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The president is wrong: The NSA debate wouldn’t have happened without Snowden

427 points by Libertatea 13y ago

dfgdbdfbfdg 13y ago
The headline should be "The president is lying" but that would upset the readers and the sponsors. So lets just say he is "wrong", just like the NSA is just "wrong" about not collecting data on everybody.
- northwest 13y ago
  He had the "balls" to say on TV something to the tune of "the US doesn't have a spying program at home". That should be enough for everybody to understand even Mr Hope-and-Change is lying now.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- bengrunfeld 13y ago
  Just remember that the author knows the NSA is watching him, and if he goes too far (i.e. by outright saying that they or the president is lying), he might become a risk to national security. In this country, the people do not have the right to criticize the government, you know? ;)
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    So we should prefer self-censorship that strengthens the position of the totalitarian elements in the US government and leads to further erosion of constitutional rights? There's no progress and no remedy for the current situation if people continue to act "reasonably" (Snowden didn't and we made progress).
    - bengrunfeld 13y ago
      Sarcasm, lazyjones. I was being sarcastic. I dream of a world where you can say what you want without getting persecuted for it, not the world represented in the following video: "DOJ justifies searching Associated Press phone records" http://youtu.be/5CguKdc21AU http://youtu.be/5CguKdc21AU
Sauer_Kraut 13y ago
It would happen at the same time as the closing of Guantanamo Bay, I imagine.
- madaxe 13y ago
  Yes, simultaneously with the end of drone strikes. All of these things ended in '08, when he was elected, remember, just like he promised.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    He never promised to end drone strikes. In fact I believe he emphasized drone strikes even then in order to shift away from American "boots on ground" and the then-current policy of using JDAM bomb strikes (which are even more dangerous w.r.t. collateral damage).
    - madaxe 13y ago
      You're quite right, actually - he didn't promise anything about drones - as at that point they didn't officially exist, most likely.
jacquesm 13y ago
Obama has his own reality distortion field. In time Snowden will enter the history books for what he did, Obama not so much. Maybe only to serve as a reminder that the Nobel peace prize lost its prestige. Part of this is that Snowden did a service to everybody on the planet (including Obama) and Obama serves a limited set of interests.
- corin_ 13y ago
  Let's not exaggerate and say that Obama won't be entering the history books for what he's done. Love him or hate him, he's a US president, he's in the history books even if he never gets out of bed for his entire term.
  - TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
    in the US history books.
    - scotth 13y ago
      Why wouldn't he be in all in them? Is there a size limit?
      - jacquesm 13y ago
        History books tend to remember things of note. Obama is more of a footnote. Honestly, not a single thing of world class importance stands out. Capturing Bin Laden, maybe.
        ippisl 13y ago
        And possibly that healthcare thing, depending on how it will turn out ?
        ajuc 13y ago
        What do you know about social policies of the biggest empires from a few centuries ago? Such stuff is lost in noise after a few centuries, only people from the country where it happened learn about it, often not even that.
nwh 13y ago
Especially as a foreigner, it's pretty clear that there's no end to any of this. Even if it is claimed that spying has stopped, there's almost no chance that anything will actually change. You're talking about an organisation that has it's own interpretation of the rules, has nobody to pull them up on what they do wrong, and for all intents is invisible to the public. If a public court "shuts them down", it's just a facade to keep the media at bay. If their president is lying to them on simple facts that get refuted by a whistle browser at the next available moment, there's no telling what else goes on behind closed and private doors.
- northwest 13y ago
  Also, rest assured that the US government will continue to put enough pressure on foreign/European governments to continue mass surveillance on their behalf. If there is no fundamental structural change in the US, the Western World will remain a surveillance society and the current degree of democracy will be so much weakened that the term "democracy" will need to be "redefined".
  - madaxe 13y ago
    Representative democracy is the rule of more equal people over the less equal.
    - akbar501 13y ago
      Love the quote. Nice adaptation. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".
alan_cx 13y ago
Obama said that? Shame on him. He doesn't even need re-election. I was so happy for the US and world in general when Obama was elected. This man has become the world biggest disappointment. Americans appear love world records and things that go down as "historic". Well chaps, you have another one. This man is worse than George W Bush. Bush was clearly what he was. We all knew what we were getting, and could rely on it. Obama is a lie in a suit. He makes the US look like a national and international lie. Maybe it is.
