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Obama’s Path From Critic to Overseer of Spying

249 points by mjstahl 13y ago

coob 13y ago
What is it, do you think, that causes former critics of spying to become 'overseers'? The Presidency is limited to two terms, so it's not like it's being used to weild power. Are there honest intentions related to safety, or is it all about money/lobbying?
- Skalman 13y ago
  Was he ever that critical? From the article: > Mr. Obama was a sponsor of a bill in 2005 to raise the standard required for federal agents using ... national security letters ... He joined other Democrats fighting the renewal of the Patriot Act until it was amended to address civil liberties concerns, then voted for its extension in 2006 after a compromise, breaking with Mr. Wyden who voted no. > “The rhetoric was probably sharper than his votes.” By summer 2008, with the Democratic nomination secured and the White House now a real possibility, Mr. Obama voted for legislation essentially ratifying Mr. Bush’s surveillance programs.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  When you are the head of (one branch of) the government and you know that people will blame you foremost for any attacks or intelligence failures, I think almost anyone would tend to see these types of powers and programs differently than when they were merely one of 100 senators.
- rrggrr 13y ago
  Perhaps it's about supporting the people who have to collect and analyze Intel in the face of withering public criticism. The rank and file are skilled and intelligent and can find work elsewhere. If the President doesn't defend the value of their work then many will bail. He may still be a vocal critic behind the scenes.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  The Federal government is a byzantine web of regulation, conflicting rules, agendas and actions. Big programs have tentacles so intertwined into things, it's difficult/impossible to unwind and even figure out what they are doing. Think of it from the President's perspective -- getting someone whom he trusts in a position to actually know anything about the programs probably takes a year. Say you have someone on top whom you trust and the President says "dismantle X program". The bureaucracy is awesome and effective at slowing things down. Keeping up the pressure to do something that the bureaucrats don't want requires alot of energy. And with something like Intelligence, attacking the people running those programs means that they won't be motivated to make the President look good. So from the President's perspective, you have to invest massive energy, take body blows when things don't go well and distract yourself from whatever it is that you ran for office for. It's a high cost, and the benefits are minimal -- nobody is going to carve your head into the side of a mountain for shutting down some Top Secret program that nobody knew about anyway.
grandalf 13y ago
The headline might as well be a more Onionesque "After gaining power, politician turns out not to actually hold the strongly principled views he expressed while campaigning". I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power. Generally speaking, the vast majority of power holders agree that aggressive spying is a good idea. This is closely related to their strong preference for maintaining the status quo across the board. We should not be surprised that Obama did not reverse any of Bush's controversial decisions because they were not actually controversial among those with power or with the potential to gain power. Generally speaking, when an issue is touted as being highly controversial between the major parties, it consists of 98% solid agreement and 2% hyped up disagreement. The disagreement and the "fray" are part of the choreographed propaganda undertaken by powerful interests to create the illusion of dissent.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Talking about "majority of power holders agree" is so disingenuous. See: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/poll-public-supports-nsa-spying-on-their-email-neighbors-and-foreign-leaders http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/poll-public-supports-nsa-sp... ("As we’ve written about before, the American public has widely supported the NSA’s activities before and after the scandal. I’m no fan of the secretive spying, but if the government appears to be acting slowly on surveillance reform, it could be because they’re responding to constituents."). And this is a poll of people. If you polled likely voters, who skew older (i.e. more who lived through the cold war), you'd see even healthier margins in support of the NSA. Also, it's a bit of historical revisionism to paint Obama as extremely anti-surveillance. Yes, he opposed certain of Bush's programs, but look at the whole picture. He's answer to "what would you have done instead of going into Iraq?" was "I would have hit Afghanistan harder!" He was a candidate who was self-conscious about the perception of Democrats as being "weak on security" and campaigned to avoid that label. And on his second go, he campaigned as "the guy that killed Osama." He's been quite consistent as someone who wants to project a lot of U.S. military power abroad, and in the grand scheme of things the NSA is part and parcel of that.
