Report: Obama to give up NSA's phone call sweep

[Constitutional Paulicy]

Report: Obama to give up NSA's phone call sweep
By EILEEN SULLIVAN 1 hour ago

The White House proposal would end the government's practice of sweeping up the phone records of millions of Americans and holding onto those records for five years so the numbers can be searched for national security purposes. Instead, the White House is expected to propose that the phone records be kept for 18 months, as the phone companies are already required to do by federal regulation.

According to a senior administration official, the president will present "a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified." The administration official spoke late Monday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal before it was officially announced.

The president's plan, however, relies on Congress to pass legislation — something that has so far seemed unlikely.

Details of the government's secret phone records collection program were disclosed last year by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. Privacy advocates were outraged to learn that the government was holding onto phone records of innocent Americans for up to five years. Obama promised to make changes to the program in an effort to win back public support.

more here... http://news.yahoo.com/report-obama-nsas-phone-call-sweep-021841873--politics.html

 

[thoughtomator]

Next year's "Lie of the Year"

 

[Constitutional Paulicy]

Can somebody say "empty gesture"?

 

[fr33]

Grab it and run with it Rand. Pick up those swing voters. Obama is a lame duck.

 

[anaconda]

Oh, great. So we get to be spied on in rolling 18 month intervals? I hope Rand goes into sarcasm overdrive in the media on this one. Also, when is Rand going to formally request the Senate Select Committee to study the surveillance issue?

I swear this administration knows no shame. Can somebody tell me how the government thinks that "only holding data for 18 months" somehow means that we are no longer being spied upon? This is just surreal.

The general warrant still completely exists. Unless I missed something here..

 

[Constitutional Paulicy]

Grab it and run with it Rand. Pick up those swing voters. Obama is a lame duck.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Wait, so now all the sudden this guy needs Congress to act?

One of the only few legitimate things a President can constitutionally do all by himself, and now this guy decides that he has to go through Congress.

Fr for cryin out loud.

 

[Mini-Me]

Wait, so now all the sudden this guy needs Congress to act?

One of the only few legitimate things a President can constitutionally do all by himself, and now this guy decides that he has to go through Congress.

Fr for cryin out loud.

WOW, good catch. I didn't even think about that, but you're right.

 

[Mini-Me]

Oops, double post!

 

[acptulsa]

Wait, so now all the sudden this guy needs Congress to act?

One of the only few legitimate things a President can constitutionally do all by himself, and now this guy decides that he has to go through Congress.

Fr for cryin out loud.

You forget. That whole Constitutional Scholar thing was just a campaign promise. You know, like, 'If you like your insurance you can keep it,' and 'troops home by 2013.'

 

[DamianTV]

Obama has LIED about everything else. Why would anyone believe one single word that comes out of his mouth?

 

[Root]

Obama has LIED about everything else. Why would anyone believe one single word that comes out of his mouth?

racist

 

[Anti Federalist]

Obama to give up NSA's phone call sweep

Yeah, right and I got a fucking bridge to sell you.

 

[asurfaholic]

According to a senior administration official, the president will present "a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified."

Nothing changes. His team is still spying on you

 

[VBRonPaulFan]

Wait, so now all the sudden this guy needs Congress to act?

One of the only few legitimate things a President can constitutionally do all by himself, and now this guy decides that he has to go through Congress.

Fr for cryin out loud.

That was immediately the first thing that jumped out at me in the story. If he wants to do it, it gets done with EO. Everything else 'must go through Congress, that's how the Founder intended don'tcha know...'.

And how exactly is what he proposing here a broad change that anyone should give a shit about? Obama's just saying 'we're only keeping your shit for a year and a half instead of five years, problem solved!' No, that doesn't solve the problem you twit, that doesn't even get into the problem at all.

 

[Constitutional Paulicy]

 

[Constitutional Paulicy]

Obama’s new NSA proposal and Democratic partisan hackery
By Glenn Greenwald 25 Mar 2014, 9:49 AM EDT

I vividly recall the first time I realized just how mindlessly and uncritically supportive of President Obama many Democrats were willing to be. In April, 2009, two federal courts, in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, ruled that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) required the Pentagon to disclose dozens of graphic photos it possessed showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama administration announced that, rather than contest or appeal those rulings, they would comply with the court orders and release all the photos. The ACLU praised that decision: “the fact that the Obama administration opted not to seek further review is a sign that it is committed to more transparency.”

This decision instantly turned into a major political controversy. Bush-era neocons, led by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney, excoriated Obama, arguing that release of the photos would endanger American troops and depict the US in a negative light; Cheney expressly accused Obama of “siding with the terrorists” by acquiescing to the ruling. By contrast, Democrats defended Obama on the ground that the disclosures were necessary for transparency and the rule of law, and they attacked the neocons for wanting to corruptly hide evidence of America’s war crimes. I don’t think there was a single Democratic official, pundit, writer, or blogger who criticized Obama for that decision.

But then – just two weeks later – Obama completely reversed himself, announcing that he would do everything possible to block the court order and prevent it from taking effect. ABC News described Obama’s decision as “a complete 180.” More amazingly still, Obama adopted the exact arguments that Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney were making over the prior two weeks to attack him specifically and transparency generally: to justify his desire to suppress this evidence, Obama said that “the most direct consequence of releasing the [photos], I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in danger.”

Now, obviously, the people who had been defending Obama’s original pro-transparency position (which included the ACLU, human rights groups, and civil liberties writers including me) changed course and criticized him. That’s what rational people, by definition, do: if a political official takes a position you agree with, then you support him, but when he does a 180-degree reversal and takes the exact position that you’ve been disagreeing with, then you oppose him. That’s just basic. Thus, those of us who originally defended Obama’s decision to release the photos turned into critics once he took the opposite position – the one we disagreed with all along – and announced that he would try to suppress the photos.

But that’s not what large numbers of Democrats did. Many of them first sided with Obama when his administration originally announced he’d release the photos. But then, with equal vigor, they also sided with Obama when – a mere two weeks later – he took the exact opposition position, the very anti-transparency view these Democrats had been attacking all along when voiced by Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney

more here... https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/25/obamas-new-nsa-proposal-democratic-partisan-hackery/

 

[Occam's Banana]

 

[jkr]

HRMPH!
like HE can stop them...

SHADOW GUbbERMINTS
GONNNA
SHADOW GUbbER

 

[Lucille]

3 Lessons From the NSA Telephone Dragnet Obama Plans to End
http://reason.com/blog/2014/03/25/3-lessons-from-the-nsa-phone-record-drag

Everything was fine as long as it was secret.
The program was essential until it became dispensable.
Whistleblowing is a crime.

But in the end:

The NSA is only one source of the rot that is spread across numerous agencies and programs, the rot that has infected our government at every level (federal, state, county, municipal, etc.) and in countless ways. But the unique and restricted focus on the NSA is also an enormous boon to the State; it is largely the result of our culture's idiotic and myopic focus on the "hot" story of the moment, devoid of history, of context, of everything that should inform our understanding of the issues involved. It creates and supports the view that, if only we "fix" the NSA, then a significant part of the problem will be solved. But that is flatly untrue. As I already noted, you could eliminate the NSA entirely this very minute, and it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference. But the heightened focus on the NSA, while ignoring all the other agencies and programs involved in similar and even identical activities, leads directly to the "solution" that will make the State writhe in ecstasy. Congress will have some hearings, and they will provide for some "oversight" and "accountability," and most people, including most of the State's critics, will herald the great triumph of "the people" and "democracy." Meanwhile, the State will continue doing exactly what it was doing before.