- perlpimp 13y ago
  Never trust a politician, never talk to the police.
- madaxe 13y ago
  He also categorically denied that any warrantless searches were/are being performed - which is also a flat lie, and explicitly refuted by the Guardian's piece a few hours before his bullshit session.
- vermontdevil 13y ago
  Jeez have we forgotten what Bush had done? Iraq anyone? And no I'm not saying Obama is doing hecka of a job. But let's not forget the serious damage Bush did. Not to mention all this NSA stuff too under Bush.
  - madaxe 13y ago
    Frankly, both Bush and Obama are patsies for the system, which at this point is a fully fledged self-sustaining kafakesque bureaucracy. It's easy to personify and be angry with a person, less easy to be angry with an abstract clusterfuck of human interaction and behaviour gone horribly wrong, systemised, and enshrined in transgenerational tradition.
  - tinco 13y ago
    No one cares about Bush anymore, you're being rather irrelevant.
dotcoma 13y ago
Of course he's wrong. He's looking more and more like Nixon...
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
This is beginning to have the feel of a watergate - the press can sense blood in the water - senior administration figures have outright lied, in public, and been found out. That usually leads to a resignation - but now there are bigger fish to hunt. Shutting down the program will no longer be enough - there is an impeachment in the offing. What will be enough to call off the dogs? Edit: I often let my cynical side overrule me - and happily claim "they" will always continue doing shady and disreputable things. But the reason "they" can is that "we" do not stand up and shout loudly enough and so build the laws to prevent them. It seems an ownership change has not hurt WaPo, for which I am glad.
akbar501 13y ago
(Copy and Pasted from) Obama's Ethics Agenda (2008)...in his own words. Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
- graycat 13y ago
  Yup, he said (wrote, had his staff publish, whatever) that. It sounded good, didn't it? Yup, it sounded good. So, in part with such things he got elected. Now, guess what, he isn't following what he said. We have to guess that maybe what he said was a deliberate lie. But it appears so far that he has 'read' the voters correctly: People will vote based on such promises but then, later, during the term of office, nearly completely forget about such promises. Uh, maybe Obama would have a better memory if more voters did! One reason in the past to forget was that, for tens of millions of voters, it was a bit clumsy to clip the original statement from a newspaper, file it, and then find it later. And, even if did find it, tough to do anything with it, e.g., get enough publicity about it to cause the politician start to make good on the promise. Of course now we have easy ways to find all such promises and publicize, if only on blogs and fora, that a promise is not being followed. But, apparently, still nearly all the voters are like they used to be and not really paying attention. If a voter was wise, then during the election they likely assumed that nearly everything the candidates said were lies, only had two candidates to vote for, picked one, but never expected that the winner would honor the promises. Net, really, especially now with the Internet, what government we get is up to the voters; when 60% of the voters are up on their hind legs yelling and screaming about the government tracking mud over the Fourth Amendment, then we will get some big changes quickly. The good news is that all we need is the 60%. The bad news is that getting the 60% on a 'technical' or 'detailed' issue that does not yet directly affect the daily lives of the citizens is tough to do. An old remark is that in a democracy the voters get the government they deserve. So far, by making promises that are lies and then forgetting about the promises, Obama is just giving the voters what in effect they want. That's part of why he won election twice.
mtgx 13y ago
Obama is not wrong. He's just lying. Who actually believes he would've started any kind of reforms without this, when he commanded over this program for five years? Not to mention that none of these "reforms" seem too serious anyway. The only reform that is needed is to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. Then we can start the debate from scratch, rather than trying to win inches in this debate from the privacy point of view.
- indymike 13y ago
  Wrong by choice is still wrong.
Terretta 13y ago
The president is both wrong and not wrong. He's saying things that are both true and not true, or true and beside the point. For example, "No domestic spying program" may be 100% true. It's a foreign spying program that's devouring domestic data because of where the data is tapped and how data flows, then having the data shared domestically outside the program. Any time government officials are commenting here, the adjectives and adverbs -- okay, even verbs and nouns -- are being used as qualifiers to eke out a "technically true but in a practical sense false" statement. In another example, when he says "nobody's reading your emails" that's true for all but a handful of his listeners. For the rest of us, an algorithm may be parsing, but "nobody" as in no human, is "reading" as in with her eyeballs, until the emails are flagged live for review or "collected" (read with eyeballs, according to Clapper) later. It's a shame dialectic isn't a popular school subject any more. The TL;DR crowd doesn't stand a chance against this kind of nuance. These pronouncements and these nebulously defined NSA behaviors are like Schrödinger's cats. We need Snowdens to help us observe and collapse their states.