  - 13y ago
redknight666 13y ago
It is also good for the press, if he is going to do anything is another matter.
wwwtyro 13y ago
“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. This strikes me as backwards. Seems that a president with a steely spine would be strong enough to maintain the rights of citizens in the face of such challenges.
- mikepurvis 13y ago
  I wonder if the real answer is to simply reject that workflow. I can't imagine functioning in an environment where I'm being daily bombarded with information about dozens or hundreds of potential "threats" which never become anything. What if the president simply told his advisors that he would take a weekly instead of daily briefing on these issues?
  - seunosewa 13y ago
    He'll look bad when his failure to react to some threat on time leads to some unfortunate incident.
rfnslyr 13y ago
What is honestly the point of even concerning ones self with politics anymore? There has been nobody I've talked to in real life that has their head in the game completely, who knows what they are talking about, myself included. Nothing is going to change, it's a big boys club, debating it, writing about it, all fruitless.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  This seems like a really sad and poor way to concern yourself with how our society governs itself.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    There's just no way to do it from the bottom. All these protests, all this (sl)activism, it doesn't do anything. You either need to dedicate your life to politics and get into the club and start working from the inside, and pray some holy fucking deity that there are others like you, or nothing will change. Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. There isn't enough time in the day to concern yourself with shit that matters. Nobody wants to come home after working 8 hours with a two hour commute to dip their head into politics, just to even begin to know what's happening. Where do you go? The mainstream media? Where do you inform yourself? The reality is people just want to go home, flick the TV on, spend some time with the kids, and maybe if they're lucky, devote a few extra hours to a hobby every week. This scenario occurs in the poor, it occurs in the rich. It takes a very very special type of person to run a country. You need people who are basically insane. Who have no problem getting up every day and just doing that one thing they do, all day, every day. That isn't 99% of the population. If the top tier of our government is run by similar people at the bottom, we're screwed.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      > Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. I always find this sentiment (or various forms of "wiping the slate clean") to be quite amusing. It is historically more likely for a society to be less free after violent revolution than the opposite. Radicals who believe in a cause strongly enough to engage in revolution also tend to be ideologues who, once in power, want to remake society in the mold of their own viewpoint. The historically successful revolutions have been conservative ones. For example, the Glorious Revolution in which Parliament asserted its supremacy over the King of England. In another example, modern democratic Spain arose with the restoration of the monarchy!
pixelmonkey 13y ago
From the article: "Mr. Obama was acutely aware of the risks of being seen as handcuffing the security agencies. 'Whatever reforms he makes, you can be sure if there’s another incident — and the odds are there will be in our history — there’ll be someone on CNN within seconds saying if the president hadn’t hamstrung the intelligence community, this wouldn’t have happened,' Mr. Axelrod said." And so, the wheel keeps turning...
- zephjc 13y ago
  If theres ever a time to do the right thing, it's in the President's second term: it's all downhill, what the pundits say doesn't matter to re-electability, since there is none (unless you plan on going to another office later on...)
  - privong 13y ago
    > (unless you plan on going to another office later on...) Just curious, has a president ever done that?
    - ForHackernews 13y ago
      Yes. William Taft went on to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after being President: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft Reportedly, he hated being President and wished he'd never done it, but loved being a judge.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - triangleman 13y ago
      Famously, John Quincy Adams served in the House for nine terms (17 years) after his single term as president, where he spent most of his time fighting to abolish slavery.
    - noarchy 13y ago
      Andrew Johnson won election to the Senate shortly before his death, in 1875. This was after several attempts to win political office in his post-Presidency years had failed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Post-presidency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Post-presidency
supersystem 13y ago
Just seems like a worse version of http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_... By the way if your getting most of your updates on this subject from HN, you're most likely out of the loop. Since a lot of the insightful content doesn't make it. IIRC there's even a penalty on this subject on HN.
