Dissecting Obama's NSA Speech

[Valin]

Ricochet:

John Yoo

1/17/14

 

Conservatives could react to President Barack Obama's NSA speech today with a collective "whew," sop their brows, and say it could have been a lot worse. President Obama did not give in to the pleas of the anti-war left and shut down the NSA completely, nor is he ending the collection and analysis of telephone metadata.

 

He should receive some credit for a speech that recognized the long American history of signals intelligence—the interception of foreign communications—and its great benefits during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Critics who want the NSA's activities shut down should read about the Battle of Midway, where US cryptographers intercepted the Japanese fleet movements, or examine the 9-11 Commission report, which details how American inability to track terrorist communications inside the U.S. allowed the hijackers to go undetected.

 

That said, President Obama's speech is an unfortunate example of a president seeking to avoid the responsibilities of the office that he wanted so badly. He seeks to place the NSA under unprecedented restrictions for little gains in privacy—and at the cost of a reduction in our security.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Obama Leads from Behind on NSA
GARY SCHMITT
1/17/14

Thankfully, President Obama is not a doctor. If he was and you happened to visit him in his office and mentioned that you were worried about the potential for lung cancer, he’d immediately put you under, open you up, and pull out a lung—or, at least, that’s the logic that seems to be guiding his decisions on NSA’s collection programs. Yes, no one has found any evidence that NSA has broken the law, invaded constitutionally-protected privacy rights, or is about to. But never mind, it’s the very possibility that someday, somehow, NSA will jump the tracks that requires the president now to unduly complicate the use of what he admits has been an important counterterrorism tool.

(Snip)

If there is any good news coming from the president’s speech it’s that he didn’t accept any of the presidential panel’s even wilder recommendations about breaking up NSA into offensive and defensive components—a sure fire way of making both less effective—nor did the president adopt perhaps the panel’s silliest recommendation of all: telling NSA to stop looking for ways to defeat encryption systems that, needless to say, terrorists, criminals, and rogue states might want to use.

Finally, over the last few days it’s been clear from various news stories and leaks from the White House that the president has bounced around on what he would recommend. One might even be sympathetic to his indecision about how to balance privacy rights and security if this wasn’t a problem in some measure the president brought on himself by not taking a more public role in defending his own intelligence programs. But, as Bob Gates makes clear in his new book, Duty, this is a president who not only likes to lead from behind but thinks leadership is akin to riding public opinion instead of directing it.

[Valin]

[Valin]

http://youtu.be/2Um6rN7Pi2c

[Draggingtree]

Probing America: Top German Prosecutor Considers NSA Investigation

 

Germany and the US appear to be edging closer to political confrontation. The Federal Prosecutor says there is sufficient evidence to open a politically explosive investigation into NSA spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone. By SPIEGEL Staff http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/nsa-syping-scandal-a-944415.html