Or perhaps we were encouraged to look away from the curtain all this time.
And you're okay with that?
NSA is the presidents game.
He asked for the resignation of the head of the IRS after the political targeting scandal. He asked for the resignation of General McChrystal after he talked trash about Obama in a Rolling Stone article. But in this brazen assault by the NSA on the very foundations of our government Obama has barely responded at all. Director Clapper flat out lied to Congress and Obama hasn't even lifted a finger.
That to me indicates that Obama is absolutely supportive of what the NSA is doing.
"The President's Daily Brief (PDB) ... is a top-secret document produced each morning for the President of the United States."[1]
And he can definitely read the legal decisions that come out of the FISA court. There's no way that a FISA court decision declaring an NSA program unconstitutional wouldn't get to the President's desk.
I'm highly disappointed with Obama but he is hardly a psychopath. All those decisions you find repellent are the result of pressure from third parties or his own underlings. Impeaching Obama would be counter-productive. It would just create instability and would not solve the underlying problems that led him to make those decisions you hate.
Literally speaking, the president /is/ the highest commander of the NSA.
It doesn't matter where the pressure came from to make Obama go down this road. The bottom line is that Obama chose to go down this road.
Some people are saying, "Well, maybe he wasn't in the loop." If that is the case, and Obama was mislead as to the scope and nature of what the NSA was doing, he should've come down on the NSA HARD. The fact that he got up on TV and stammered on about balancing security and privacy and "welcoming the debate" means he was not alarmed by what was revealed and he had not intention of stopping it. He has done nothing to rein this program in.
Make no mistake, Obama knew enough to know what was going on was wrong. The fact that he chose to go down the wrong path means he is responsible and he should be impeached.
No, the way to get the message across is to keep it alive and use in the 2014 elections to ensure his party is trounced. Yes that will mean giving the Republican's the upper hand in Congress but fortunately or unfortunately depending on your political stance they are pretty inept at using it well. There are some Republicans that need to go as well and they should not be given free pass.
It comes down to getting the American people to stay interested enough, to adopt the philosophy of "throw the bums out". If that means we swing back and forth each two years or four then so be it, for when one party has dominance too long we get into situations like we are today.
Yeah, and right now it's the Democrat/Republican party.
You aren't going to change anything switching from Democrat>Republican or vice versa.
Unfortunately, I think that for most people, civil rights are very low on the list of issues that they care about when voting in an election. They care much more about health insurance, security of union jobs and pensions, etc. And the big corporate donors probably care about civil rights even less than the average voter.
Frankly that ship has sailed. Pardoning and rehabilitating Nixon, along with never prosecuting Nixon, Kissinger, Bush, or Cheney for war crimes after they left office has made that message loud and clear.
And it's at all levels. Government is simply above the law. How many police are in prison for murdering civilians?
So I voted for Obama, and again when Romney started to sound like Bush.
Sheesh. So disappointed. Honestly, I am bothered by the NSA stuff but part of my empathy goes out to him and 'allows' that perhaps he is acting on information that we don't/can't know. Maybe there arose an enormous threat and he was desperate to stop it.
I await the day when he can tell the entire story of why he made the choices he did. I now fear that this is just fantasy on my part.
However, I see no excuse for going forward with Syria at this time. He would have the same effect if he got the UN and/or allies to agree to a strike if it happens again- rather than doing it for something that has passed.
So now I am really wondering who the hell the guy is.
Even an existential threat - an actual one like another nation-state pointing world-ending numbers of nuclear weapons at our country - is less harmful than dismantling the mechanisms of the state internally.
What could even possibly justify this kind of thing?
"Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later."
The Cheney administration was openly deceitful, as it were, a brazen set of liars fronted by an idiot stooge. This turn of events - particularly given Obama's rhetoric and the expectations of him - seems in many ways much more insidiously dangerous.
Give me honesty and integrity over IQ points any day.
Don't get me wrong -- there are a lot of smart, competent conservatives I think are sometimes wrong and or just on a different side of class interest from me. Say, Dick Cheney, Bush Senior, Ronald, Nixon (off the charts smart, really). But George Junior was, indeed, an idiotic stooge.
1) one example http://keithhennessey.com/2013/04/24/smarter/
I still think history will judge his administration as being 8 years of screw-up, class warfare, and embarassment. Note that I am not saying that about his Dad, Ronald, or Richard....
BTW, the Obama admin has zero evidence in public of scientific samples or intel proving use of sarin gas by the Syrian government: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE98603A20130907?irpc...
Reality check: Obama and Bush are cut from very similar policy cloth. Both warmongers and NSA expansionists who don't give a damn about the civil liberties of the American public.
Bush Library Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw86w6G9e3E
Uncommon Knowledge: President George W. Bush On His Presidency and Life After the White House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K48Co8InGi4
"Villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged." -- Captain Picard
> We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. And then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly it threatens to start all over again.
and
> Maybe. But she or someone like her will always be with us, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish--spreading fear in the name of righteousness. Vigilance, Mr. Worf. That is the price we have to continually pay.
That's one way to look at it. Another is that the policies were put in place under Bush/Cheney, and they are being exposed under Obama.
Obama ran on transparency, and things are definitely becoming more transparent, albeit through unconventional means.
Politics is a complicated game and a delicate balancing act, especially when its intertwined with the military, the agencies, and the powers that be. We may be observing a complex line on the grand chessboard, and unless we are able to see the whole board, we won't fully understand the moves or the strategy in play.
But just like watching what people do can reveal more than listening to what people say, observing the effects in a complex system can reveal more than focusing on the mesmerizing flap of its butterfly wings.
There seems to be a bit of "don't throw me in the briar patch" mixed in with a dash of "gaffes" and "blunders". This surreal stew may be designed to complicate the GOP's public policy opposition strategy.