Sambdala 13y ago
“He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration,” said the former Obama aide Okay, so given the trend of these powers is to increase, and he's not going to be in power after 2016, does he trust the next guy with even more powers, or the guy after that with even more than that? When civil liberties advocates visited to press him to do more to reverse Mr. Bush’s policies, Mr. Obama pushed back. “He reminded me that he had a different role to play, that he was commander in chief and that he needed to protect the American people,” The role of President isn't to follow through on the platform you were elected on?
mcone 13y ago
What's interesting is that the article suggests that Obama himself did not know extent of the NSA's activities. ("At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden... just how far the surveillance had gone.") If that's true, it seems to indicate that Obama is not an overseer at all. Have our worst fears been confirmed? Is the NSA an unstoppable organization that reports to nobody except itself?
- adventured 13y ago
  The military industrial complex has been running the United States since WW2. It's best to take Eisenhower's speech as the acknowledgement of that. It was a sitting President issuing a dire warning of what can only be described as a coup to a free Republic. The political power, the money, the might, the lobbying, the military budget slush fund, the endless scandals, the wars. It's pretty clear the military-industrial combination has done the most to shape the last five or six decades of America's existence.
- drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  This is a good point. We have this fetished ideal of the POTUS as this mastermind, but I imagine a great deal of things are purposely hidden from him or hidden via apathy/politicking/corruption and "lets not involve the president on this," kind of thing. I'm also curious what would happen if we had a president who was strictly anti-intelligence and anti-military. I imagine that's a quick way towards impeachment or getting deposed. There are way too many powerful people and way too much money in intel/military to just reform it. Can you imagine moving to a military budget on par with Russia? Ever? If anything, we're a military power first and a democracy last. The fact that we can casually lie about war justifications, end the lives of 130,000 civilians, get into almost 1T in debt for it, and have it considered uncontroversial by American citizens and politicians speaks a lot about our values and our system.
- scintill76 13y ago
  No kidding. This is either a lie "Golly, I had no idea, I am shocked! Until this news story blows over.", or a scary truth. If a contractor for the NSA was able to find more shocking abuses of liberty than the Commander in Chief knew of, it would seem what little oversight there is, is completely ineffective. Both look bad for NSA and Obama, both should compel us to demand more transparency. P.S. Some would say Snowden should have gone the sanctioned whistleblower route to bring this to the attention of the proper parties such as Pres. Obama. Personally I am not optimistic that that would have been effective. I believe Snowden has claimed trying to start conversations with superiors, and NSA claims he never did such a thing.
wmeredith 13y ago
“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.” That's the whole problem. The NSA spying is being sold as if it stops terrorist attacks. It does not. They have not cited a single incidence.
- jasonlotito 13y ago
  I'm agains the NSA spying as well, but saying they haven't cited anything isn't the same thing as proving they haven't stopped terrorist attacks. Please don't read more into this than what I said.
  - wmeredith 13y ago
    The NSA existing in a state that doesn't stop terrorist attacks is the status quo (it's the same as them not existing at all). It doesn't need proving. If they want to spy on everyone in the world all the time and their reasoning is that it makes Americans safer, then the burden of proof is very much on them.
    - gbhn 13y ago
      Not to mention that terrorists aren't the only thing the president is charged to protect citizens against.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      the burden of proof is very much on them But who do they have to prove it to? The public, or the people they actually report to?
      - wmeredith 13y ago
        They're salaries are paid in tax dollars. The public is who they report to.
fit2rule 13y ago
What I'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect endure that turns him into an alien lizard from hell? I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-Presidentiality, Obama was real. After-President'ness, he's become some obscure caricature of all other Presidents who came before him.. So is there some sort of secret Presidential chamber that all the past Presidents get to donate their DNA to, which gets injected into The New Guy, to make him into some sort of transformed hybrid clone, or something? I seriously wonder sometimes, if the enemies of the USA haven't realized that the real backdoor to infiltrating America and bringing it to its knees is in the Presidential Training Program that goes on with newly elected victims. It sure seems like the President of the USA gets a new skin, anyway .. I've only been watching for the last 4 Presidents or so ..