- madaxe 13y ago
  The word you're after is doublespeak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
  - wpietri 13y ago
    I'm also ok with "lie". These sorts of "I can pretend it's not a lie" lies are still lies. Words were said with the intent to deceive. That they are spoken by skillful and practiced liars just makes them bigger assholes, more deserving of condemnation.
- ankitml 13y ago
  Schorodinger's cat should be alive and dead at the same time. Here it is more like a dead cat appearing to be living. What obama is saying is pure lie, but may appear truth for non-rigorous people
general_failure 13y ago
Agree. Snowden's the only reason why people, politicians and the president are talking about this.
chrisvineup 13y ago
Yeah at some point in history, maybe. Its easy to say that after being caught with your dick in my inbox.
bambax 13y ago
For me, Obama has become inaudible; I don't care anymore about what he says. I'm more interested in his actions; among these we find (by decreasing order of importance): - use of drones to indiscriminately kill civilians, "suspected terrorists" or their children (cf. the murder of 16 years old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki) - the detention, and ruthless and aggressive prosecution of Bradley Manning - force-feeding Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike, depriving them of even the right to end their own life I'm not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn't matter; but he must have set some kind of record in the amount of goodwill he was able to destroy during his time in office.
- icelancer 13y ago
  >I'm not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn't matter.... I am a US citizen and my opinion matters as much as yours does.
  - Zirro 13y ago
    US citizens have the ability to express their opinion on him through votes. That said, I am not sure the alternative would be much better. I believe the American people would benefit greatly from having more than two viable alternatives when they vote, as the two current alternatives have similar opinions in many questions.
    - jessriedel 13y ago
      He's term limited. He can't run again.
    - aylons 13y ago
      The only way this could happen is if US voting system for presidency changed to a direct, 2-turn election. This way, someone could vote for a third option knowing that it won't help the opposing party.
      - tankenmate 13y ago
graycat 13y ago
Obama is just saying some things, little things to defuse the situation until it is out of the headlines. The article explains that what Obama said the effect Snowden had isn't true, but since Obama is only trying to defuse the situation before the vast majority of voters who are not paying much attention, that what he said is not true seems not to matter much. And for reminding voters in the future that what Obama said here is not true also seems will not matter much to the vast majority of voters. I'm concluding that the political process, i.e., involving Obama and Congress, will consist of a lot of pushing to save the Fourth Amendment, etc. from the small minority of voters who care a lot, a little movement by the politicians, the issue out of the headlines, and then no more movement by the politicians. So, for saving the Constitution, I'm counting on legal cases going to the SCOTUS and the SCOTUS defending the Fourth Amendment, etc.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> "My preference, and I think the American peoples’ preferences would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws." Yes, and you had the time to bring that to the fore. I recall one of the rationales Snowden offered for not acting sooner was that he was holding off to see whether you did anything about them via that more orderly process. I wonder how much faith in the political process, especially among young people, Obama's managed to burn.
mercurial 13y ago
It's funny to think of how Clinton was hounded for lying under oath about a blowjob, and how the US Congress seems to be asleep at the wheel (or complicit) in this case. At least, that's the impression from abroad.
- nhangen 13y ago
  Congress has been investigating, but has been denied access to evidence because it is classified.
  - swombat 13y ago
    Isn't that grounds to impeach the president? Getting in the way of a congressional investigation?
  - rietta 13y ago
    I am really rather certain there are members of Congress, perhaps members of the Intelligence Oversight Committee even, that can get at anything they want. Sadly, that they are not pushing harder tells that they agree with the actions of the administration.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Uh, Congress has access to classified information. They receive classified briefings all the time from agencies in the Executive Branch.
