20 ms·

Why Obama did not stop NSA domestic surveillance

138 points by declan 11y ago

mirimir 11y ago
This reads like historical fiction. I can't imagine that Charlie Savage attended the meeting. But he says nothing about his source(s). Maybe the book does. Nevertheless, the style strikes me as odd.
gozo 11y ago
The New Yorker wrote the "must read" article on the subject two years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/state-of-deception http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/state-of-decept... I remember it being really good, you should read it if you have the time.
- atmosx 11y ago
  That's a book not an article, but it is really good. The NY has really high quality content.
steve19 11y ago
The charitable explanation, which this article seems to imply, is that he suddenly discovers how important these programs are and how much is at stake. The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending political fallout from a major terrorist attack (after dismantling surveillance programs). He chose the option that he thought would give him a second term (and then a gold plated public speaking career after the White House). I would say his gambit paid off. The right would never love him, the left had no one else and in any case they had fallen so deeply in love with the Idea of him.
- mjevans 11y ago
  A more reasonable explanation is that irrespective of what he might /want/ to do, he doesn't actually have sufficient power to do anything about the actions, assuming he's actually being accurately briefed on the matter. It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective at doing anything than consuming money to be elected for corporate interests the US congress has become. I think at this point I might actually be better served by having representatives and senators selected at /random/ from the entire populace.
  - IIAOPSW 11y ago
    Wouldn't be the first time historically speaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
  - acqq 11y ago
    > irrespective of what he might /want/ to do, he doesn't actually have sufficient power to do anything, assuming he's actually being accurately briefed on the matter. He definitely had enough power, but as steve19 points, he could have estimated that such actions would have probably lowered his chances for reelection.
    - deadfish 11y ago
      Why definitely? If it was truly hidden from him... then who is to say he has the power to stop it?
      - acqq 11y ago
        Note: "assuming he's actually being accurately briefed" so here nobody discussed the "truly hidden" variant.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I disagree. In theory he has enough power, but if you look at how the whole system works, you don't get to become a president if you aren't a) owing a lot of people favours, and b) a kind of person that would be disruptive. If you're the uncontrollable type that would pose the risk to the status quo, you won't be allowed to rise high enough to become a president.
- richardw 11y ago
  > the catastrophic career-ending political fallout from a major terrorist attack Any rational person would consider preventing a major terrorist attack far more important than keeping their job for four years. People with the opposite motivation do exist, but generally I'd consider them pretty close to evil. Someone like that would probably have had a different 2 terms to Obama, in my opinion.
  - makomk 11y ago
    It's not clear that these surveillance programs actually help stop terrorist attacks, just that if one did happen after Obama stopped them it'd be a career-ending move because it'd be perceived to be his fault.
  - irixusr 11y ago
    And if the system selects the non-rational power hungry by design? Elections are cutthroat, and to become president you have to have won many of them. It could be argued that an evil person has slightly better of odds of getting through. Raise that to the power of the half dozen elections needed to become president and you end up with Cheneys, Hilarys, and the like...
- bwindels 11y ago
  > The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs Why do you say it's hard to believe he doesn't agree with these programs?
- robin_reala 11y ago
  ‘left’ is a bit of a misnomer. With US politics it’s ‘extreme right’ and ‘a bit right of centre’.
- purpled_haze 11y ago
  > He chose the option that he thought would give him a second term (and then a gold plated public speaking career after the White House). Isn't it also possible that he chose the option he thought was right for the country? Of course, it isn't that clear cut and there were probably many other things weighing in, but I wouldn't discount it.
- irq-1 11y ago
  Obama publicly agreed with the data collection and voted to expand it before the election. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/obamas-wiretapping-flip-flop-yes/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/... > But recently the Senate again took up legislation that would let the phone companies off the hook. It would also expand the government's domestic spying powers. > Obama supported an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the measure. But after that amendment failed, Obama declined to filibuster the bill. In fact, he voted for it. It passed the Senate, 69-28, on July 9.
  - knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    I think the simple explanation here is this: Governments rely on information to function. When you get into a position of power and see the breadth and quality of information provided by digital means, you aren't going to be the one to push to turn that off. I'm talking about all data here of course, not just the NSA et. al. - weather, financial, trade data, so on. However, I think this is even closer to the truth when it comes to clandestine sources of data, since those are more often than not tightly coupled with security. The point being that all of this just makes logical sense given their (essentially impossible) mission of preventing all future terrorist attacks, whether or not you agree with it from an ethical perspective. It makes an argument against the NSA's methods difficult without hard evidence that threats to the country are either overinflated or could not possibly be stopped without surreptitious methods.