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Perceval 13y ago
  > What I'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect endure that turns him into an alien lizard from hell? A Truman-era bureaucrat coined the phrase, "where you stand depends on where you sit." When Obama was outside the executive branch and had only a year of Senate experience before embarking upon his presidential campaign, he had a very different set of interests and responsibilities. As a junior, back-benching senator with no Washington DC experience, Obama had very few capabilities or political capital. People who are weak decry the power of the strong and seek to limit it. When Obama became president and was given responsibility not just for Illinois, but for the United States and its allies, he assumed a very different set of responsibilities, interests, and capabilities. Obama entered office with a tremendous amount of political capital and the full panoply of executive branch powers at his disposal. The powerful do not generally seek to limit their own power or to accept limits placed upon them. This happens to every candidate-turned-president, but with some it's more extreme than others. Some presidents enter office with executive branch experience, e.g. Bush Sr. or Eisenhower. Some enter with tremendous political capital and experience with DC politics, like LBJ a.k.a. the "master of the Senate." The transformation is not so great with these presidents. Some enter with almost no political experience whatsoever, like Obama. The subsequent transformation is much more jarring, because the change in their power is much starker. > I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-Presidentiality, Obama was real. After-President'ness, he's become some obscure caricature of all other Presidents who came before him.. On the contrary, pre-presidential Obama was fake. He was in campaign mode from his entrance on the national scene in 2004 through 2008. You cannot honestly believe that the campaign image of a politician is the "real" version of that person. Presidential Obama is the real Obama. Abraham Lincoln said, "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." This is who Obama is. There's a reason why presidents seem to feature greater continuity than change, and part of that reason is that the responsibilities of the office don't change according to the president, rather the president must change in order to perform the responsibilities of the office. Many wildly different personalities can occupy the office, but the office structures and constrains those personalities. Idealists often have a consequence-free vision of what presidents ought to do (a "deontological" ethic). But politics does not work that way. Max Weber contrasted the (deontological) "ethic of ultimate ends" with the "ethic of responsibility" in his essay "Politics as a Vocation," which I urge you to read. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-vocation.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-vocation.pdf Responsibility is a different ethical standard than what individuals on their own would be held to. And what an individual ought to do is very often different from what someone responsible for the lives of others ought to do. And the actions a responsible political figure ought to undertake are often morally repugnant to the private individual. But it is a mistake to judge the leader by the standards one would use to judge a private citizen. Weber says as much: > "It follows that as far as a person's actions are concerned, it is not true that nothing but good comes from good and nothing but evil from evil, but rather quite frequently the opposite is the case. Anyone who does not realize this is in fact a mere child in political matters." Isaiah Berlin in his famous article on Machiavelli (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-special-supplement-the-question-of-machiavelli/?pagination=false http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-speci...) puts it even more starkly: > If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are, to use Ritter’s word, “erschreckend,” too frightening, Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect to be ignored or destroyed. > To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterize, to amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop halfway because of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique, is a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst of both worlds. And there are at least two worlds: each of them has much, indeed everything, to be said for it; but they are two and not one. One must learn to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back. > There is more than one world, and more than one set of virtues: confusion between them is disastrous. One of the chief illusions caused by ignoring this is the Platonic-Hebraic-Christian view that virtuous rulers create virtuous men. This, according to Machiavelli, is not true. Generosity is a virtue, but not in princes. A generous prince will ruin the citizens by taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the citizens and so add to public welfare. A kind ruler—and kindness is a virtue—may let intriguers and stronger characters dominate him, and so cause chaos and corruption.
ck2 13y ago
Like anyone ever in any kind of law enforcement position: "it's okay when we do it"
nathan_long 13y ago
OK: once he got in office, it turned out that watching everyone seemed like a good idea. But here's the thing: it's unconstitutional. It's illegal. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized". Meaning: 1) You can't read my email without a warrant and 2) you need specific suspicions of me to get one. Any interpretation that says the grocery list in my pocket is covered by the fourth amendment, but every electronic communication I make is NOT covered, is insane. "Houses, papers and effects" was the writer's way of saying "everything I can think of belonging to that person." Email and phone metadata and GPS location weren't imagined, but can you seriously say they would have been excluded? So: balancing security with privacy is a hard thing. It is. But pooping on the constitution isn't a solution. You want to surveil everything? Say so openly, explain your case, and try to repeal the fourth amendment. We're America: we decide by voting. Secretly discarding the highest laws of the land is tyrannical, whatever the justification.