And in the case of Syria, even Bush's ex-admins are split on what to do (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/bush-vets-split-on-syr...).
Sure Congress bets some blame, but you can't blame the opposition in Congress for Executive abuses of power. That we are out of Iraq was despite Obama's best efforts to the contrary. That we got some transparency in civil liberties vs the war on terror have occurred despite Obama's war on whistleblowers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02ea3dBJAuI&feature=youtube_...
>Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or of falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding.
Even so, such a lie when delivered by PotUS might constitute a high crime and/or misdemeanor.
Although I'm receptive to that argument in general, part of the whole idea that generic collection is authorized at all, is that pre-emptively mirroring the data without looking at it (assuming that such mirroring is required at all) is still at least not doing a search on that data.
While I understand the Administration has tried to go away from that argument after it was first presented I see no other justification for capturing traffic that isn't clearly crossing national boundaries (which is admittedly a hard problem).
So the only way I could see for that argument to apply is if the data in question comes up on a legal search of foreign traffic, but not a new selector search into the entire pool of set aside traffic.
If you couldn't have legally run a search on the data as it came across the wire due to lack of a warrant then it wouldn't become OK unless another legal search window into that data opened it. It certainly doesn't become OK just because you happen to have custody of the data, just like we don't let the government open and read our mail without a warrant.
And again, the foreigners' right to protection of their privacy is not even up for discussion.
I'm tempted to say this is un-american. But thinking it over, it seems to actually have become the new "american".
In any case, this kind of attitude can not come from nation that sees itself as "the best country in the world".
"Un-american" supposedly means against freedom (and a range of other positive buzzwords) which is pretty hilarious given their behavior.
We would have been on the winning side of those conflicts no matter which side we chose.
However such behavior is at least consistent with traditional American 'protections' on foreign traffic. Even before there was an NSA, there was a government office reading Western Union telegrams being transmitted internationally.
This behavior is even consistent with the behavior of even Germany, which has a similar concept of foreign surveillance vs. domestic.
If the OP is correct, then this is some blame that might stick to Obama. In this case, my reading is that he will rush to correct the situation.
So, first step, pin the blame on Obama, and then let him suffer with it until he changes it.
If I were the POTUS, then I'd have my staff draft a short statement and use it to address the nation. The main point would be that the US actually is vulnerable to an attack by terrorists, and even if we totally lock down our country, turn the US into a 'surveillance' state and a police state, trash most of the Bill of Rights, damage our domestic economy, shoot our international trade in the gut, etc., we will still be vulnerable. We can't be 100% safe.
I'd mention that often there are several courses of action, with some safer than others but none 100% safe. E.g., from B. Schneier, after 9/11 so many people were so afraid of commercial air travel and drove cars instead that the fact that cars are much less safe than air travel resulted in more deaths of US citizens than 9/11 caused.
Might also mention that a goal of UBL was not to defeat the US via force but just to trick the US into a response so absurd and wasteful that the US would bankrupt itself, and here UBL has had a lot of success.
Then I'd ask the US citizens to go to a special, nationwide referendum on what to do, (1) return to the US as it was before 9/11 with some prudent and legal improvements to stop terrorists or (2) trash much of what is great about the US and still be vulnerable to terrorists. In this choice, we have to notice that the terrorists are not totally stupid and will avoid confronting the defenses we do put up and, instead, exploit ways in which we are still vulnerable.
A review of the track record of just what good all our anti-terrorism hysteria -- NSA, 'militarization' of local police, trashing the Bill of Rights, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the TSA trashing our domestic transportation industry, excesses by our Customs units, the money, etc. -- actually accomplished.
E.g., we should note the Boston bomber -- the NSA, etc. didn't stop him.
Then let the US citizens decide.
Good way for Obama to play CYA and also get the US back to a sane country away from some national neurotic hysteria from a few wackos with airline tickets and box cutters.
Maybe the hope of the NSA is catching another UBL planning another 9/11 and do so by grabbing cell phone data. Well, the terrorists know now to assume that telephones and e-mail are not secure; knowing that, the NSA will be even more useless than now.
The NSA is just a bureaucracy gone totally out of control because no one with authority wants to say "Stop" and then risk being blamed the next time something goes "Boom!". Any reasonable evaluation of costs and benefits would say that the NSA should be cut way back, say, to their original mission of arranging secure communications for the State Department. Then, maybe let them try to listen in on efforts to make loose nukes. Otherwise, save the money and the US Constitution.
I don't even blame the Exec branch that much since they have a LE mentality of "if you have nothing to hide...protect lives...blah blah"
I do however blame the courts, they could've stopped or at least not-rubber stamped this. The judges also have lifetime appointments, yet they let this happen. And no, the Congress cannot order the courts to ignore the Bill of Rights, regardless of what any legislation says.
It's not legal as far as they're concerned, they wouldn't be pushing for legislation to give them more power, seek secret courts for unethical interpretations of the constitution or lie and try and hide the scope of their activities (where even members of Congress still have no idea what they're doing) if that was the case.
As far as they're concerned they've got all the power and freedom with the influence to push any legislature they need to, and continue unfettered in their mission to track anyone they want to regardless of the constitution, legislation or public opinion.
The American people have for a long time been extremely 'tough on crime' (e.g. the ongoing 'war on drugs'), and the reason people don't seem to care is that this is an extension of the same philosophy.
What can we do about it? I honestly can't think of a single thing I could do, or 100,000 citizens could do that would make a lick of difference.
I agree with the parent comment, people have too much trust that this all will not affect their lives. The fact that a functioning democracy becomes impossible when political opponents can be retroactively wiretapped for years into the past is something esoteric that simply doesn't strike home.