    - nhangen 13y ago
      http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress-nsa-denied-access http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congres...
merraksh 13y ago
When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected. Well, doesn't that answer automatically imply that a very large percentage of the population was watched? Otherwise, if the number were, say, 1%, the mere number would not have violated anyone's privacy.
tbatterii 13y ago
> “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” the president said was?
ajuc 13y ago
Does USA have a way to change president mid-term if enough people sign for that?
- rietta 13y ago
  Yes, it's called an Impeachment. According to the Constitution it can only be for an high crimes and misdemeanors. The Congress then holds a trial and if convicted the President is removed from office. Then the next in succession becomes President until the next election. Basically, it's not going to happen over this. Remember, Congress agrees with the actions of the government more or less. To more directly answer your question. There is no popular recall mechanism. The closest would be if there was enough public outcry to their congressional representatives that Congress began to move against the President. The bar is really, really high on this. It's not going to happen.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Of course that would leave us with Joe Biden. Which is probably why Obama picked him.
eyeareque 13y ago
I was very happy Obama was re-elected.. So much for that. But at least now I've realized I need to start voting independent. Our two party system is a failure. We lose when your voting choices are "bad" or "worse".
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  Even if the US escapes from the two party local maximum, it'd probably land in a three party local maximum like many modern democracies (Germany is a good example). Then, a middle-ground party works with the election winner to maintain government stability. It is not a much better model. The conclusion we are reaching is that representative democracy has very serious limits. Voting for the whole ideologic package does not allow my voice to be heard on stuff that: a) I really care about, or b) I really know inside and out. I'd prefer to relinquish my opinion on some stuff (agricultural policy, for example), and really be heard on other matters (there's absolutely no excuse for torture).
  - angersock 13y ago
    Here, I'll take it one step further. In this day and age, especially with such a strong emphasis on advertising and consumerism, the people governed on the whole do not deserve a say in how things are done. We had a thread not a day ago where mass numbers of HN folks earnestly pleaded that we couldn't reasonably expect normal people to learn to use computers beyond knowing how to app store a thing, how to socializeauth their twitterscapes--people who routinely bemoan how bad politicians are on tech policy issues. Fuck it. If we want to progress as a race, we need to stop pretending that the 'common man' ought to have a say in long-term priorities, or in how we should govern their fellow citizens.
    - ams6110 13y ago
      I think you've got it exactly backwards. We need to rely much more on the "common man" being able to take care of his own day-to-day needs, and take the attitude that the government is what is harmful, incompetent, corrupt, and does not deserve a say in how many things are done.
bengrunfeld 13y ago
According to Snowden's slides, PRISM began to receive information from Microsoft in 2007. So now in... wait for it.. 2013, Obama was juuust about to start looking into what those crafty NSA people were doing?? The amount of stupid here is Unbearable!!
andyl 13y ago
Since Bezos took over, this is the first WaPost article I've taken notice of. Great article - I'm encouraged.
justplay 13y ago
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg tweeted my wikileaks.
zeteo 13y ago
Well, arguably everything he said in yesterday's news conference was at best questionable (and at worst deceitful). But I'm still glad he said it. The fact that he had to address these issues publicly, and in a manner that's effectively "oh yeah, I would have revised those programs anyway" (rather than some senators' "the programs are essential! don't listen to the traitors") is greatly encouraging; the system may not yet be beyond redemption. Are his measures palliatives rather than cures? Very likely. And he's still hiding behind concocted phrases designed to "reassure the people". But the moment can nonetheless be savored as a promising victory for the digital civil rights movement.
walshemj 13y ago
newspaper blows own trumpet - film at 11.
dllthomas 13y ago
Even accepting on its face the notion that Obama was preparing to look at reforms, how does that make what Snowden did less patriotic? I don't think anybody but Obama knew that he was preparing to look at reforms, and after 6 years of an Obama presidency where things were just getting more spy-happy how was Snowden supposed to assume anything but more of the same? According to Obama, Snowden and Obama agreed that the programs needed change, and they both chose to do something about it.
eagsalazar2 13y ago
The president is not wrong. The president is lying. Big difference.