- canjobear 11y ago
  > The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, I thought the article was arguing that he in fact did agree with those programs so long as they had a sound legal basis. In criticizing the Bush surveillance programs, people complained that they were (i) bad and (ii) illegal. The article argues that Obama thought that once (ii) was fixed, his work was done.
- tsunamifury 11y ago
  There seems to be a massive flaw in this logic in that it could be used to justify almost anything. For example, it would be more important for President Obama to forcibly make a large portion of private industry to work on a super laser to defend against alien invasions, because alien invasions would cause more political fallout than not defending against them. This is the mental problem with forecasting black-swan events, then basing your strategy on the outsized risk of those events. You can end up justifying insane behavior due to an event you have convinced yourself will happen, even if the odds are infinitesimal.
fasdf3asdf 11y ago
The NSA is part of the executive branch. Obama controls the executive branch. Reining in NSA powers is effectively giving up some of his own powers, something that people rarely do. Most people do not walk away from power. George Washington and Cincinnatus were rare exceptions, and not at all the norm.
whoopdedo 11y ago
This lawyerly approach to government had some surprising consequences for civil libertarians To those who were unhappy with the overreach of the Bush administration, I would remind them that lawyers gave us the Dred Scott decision. It was an executive order that ended slavery in the United States.
yc1010 11y ago
There is another scary explanation, is that they have collected enough dirt on him and other politicians to become "untouchable"
- tempodox 11y ago
  Since the NSA increasingly knows everything about everyone, it is only a question of time until they will be able to blackmail just about anyone. How politicians, who are naturally especially vulnerable in that department, can let this cancer grow unchecked, is beyond me.
  - uptown 11y ago
    Perhaps you've answered your own question. If the NSA knows everything about those that might oppose it, how could compromised politicians possibly hope to succeed in reducing those powers, unless they were willing to become potential martyrs?
- junto 11y ago
  This is basically how the "whip" system works in British politics. There is an actual official post in the party called "Chief Whip". [1] In the original series "The House of Cards" from the BBC in the 1990's [2], Ian Richarson plays the chief whip. Whilst his primary role is officially supposed to be the formal request of party members to attend votes, he is busy collating secret dossiers on the various party member's dubious personal lives that (when required) can be used as leverage against them. The NSA bulk surveillance programs are this system in automatic overdrive. The enable the powerful (who control these systems) to abuse and corrupt democracy. The only "safeguards" being a secret court, with secret judgements by judges that can also be corrupted. I'll give the NSA and the US one thing. They appear to give (at least) lip service to the idea of privacy of American citizens. In the case of the UK, the government is desperate to monitor it's own citizens' internet activities first and foremost. What's sad is that the UK public have pretty much passed the point of no return. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Whip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Whip [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)
maguirre 11y ago
After reading the book: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. I truly believe that the president (and maybe more so this president) is simply a figure head. Being surrounded by people of strong character he's been unable to be a commander and instead became someone with nice rhetoric.
mkempe 11y ago
Or: Obama loves power. Total domestic surveillance at home and drone wars abroad are but two facets of the same Leviathan.
pinaceae 11y ago
which other elected leader of a western-style country has ended any kind of surveillance? realpolitik is far more messier than lofty moralism, the US never had a clean slate, ever. just like any other country. and for the posters bitching about the sham democracy in the US - right, but still people are dying in other countries to achieve just of a fraction of the freedom, safety and liberty present in the USofA. if elections changed anything they would be banned, right? which they ARE, in a lot of places on earth. as long as a president here is limited to two terms the systems works. erdogan, putin, see for other places where this core principle gets violated and what it does to the system.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
Glenn Greenwald did an interesting interview with Charlie Savage about the subject of this book: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/interview-with-charlie-savage/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/interview-with-charlie-s...
caseysoftware 11y ago
> An important meeting with Obama was scheduled to begin in the Situation Room at half past noon on Friday, February 6, 2009. Officials who had been asked to participate gathered around the conference table waiting to brief the new president. He was late > The officials were there to tell Obama about secret surveillance programs—including the fact that the National Security Agency was collecting Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk. Funny... that was about 3 years before he denied the Feds were collecting anything. And then corrected himself to admit they were collecting metadata.
jokoon 11y ago
I wonder if there are other similar "lawyerish" explanations for how obama dealt with wall street.
tn13 11y ago
When was the last time a politician said no to power ?