- rayiner 13y ago
  This has been debunked to death. The issue isn't "houses, papers, and effects" not encompassing e-mail, but the "belonging to that person" aspect. Phone metadata doesn't "belong" to you. It belongs to your phone company. They generated it, they store it--you never even see it. It's also quite questionable how much of say your Facebook data "belongs" to you. Or your GPS location data. It's about you, but much or all of it is generated by some company and stored by that company, and you are often even not aware of it nor do you have access to it. You have little to no recourse if they lose it, destroy it, or misuse it. You can't even make them let you see it. Indeed, I strongly agree with your use of the word "belong" because I think the use of "houses" and "persons" purposefully puts the 4th amendment on a strong property rights foundation.[1] But viewing the 4th amendment through the lens of property rights (i.e. "everything I can think of belonging to that person") makes most of what the NSA is doing quite legal! Things that are about you do not necessarily belong to you. If I write down every time my neighbor enters and leaves his house, that's mine, not his. Is Facebook tracks what you click on and your cellular company tracks your GPS location or your phone company tracks who you call, that's their data, not yours. [1] The prevailing Supreme Court view of the 4th amendment is broader than this property rights view, but still embraces third party doctrine which makes much of what the NSA is doing legal. And certain Justices seem partial to the property rights formulation.
socrates1998 13y ago
I just don't get why people don't believe politicians. We are lied to all the time by them. We don't need the US Congress. We don't even need the President in it's current version. We can vote on legislation ourselves. We can approve a budget ourselves. We can veto stupid and corrupt laws. We do everything else online, why can't we govern online? The people in power don't want this to happen, so they convince us they are actually doing something.
pessimizer 13y ago
>Mr. Obama was told before his inauguration of a supposed plot by Somali extremists to attack the ceremony[...]. Although the report proved unfounded, it reinforced to Mr. Obama the need to detect threats before they materialized. “The whole Somali threat injected their team into the realities of national security in a tangible and complicated way”[...] So a non-existent threat was what made Obama decide that the surveillance state was necessary. Great decisionmaking here.
mbateman 13y ago
Everything that's wrong with the current intelligence approach in a sentence: "And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration." This completely vindicates Snowden's point about the current system being one of policy instead of law, and of enabling turnkey tyranny.
- abvdasker 13y ago
  I think it's a symptom of corruption of the system's built-in checks and balances. The executive branch is much more powerful now than it used to be, and is the only branch that is composed entirely of a single party. The only politically homogenous branch is now far-and-away the most powerful.
equalarrow 13y ago
Sigh, I guess this is nothing new. Obama's the ultimate (in my mind) say one thing, do another. At least with Bush we knew he was just a bad guy that didn't give a shit for anything other that war, greedy buddies, and a good walk on the ranch. With Obama, yah, he came in as the 'outsider' (typical of all candidates I suppose) with all these things he would 'Change' (Shepard Fairey anyone?). But alas, it's been one disappointment after another. Net neutrality, spying, real universal healthcare, not going after politicians of the Bush area that blatantly broke all kinds of laws, etc. All a sham. It's playing out like a sci-fi story where anyone can be an enemy of the state, just choose your own adventure: leaker, no fly list, dissident, downloader, photographer/videographer; the list goes on and one. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as this isn't really a democracy anymore. Every law, decision pretty much has to have some 'but what about business/economy?' question. Excessive lobbying makes sure these decisions/rules will never change short of revolution. The fact that corporations are 'people' and that they have no donation limits anymore, pretty much ends what the founding fathers fought for - we the people. The message of the 21st century america: get rich. Get above the law and above the fold of the 99%. Go where the rules don't apply to you. Go where you make the rules for everyone else.