427 points by Libertatea 13y ago

The headline should be "The president is lying" but that would upset the readers and the sponsors. So lets just say he is "wrong", just like the NSA is just "wrong" about not collecting data on everybody.

northwest 13y ago
He had the "balls" to say on TV something to the tune of "the US doesn't have a spying program at home". That should be enough for everybody to understand even Mr Hope-and-Change is lying now.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
bengrunfeld 13y ago
Just remember that the author knows the NSA is watching him, and if he goes too far (i.e. by outright saying that they or the president is lying), he might become a risk to national security. In this country, the people do not have the right to criticize the government, you know? ;)
- lazyjones 13y ago
  So we should prefer self-censorship that strengthens the position of the totalitarian elements in the US government and leads to further erosion of constitutional rights? There's no progress and no remedy for the current situation if people continue to act "reasonably" (Snowden didn't and we made progress).
  - bengrunfeld 13y ago
    Sarcasm, lazyjones. I was being sarcastic. I dream of a world where you can say what you want without getting persecuted for it, not the world represented in the following video: "DOJ justifies searching Associated Press phone records" http://youtu.be/5CguKdc21AU http://youtu.be/5CguKdc21AU

Sauer_Kraut 13y ago

It would happen at the same time as the closing of Guantanamo Bay, I imagine.

madaxe 13y ago
Yes, simultaneously with the end of drone strikes. All of these things ended in '08, when he was elected, remember, just like he promised.
- mpyne 13y ago
  He never promised to end drone strikes. In fact I believe he emphasized drone strikes even then in order to shift away from American "boots on ground" and the then-current policy of using JDAM bomb strikes (which are even more dangerous w.r.t. collateral damage).
  - madaxe 13y ago
    You're quite right, actually - he didn't promise anything about drones - as at that point they didn't officially exist, most likely.

jacquesm 13y ago

Obama has his own reality distortion field. In time Snowden will enter the history books for what he did, Obama not so much. Maybe only to serve as a reminder that the Nobel peace prize lost its prestige. Part of this is that Snowden did a service to everybody on the planet (including Obama) and Obama serves a limited set of interests.

corin_ 13y ago
Let's not exaggerate and say that Obama won't be entering the history books for what he's done. Love him or hate him, he's a US president, he's in the history books even if he never gets out of bed for his entire term.
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y ago
  in the US history books.
  - scotth 13y ago
    Why wouldn't he be in all in them? Is there a size limit?
    - jacquesm 13y ago
      History books tend to remember things of note. Obama is more of a footnote. Honestly, not a single thing of world class importance stands out. Capturing Bin Laden, maybe.
      - ippisl 13y ago
        And possibly that healthcare thing, depending on how it will turn out ?
        ajuc 13y ago
        What do you know about social policies of the biggest empires from a few centuries ago? Such stuff is lost in noise after a few centuries, only people from the country where it happened learn about it, often not even that.

nwh 13y ago

Especially as a foreigner, it's pretty clear that there's no end to any of this. Even if it is claimed that spying has stopped, there's almost no chance that anything will actually change. You're talking about an organisation that has it's own interpretation of the rules, has nobody to pull them up on what they do wrong, and for all intents is invisible to the public. If a public court "shuts them down", it's just a facade to keep the media at bay. If their president is lying to them on simple facts that get refuted by a whistle browser at the next available moment, there's no telling what else goes on behind closed and private doors.

northwest 13y ago
Also, rest assured that the US government will continue to put enough pressure on foreign/European governments to continue mass surveillance on their behalf. If there is no fundamental structural change in the US, the Western World will remain a surveillance society and the current degree of democracy will be so much weakened that the term "democracy" will need to be "redefined".
- madaxe 13y ago
  Representative democracy is the rule of more equal people over the less equal.
  - akbar501 13y ago
    Love the quote. Nice adaptation. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".

alan_cx 13y ago

Obama said that? Shame on him. He doesn't even need re-election. I was so happy for the US and world in general when Obama was elected. This man has become the world biggest disappointment. Americans appear love world records and things that go down as "historic". Well chaps, you have another one. This man is worse than George W Bush. Bush was clearly what he was. We all knew what we were getting, and could rely on it. Obama is a lie in a suit. He makes the US look like a national and international lie. Maybe it is.

