{"id":186455,"date":"2014-01-17T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T00:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/17\/obama-presents-cosmetic-reforms-to-the-us-state-security-apparatus\/"},"modified":"2014-01-17T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T00:45:00","slug":"obama-presents-cosmetic-reforms-to-the-us-state-security-apparatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/01\/17\/obama-presents-cosmetic-reforms-to-the-us-state-security-apparatus\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Presents Cosmetic Reforms to the US State Security Apparatus"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, it must be noted that Obama’s definition of spying is the same as the one used by DNI James Clapper as an alibi for perjury<\/a>, that you can collect everything, and it is not spying unless you actually call it up for a specific purpose, even if we have found that NSA employees tracking ex-giflfriends with that “not spying” data that they collected<\/a>:<\/p>\n

President Obama said Friday, in his first major speech on electronic surveillance, that \u201cthe United States is not spying on ordinary people who don\u2019t threaten our national security.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> Obama placed restrictions on access to domestic phone records collected by the National Security Agency, but the changes he announced will allow it to continue \u2014 or expand \u2014 the collection of personal data from billions of people around the world, Americans and foreign citizens alike.<\/span>

<\/span> Obama squares that circle with an unusually narrow definition of \u201cspying.\u201d It does not include the ingestion of tens of trillions of records about the telephone calls, e-mails, locations and relationships of people for whom there is no suspicion of relevance to any threat.<\/span>

<\/span> In his speech, and an accompanying policy directive, Obama described principles for \u201crestricting the use of this information\u201d \u2014 but not for gathering less of it.<\/span>

<\/span> Alongside the invocation of privacy and restraint, Obama gave his plainest endorsement yet of \u201cbulk collection,\u201d a term he used more than once and authorized explicitly in Presidential Policy Directive 28. In a footnote, the directive defined the term to mean high-volume collection \u201cwithout the use of discriminants.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> That is perhaps the central feature of \u201cthe golden age of signals intelligence,\u201d which the NSA celebrates in top-secret documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. Obama for the first time put his own imprimatur on a collection philosophy that one of those documents summarized this way: \u201cOrder one of everything from the menu.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cIt\u2019s noteworthy that the president addressed only the bulk collection of call records, but not any of the other bulk collection programs revealed by the media,\u201d said Alexander Abdo, an attorney with the ACLU\u2019s national security project. \u201cThat is a glaring omission. The president needs to embrace structural reforms that will protect us from all forms of bulk collection and that will make future overreach less likely.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Other bulk collection programs, like the NSA hoovering over 200 million text messages a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You could tell that this was entirely damage control, and an attempt to avoid any meaningful reform because of is bizarre and ahistorical invocation of silversmith and revolutionary Paul Revere<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a speech that tried hard to defend the actions of the U.S. intelligence community while simultaneously admitting that some of those actions were unnecessary and egregious, President Obama on 17 January 2014 announced modest reforms of NSA spying practices that have been revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.<\/span>

<\/span> President Obama began by comparing the National Security Agency to the Sons of Liberty, an American revolutionary group famous for the 1773 Boston Tea Party, and one of whose members, Paul Revere, famously warned of incoming British troops. Ironically, Revere\u2019s legendary midnight ride would have most likely been stopped by the British if they had the NSA\u2019s metadata collection capabilities. Even more ironically, the American Revolution was kicked off in part by overly broad general warrants that gave British troops nearly unlimited power to search for contraband. It\u2019s all about intelligence.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would also suggest that you read Marcy Wheeler’s list of secret police style techniques that Obama thinks is OK<\/a>, because he has claimed that there have been no abuses:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n