Breaking Down New N S A Policy

First the Provisions and then the Commentary

CNN) -- President Barack Obama talked in sometimes lofty, often technical tones Friday about changing how the government does its anti-terror snooping. That includes how it collects records on many of your phone calls, emails and online chats.  Here's what it all meant:

1. The public will get a voice before the secret intelligence court -- sort of

The way things work now at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the government asks a judge in secret for permission to collect, say, phone records. No one gets to argue the other side.

Obama said he wants to open the court's doors to advocates from outside the government who can "provide an independent voice in significant cases."

Obama announces changes at NSA

The idea is to make sure outside voices have a say -- voices that might not always buy into the intelligence community's arguments -- but who knows what that panel will end up looking like.

2. New limits on telephone records

If you've been paying attention the last few months, you know the National Security Agency has been slurping up details on millions of phone calls placed in the United States. The agency isn't recording the actual conversation -- they're after stuff like the phone numbers involved and the time and length of each call.

Blog: What others are saying

That won't end, exactly, but Obama says big changes are coming. First, fewer calls will be cataloged. And analysts will now have to get a judge's approval to dip into the records. Later, the government will stop collecting and storing those records. Where they'll go is still up in the air, though.

3. Super-secret "we want your stuff" letters are changing

Remember the movie, "Fight Club?" Remember the line, "First rule of fight club is you do not talk about Fight Club?" Well, the government has something like that called the National Security Letter program. It requires tech companies to cough up info about suspected terrorists and others without so much as a peep.

Obama wants to change it so those letters don't always stay secret. He also wants to give tech companies more latitude to reveal information about what the government asks for. He didn't say exactly what they'll be able to reveal, but at least maybe they'll be able to finally acknowledge "Security Club."

4. People living outside the U.S. get some love, too

Revelations sparked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks didn't just rile up Americans. We learned the United States had been monitoring leaders of some of its allies, such as Germany. The United States also doesn't extend the kind of privacy protections to your everyday Italian or Peruvian living outside the United States.

So Obama says the United States will take what he calls the "unprecedented step" of developing some privacy safeguards for citizens of other nations living abroad. That might include limits on how long the government keeps personal information and taking steps to make sure it's used only in very limited circumstances.

5. So this ends all the drama, right?

Hardly. Critics of U.S. intelligence practices barely waited for the speech to end before pouncing.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he thinks Obama's speech amounted to little. "I think it's embarrassing for a head of state like that to go on for almost 45 minutes and say almost nothing," he said.

Another privacy advocate called the reforms "mere window dressing."

"Rather than dismantling the NSA's unconstitutional mass surveillance programs, or even substantially restraining them, President Obama today has issued his endorsement of them," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, an anti-surveillance organization.

Snowden is expected to speak up about the changes next week, Assange told CNN.

 

The Teleprompter-In-Chief Fails to Impress …

President Obama did exactly what the American people predicted: made a pretty speech, but failed to rein in NSA spying.
CNN correctly notes:

Critics of U.S. intelligence practices barely waited for the speech to end before pouncing.

Representative Rush Holt says:

The President’s speech offered far less than meets the eye.
“His proposals continue to allow surveillance of Americans without requiring a Fourth Amendment determination of probable cause.  They continue to regard Americans as suspects first and citizens second.  They continue to allow the government to build backdoors into computer software and hardware.  They fail to strengthen protections for whistleblowers who uncover abusive spying.
“The President spoke about navigating ‘the balance between security and liberty.’  But this is a faulty and false choice.  As Barack Obama himself urged in his first inaugural address, we must ‘reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.’
“The Fourth Amendment and other civil liberty protections do not exist to impede police or intelligence agencies.  To the contrary, they exist to hold to hold government agents to a high standard – to ensure that they act on the basis of evidence, rather than wasting time and resources on wild goose chases.
“Even the modest improvements announced today are subject to reversal at a stroke of the President’s pen.  A standard of ‘trust my good intentions’ isn’t good enough.  Congress should reject these practices and repeal the laws that made the NSA’s abuses possible.”

Senator Rand Paul says:

President Obama’s announced solution to the NSA spying controversy is the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration ….
“The American people should not expect the fox to guard the hen house,” Paul said about Obama’s promise to appoint a special White House oversight director to keep a watchful eye over the security programs.

Leading constitutional and military law expert Jonathan Turley writes:

I just listened to the NSA speech by President Obama and as expected there is precious little in terms of real change. For civil libertarians, it is a nothing burger served hot and with a sympathetic smile. It is much of the same.
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The programs will continue and the intelligence community will retain its authority with little outside independent limits. The speech had the feel of a car salesman coming back from “speaking with the manager” and saying that he is able to offer a deal that no one likes but he wants to offer because he likes the customer. Of course, this “deal” does not require our consent.
In the end, the changes are either undefined (like the privacy advocates) or basically “trust us were your government” (including a reminder that NSA people are your neighbors).
The Paul Revere reference at the beginning seemed to set the less than honest approach of the speech. Revere and the Sons of Liberty were watching public movement of an enemy at war. Likewise, Obama again references “court” review of the metadata as if it were a true court applying real probable cause. FISC has been widely ridiculed as a rubber-stamp for the government. The Court is given a standard that is hard for the government not to satisfy with even the most casual filings.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund notes:

Rather than dismantling the NSA’s unconstitutional mass surveillance programs, or even substantially restraining them, President Obama today has issued his endorsement of them. What are billed as ‘reforms’ are mere window dressing, cosmetic changes that leave this unconstitutional system intact and, in fact, provide presidential ratification.
Today’s speech full of minimization and outright denial regarding the now-documented massive scope of NSA spying on the population served as the presidential announcement of an intention to permanently implement a national surveillance grid and indiscriminate mass data collection. Every keystroke will still be captured, every phone call will still be logged.
***
Using tactics of misdirection, the president has tried to reframe the issue as who should house the massive collection of data on law-abiding people, rather than the real issue, which is that this massive indiscriminate collection and warehousing of data must stop. This speech will fail to stop the tide of opposition of people in the United States and around the world who reject living under a Surveillance State.

The Guardian reports:
Obama’s NSA speech: an affirmation that mass surveillance has a future