perlpimp 13y ago
Never trust a politician, never talk to the police.
madaxe 13y ago
He also categorically denied that any warrantless searches were/are being performed - which is also a flat lie, and explicitly refuted by the Guardian's piece a few hours before his bullshit session.
vermontdevil 13y ago
Jeez have we forgotten what Bush had done? Iraq anyone? And no I'm not saying Obama is doing hecka of a job. But let's not forget the serious damage Bush did. Not to mention all this NSA stuff too under Bush.
- madaxe 13y ago
  Frankly, both Bush and Obama are patsies for the system, which at this point is a fully fledged self-sustaining kafakesque bureaucracy. It's easy to personify and be angry with a person, less easy to be angry with an abstract clusterfuck of human interaction and behaviour gone horribly wrong, systemised, and enshrined in transgenerational tradition.
- tinco 13y ago
  No one cares about Bush anymore, you're being rather irrelevant.

dotcoma 13y ago

Of course he's wrong. He's looking more and more like Nixon...

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

This is beginning to have the feel of a watergate - the press can sense blood in the water - senior administration figures have outright lied, in public, and been found out. That usually leads to a resignation - but now there are bigger fish to hunt. Shutting down the program will no longer be enough - there is an impeachment in the offing. What will be enough to call off the dogs? Edit: I often let my cynical side overrule me - and happily claim "they" will always continue doing shady and disreputable things. But the reason "they" can is that "we" do not stand up and shout loudly enough and so build the laws to prevent them. It seems an ownership change has not hurt WaPo, for which I am glad.

akbar501 13y ago

(Copy and Pasted from) Obama's Ethics Agenda (2008)...in his own words. Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

graycat 13y ago
Yup, he said (wrote, had his staff publish, whatever) that. It sounded good, didn't it? Yup, it sounded good. So, in part with such things he got elected. Now, guess what, he isn't following what he said. We have to guess that maybe what he said was a deliberate lie. But it appears so far that he has 'read' the voters correctly: People will vote based on such promises but then, later, during the term of office, nearly completely forget about such promises. Uh, maybe Obama would have a better memory if more voters did! One reason in the past to forget was that, for tens of millions of voters, it was a bit clumsy to clip the original statement from a newspaper, file it, and then find it later. And, even if did find it, tough to do anything with it, e.g., get enough publicity about it to cause the politician start to make good on the promise. Of course now we have easy ways to find all such promises and publicize, if only on blogs and fora, that a promise is not being followed. But, apparently, still nearly all the voters are like they used to be and not really paying attention. If a voter was wise, then during the election they likely assumed that nearly everything the candidates said were lies, only had two candidates to vote for, picked one, but never expected that the winner would honor the promises. Net, really, especially now with the Internet, what government we get is up to the voters; when 60% of the voters are up on their hind legs yelling and screaming about the government tracking mud over the Fourth Amendment, then we will get some big changes quickly. The good news is that all we need is the 60%. The bad news is that getting the 60% on a 'technical' or 'detailed' issue that does not yet directly affect the daily lives of the citizens is tough to do. An old remark is that in a democracy the voters get the government they deserve. So far, by making promises that are lies and then forgetting about the promises, Obama is just giving the voters what in effect they want. That's part of why he won election twice.

mtgx 13y ago

Obama is not wrong. He's just lying. Who actually believes he would've started any kind of reforms without this, when he commanded over this program for five years? Not to mention that none of these "reforms" seem too serious anyway. The only reform that is needed is to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act. Then we can start the debate from scratch, rather than trying to win inches in this debate from the privacy point of view.

indymike 13y ago
Wrong by choice is still wrong.