138 points by declan 11y ago

This reads like historical fiction. I can't imagine that Charlie Savage attended the meeting. But he says nothing about his source(s). Maybe the book does. Nevertheless, the style strikes me as odd.

gozo 11y ago

The New Yorker wrote the "must read" article on the subject two years ago: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/state-of-deception http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/state-of-decept... I remember it being really good, you should read it if you have the time.

atmosx 11y ago
That's a book not an article, but it is really good. The NY has really high quality content.

steve19 11y ago

The charitable explanation, which this article seems to imply, is that he suddenly discovers how important these programs are and how much is at stake. The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, is that he is just another politicians and the guaranteed political fallout from surveillance and drones was far less than the catastrophic career-ending political fallout from a major terrorist attack (after dismantling surveillance programs). He chose the option that he thought would give him a second term (and then a gold plated public speaking career after the White House). I would say his gambit paid off. The right would never love him, the left had no one else and in any case they had fallen so deeply in love with the Idea of him.

mjevans 11y ago
A more reasonable explanation is that irrespective of what he might /want/ to do, he doesn't actually have sufficient power to do anything about the actions, assuming he's actually being accurately briefed on the matter. It's probably more a symptom of how absolutely useless and ineffective at doing anything than consuming money to be elected for corporate interests the US congress has become. I think at this point I might actually be better served by having representatives and senators selected at /random/ from the entire populace.
- IIAOPSW 11y ago
  Wouldn't be the first time historically speaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
- acqq 11y ago
  > irrespective of what he might /want/ to do, he doesn't actually have sufficient power to do anything, assuming he's actually being accurately briefed on the matter. He definitely had enough power, but as steve19 points, he could have estimated that such actions would have probably lowered his chances for reelection.
  - deadfish 11y ago
    Why definitely? If it was truly hidden from him... then who is to say he has the power to stop it?
    - acqq 11y ago
      Note: "assuming he's actually being accurately briefed" so here nobody discussed the "truly hidden" variant.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I disagree. In theory he has enough power, but if you look at how the whole system works, you don't get to become a president if you aren't a) owing a lot of people favours, and b) a kind of person that would be disruptive. If you're the uncontrollable type that would pose the risk to the status quo, you won't be allowed to rise high enough to become a president.
richardw 11y ago
> the catastrophic career-ending political fallout from a major terrorist attack Any rational person would consider preventing a major terrorist attack far more important than keeping their job for four years. People with the opposite motivation do exist, but generally I'd consider them pretty close to evil. Someone like that would probably have had a different 2 terms to Obama, in my opinion.
- makomk 11y ago
  It's not clear that these surveillance programs actually help stop terrorist attacks, just that if one did happen after Obama stopped them it'd be a career-ending move because it'd be perceived to be his fault.
- irixusr 11y ago
  And if the system selects the non-rational power hungry by design? Elections are cutthroat, and to become president you have to have won many of them. It could be argued that an evil person has slightly better of odds of getting through. Raise that to the power of the half dozen elections needed to become president and you end up with Cheneys, Hilarys, and the like...
bwindels 11y ago
> The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs Why do you say it's hard to believe he doesn't agree with these programs?
robin_reala 11y ago
‘left’ is a bit of a misnomer. With US politics it’s ‘extreme right’ and ‘a bit right of centre’.
purpled_haze 11y ago
> He chose the option that he thought would give him a second term (and then a gold plated public speaking career after the White House). Isn't it also possible that he chose the option he thought was right for the country? Of course, it isn't that clear cut and there were probably many other things weighing in, but I wouldn't discount it.
irq-1 11y ago
Obama publicly agreed with the data collection and voted to expand it before the election. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/obamas-wiretapping-flip-flop-yes/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jul/14/... > But recently the Senate again took up legislation that would let the phone companies off the hook. It would also expand the government's domestic spying powers. > Obama supported an amendment that would have stripped telecom immunity from the measure. But after that amendment failed, Obama declined to filibuster the bill. In fact, he voted for it. It passed the Senate, 69-28, on July 9.
- knowaveragejoe 11y ago
  I think the simple explanation here is this: Governments rely on information to function. When you get into a position of power and see the breadth and quality of information provided by digital means, you aren't going to be the one to push to turn that off. I'm talking about all data here of course, not just the NSA et. al. - weather, financial, trade data, so on. However, I think this is even closer to the truth when it comes to clandestine sources of data, since those are more often than not tightly coupled with security. The point being that all of this just makes logical sense given their (essentially impossible) mission of preventing all future terrorist attacks, whether or not you agree with it from an ethical perspective. It makes an argument against the NSA's methods difficult without hard evidence that threats to the country are either overinflated or could not possibly be stopped without surreptitious methods.
canjobear 11y ago
> The less charitable explanation, since it's hard to believe he fundamentally agrees deep down with these programs, I thought the article was arguing that he in fact did agree with those programs so long as they had a sound legal basis. In criticizing the Bush surveillance programs, people complained that they were (i) bad and (ii) illegal. The article argues that Obama thought that once (ii) was fixed, his work was done.
tsunamifury 11y ago
There seems to be a massive flaw in this logic in that it could be used to justify almost anything. For example, it would be more important for President Obama to forcibly make a large portion of private industry to work on a super laser to defend against alien invasions, because alien invasions would cause more political fallout than not defending against them. This is the mental problem with forecasting black-swan events, then basing your strategy on the outsized risk of those events. You can end up justifying insane behavior due to an event you have convinced yourself will happen, even if the odds are infinitesimal.