Terretta 13y ago

The president is both wrong and not wrong. He's saying things that are both true and not true, or true and beside the point. For example, "No domestic spying program" may be 100% true. It's a foreign spying program that's devouring domestic data because of where the data is tapped and how data flows, then having the data shared domestically outside the program. Any time government officials are commenting here, the adjectives and adverbs -- okay, even verbs and nouns -- are being used as qualifiers to eke out a "technically true but in a practical sense false" statement. In another example, when he says "nobody's reading your emails" that's true for all but a handful of his listeners. For the rest of us, an algorithm may be parsing, but "nobody" as in no human, is "reading" as in with her eyeballs, until the emails are flagged live for review or "collected" (read with eyeballs, according to Clapper) later. It's a shame dialectic isn't a popular school subject any more. The TL;DR crowd doesn't stand a chance against this kind of nuance. These pronouncements and these nebulously defined NSA behaviors are like Schrödinger's cats. We need Snowdens to help us observe and collapse their states.

madaxe 13y ago
The word you're after is doublespeak. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
- wpietri 13y ago
  I'm also ok with "lie". These sorts of "I can pretend it's not a lie" lies are still lies. Words were said with the intent to deceive. That they are spoken by skillful and practiced liars just makes them bigger assholes, more deserving of condemnation.
ankitml 13y ago
Schorodinger's cat should be alive and dead at the same time. Here it is more like a dead cat appearing to be living. What obama is saying is pure lie, but may appear truth for non-rigorous people

general_failure 13y ago

Agree. Snowden's the only reason why people, politicians and the president are talking about this.

chrisvineup 13y ago

Yeah at some point in history, maybe. Its easy to say that after being caught with your dick in my inbox.

bambax 13y ago

For me, Obama has become inaudible; I don't care anymore about what he says. I'm more interested in his actions; among these we find (by decreasing order of importance): - use of drones to indiscriminately kill civilians, "suspected terrorists" or their children (cf. the murder of 16 years old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki) - the detention, and ruthless and aggressive prosecution of Bradley Manning - force-feeding Guantanamo detainees on hunger strike, depriving them of even the right to end their own life I'm not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn't matter; but he must have set some kind of record in the amount of goodwill he was able to destroy during his time in office.

icelancer 13y ago
>I'm not a US citizen, so what I think about Obama really doesn't matter.... I am a US citizen and my opinion matters as much as yours does.
- Zirro 13y ago
  US citizens have the ability to express their opinion on him through votes. That said, I am not sure the alternative would be much better. I believe the American people would benefit greatly from having more than two viable alternatives when they vote, as the two current alternatives have similar opinions in many questions.
  - jessriedel 13y ago
    He's term limited. He can't run again.
  - aylons 13y ago
    The only way this could happen is if US voting system for presidency changed to a direct, 2-turn election. This way, someone could vote for a third option knowing that it won't help the opposing party.
    - tankenmate 13y ago

graycat 13y ago

Obama is just saying some things, little things to defuse the situation until it is out of the headlines. The article explains that what Obama said the effect Snowden had isn't true, but since Obama is only trying to defuse the situation before the vast majority of voters who are not paying much attention, that what he said is not true seems not to matter much. And for reminding voters in the future that what Obama said here is not true also seems will not matter much to the vast majority of voters. I'm concluding that the political process, i.e., involving Obama and Congress, will consist of a lot of pushing to save the Fourth Amendment, etc. from the small minority of voters who care a lot, a little movement by the politicians, the issue out of the headlines, and then no more movement by the politicians. So, for saving the Constitution, I'm counting on legal cases going to the SCOTUS and the SCOTUS defending the Fourth Amendment, etc.

6d0debc071 13y ago

> "My preference, and I think the American peoples’ preferences would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws." Yes, and you had the time to bring that to the fore. I recall one of the rationales Snowden offered for not acting sooner was that he was holding off to see whether you did anything about them via that more orderly process. I wonder how much faith in the political process, especially among young people, Obama's managed to burn.

mercurial 13y ago

It's funny to think of how Clinton was hounded for lying under oath about a blowjob, and how the US Congress seems to be asleep at the wheel (or complicit) in this case. At least, that's the impression from abroad.

nhangen 13y ago
Congress has been investigating, but has been denied access to evidence because it is classified.
- swombat 13y ago
  Isn't that grounds to impeach the president? Getting in the way of a congressional investigation?
- rietta 13y ago
  I am really rather certain there are members of Congress, perhaps members of the Intelligence Oversight Committee even, that can get at anything they want. Sadly, that they are not pushing harder tells that they agree with the actions of the administration.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Uh, Congress has access to classified information. They receive classified briefings all the time from agencies in the Executive Branch.
  - nhangen 13y ago
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congress-nsa-denied-access http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/04/congres...

merraksh 13y ago

When Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, the agency refused to give the senator any information, arguing that doing so would violate the privacy of those whose information was collected. Well, doesn't that answer automatically imply that a very large percentage of the population was watched? Otherwise, if the number were, say, 1%, the mere number would not have violated anyone's privacy.

tbatterii 13y ago

> “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” the president said was?

ajuc 13y ago

Does USA have a way to change president mid-term if enough people sign for that?

rietta 13y ago
Yes, it's called an Impeachment. According to the Constitution it can only be for an high crimes and misdemeanors. The Congress then holds a trial and if convicted the President is removed from office. Then the next in succession becomes President until the next election. Basically, it's not going to happen over this. Remember, Congress agrees with the actions of the government more or less. To more directly answer your question. There is no popular recall mechanism. The closest would be if there was enough public outcry to their congressional representatives that Congress began to move against the President. The bar is really, really high on this. It's not going to happen.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Of course that would leave us with Joe Biden. Which is probably why Obama picked him.

eyeareque 13y ago

I was very happy Obama was re-elected.. So much for that. But at least now I've realized I need to start voting independent. Our two party system is a failure. We lose when your voting choices are "bad" or "worse".

sergiosgc 13y ago
Even if the US escapes from the two party local maximum, it'd probably land in a three party local maximum like many modern democracies (Germany is a good example). Then, a middle-ground party works with the election winner to maintain government stability. It is not a much better model. The conclusion we are reaching is that representative democracy has very serious limits. Voting for the whole ideologic package does not allow my voice to be heard on stuff that: a) I really care about, or b) I really know inside and out. I'd prefer to relinquish my opinion on some stuff (agricultural policy, for example), and really be heard on other matters (there's absolutely no excuse for torture).
- angersock 13y ago
  Here, I'll take it one step further. In this day and age, especially with such a strong emphasis on advertising and consumerism, the people governed on the whole do not deserve a say in how things are done. We had a thread not a day ago where mass numbers of HN folks earnestly pleaded that we couldn't reasonably expect normal people to learn to use computers beyond knowing how to app store a thing, how to socializeauth their twitterscapes--people who routinely bemoan how bad politicians are on tech policy issues. Fuck it. If we want to progress as a race, we need to stop pretending that the 'common man' ought to have a say in long-term priorities, or in how we should govern their fellow citizens.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    I think you've got it exactly backwards. We need to rely much more on the "common man" being able to take care of his own day-to-day needs, and take the attitude that the government is what is harmful, incompetent, corrupt, and does not deserve a say in how many things are done.

bengrunfeld 13y ago

According to Snowden's slides, PRISM began to receive information from Microsoft in 2007. So now in... wait for it.. 2013, Obama was juuust about to start looking into what those crafty NSA people were doing?? The amount of stupid here is Unbearable!!

andyl 13y ago

Since Bezos took over, this is the first WaPost article I've taken notice of. Great article - I'm encouraged.

justplay 13y ago

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BPGk0PXCUAANwGP.jpg tweeted my wikileaks.

zeteo 13y ago

Well, arguably everything he said in yesterday's news conference was at best questionable (and at worst deceitful). But I'm still glad he said it. The fact that he had to address these issues publicly, and in a manner that's effectively "oh yeah, I would have revised those programs anyway" (rather than some senators' "the programs are essential! don't listen to the traitors") is greatly encouraging; the system may not yet be beyond redemption. Are his measures palliatives rather than cures? Very likely. And he's still hiding behind concocted phrases designed to "reassure the people". But the moment can nonetheless be savored as a promising victory for the digital civil rights movement.

walshemj 13y ago

newspaper blows own trumpet - film at 11.

dllthomas 13y ago

Even accepting on its face the notion that Obama was preparing to look at reforms, how does that make what Snowden did less patriotic? I don't think anybody but Obama knew that he was preparing to look at reforms, and after 6 years of an Obama presidency where things were just getting more spy-happy how was Snowden supposed to assume anything but more of the same? According to Obama, Snowden and Obama agreed that the programs needed change, and they both chose to do something about it.

eagsalazar2 13y ago

The president is not wrong. The president is lying. Big difference.