fasdf3asdf 11y ago

The NSA is part of the executive branch. Obama controls the executive branch. Reining in NSA powers is effectively giving up some of his own powers, something that people rarely do. Most people do not walk away from power. George Washington and Cincinnatus were rare exceptions, and not at all the norm.

whoopdedo 11y ago

This lawyerly approach to government had some surprising consequences for civil libertarians To those who were unhappy with the overreach of the Bush administration, I would remind them that lawyers gave us the Dred Scott decision. It was an executive order that ended slavery in the United States.

yc1010 11y ago

There is another scary explanation, is that they have collected enough dirt on him and other politicians to become "untouchable"

tempodox 11y ago
Since the NSA increasingly knows everything about everyone, it is only a question of time until they will be able to blackmail just about anyone. How politicians, who are naturally especially vulnerable in that department, can let this cancer grow unchecked, is beyond me.
- uptown 11y ago
  Perhaps you've answered your own question. If the NSA knows everything about those that might oppose it, how could compromised politicians possibly hope to succeed in reducing those powers, unless they were willing to become potential martyrs?
junto 11y ago
This is basically how the "whip" system works in British politics. There is an actual official post in the party called "Chief Whip". [1] In the original series "The House of Cards" from the BBC in the 1990's [2], Ian Richarson plays the chief whip. Whilst his primary role is officially supposed to be the formal request of party members to attend votes, he is busy collating secret dossiers on the various party member's dubious personal lives that (when required) can be used as leverage against them. The NSA bulk surveillance programs are this system in automatic overdrive. The enable the powerful (who control these systems) to abuse and corrupt democracy. The only "safeguards" being a secret court, with secret judgements by judges that can also be corrupted. I'll give the NSA and the US one thing. They appear to give (at least) lip service to the idea of privacy of American citizens. In the case of the UK, the government is desperate to monitor it's own citizens' internet activities first and foremost. What's sad is that the UK public have pretty much passed the point of no return. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Whip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Whip [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)

maguirre 11y ago

After reading the book: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. I truly believe that the president (and maybe more so this president) is simply a figure head. Being surrounded by people of strong character he's been unable to be a commander and instead became someone with nice rhetoric.

mkempe 11y ago

Or: Obama loves power. Total domestic surveillance at home and drone wars abroad are but two facets of the same Leviathan.

pinaceae 11y ago

which other elected leader of a western-style country has ended any kind of surveillance? realpolitik is far more messier than lofty moralism, the US never had a clean slate, ever. just like any other country. and for the posters bitching about the sham democracy in the US - right, but still people are dying in other countries to achieve just of a fraction of the freedom, safety and liberty present in the USofA. if elections changed anything they would be banned, right? which they ARE, in a lot of places on earth. as long as a president here is limited to two terms the systems works. erdogan, putin, see for other places where this core principle gets violated and what it does to the system.

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

Glenn Greenwald did an interesting interview with Charlie Savage about the subject of this book: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/interview-with-charlie-savage/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/interview-with-charlie-s...

caseysoftware 11y ago

> An important meeting with Obama was scheduled to begin in the Situation Room at half past noon on Friday, February 6, 2009. Officials who had been asked to participate gathered around the conference table waiting to brief the new president. He was late > The officials were there to tell Obama about secret surveillance programs—including the fact that the National Security Agency was collecting Americans’ domestic phone records in bulk. Funny... that was about 3 years before he denied the Feds were collecting anything. And then corrected himself to admit they were collecting metadata.

jokoon 11y ago

I wonder if there are other similar "lawyerish" explanations for how obama dealt with wall street.

tn13 11y ago

When was the last time a politician said no to power ?