- afterburner 13y ago
  "At least with Bush we knew" The vast majority of people took Bush at his word for a long time, especially on matters of war. The recognition of the deceit in the mainstream came long after.
audiodude 13y ago
Reminds me of this comic: http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-Darkness-Bind-Them-112729303 http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-Darkness-B...
eof 13y ago
My heart sunk when Obama won the election the first time; not because I wanted McCain to win, or that I had any actual hope that one of the third-parties could win; but because everyone was so happy. I was in Burlington, VT; about as liberal a town as you will find in the USA; and there was a strong anti-war movement. That anti-war movement bought Obama's promises hook-line-and-sinker and the same people that were out holding signs and going to rallies were canvasing for Obama. There was a march through the streets when the counting was done; people cheered as if we were finally turning a new leaf. I hope, so deeply, that people will have learned their lesson; that, if some politician you have never heard of suddenly starts getting a ton of press and magically enters your consciousness; he is being tapped by big players to do so. Obama, more than any other public figure in the last twenty years is proof positive that there does indeed exist a shadowy cartel that are fucking with us for power. If you believe Obama started out pure-at-heart and was 'corrupted' after becoming president; you are naive beyond all comprehension. Remember early, early when Obama was asked about marijuana? One of the easiest, most obvious blatantly fucked up policies our government carries out.. something that every single non-political marginally liberal person is absolutely crystal clear on should be legal for adults: he laughs derisively like it's a terrible idea. Why? What is it about Obama being so full of hope and change and feel-goody liberalness that makes him laugh at marijuana? Talk to 50 non politician democrats and you will find 49 think it's obvious to legalize marijuana. But talk to 50 politician democrats, and you will find maybe half of them. The higher up you go, the less likely they are to be pro legalization. Why? Because their interests aren't yours. If you think that there will be ever be a 'main stream' candidate that will represent your interests over the 'shadowy cartel' of government interest and lobbyists, you are sorely mistaken; and we all pay the price.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  So, if your analysis is correct... what do we do about it?
  - eof 13y ago
    vote third party only
discardorama 13y ago
If this thinking, that "we will do anything to prevent another terrorist attack, including give up our liberties", is acceptable, then why isn't giving up guns acceptable to prevent the next school massacre?
- mpyne 13y ago
  What if I told you, that there is a large gulf of possibility between "doing anything" and "doing nothing"?
lasermike026 13y ago
The big lie is that surveillance has to do with nation security. It doesn't. You build a surveillance system to suppress political descent not stop terrorist attacks. Business has big plans and they don't want some republic to vote and screw things up for them. They have world to conquer. Follow the money.
mildavw 13y ago
The mere hand-wringing that current leaders are doing over this is so disturbing to me because of where I see it taking the country. It's not hard to imagine, say, Carl Rove or his ilk giving someone at the NSA a wink and a nod that they'll be taken care of if their candidate wins office. The NSA leaks or hands off information that tilts the election their way. Given that collection of all of this data is A-OK, no step in this process is blatantly illegal anymore. If I were Ron Wyden, this is what I'd be saying. "Do you want your representatives picked by the NSA? Because that's the logical path we're going down." The ability read/listen to all electronic communication without warrants gives the NSA too much power for this not to happen.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
It is not probably a good idea surround yourself with the people you need to control. Obama spends most of his time going to eat-dinner with the same rich people that benefit from printing money. The rest of the time it is with the praetorian guard that "protects" him. Anybody believes he is going to make the same people he surrounds most of the time furious? The same people that put him in charge? This people are the eyes and ears of the "king of the world". He is living in a bubble.
rummikub 13y ago
His administration's descent on this issue has been disappointing. I mean how is the quote any different than something that would have come out of the previous administration? “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
> At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone. If this is meant to be taken at face value, and it's at least plausible given how the US government seems to operate, how can Obama not follow it up with at least a strong commitment to making the American security apparatus more clear and transparent?
- mpyne 13y ago
  Probably because unlike crypto, this is one of those areas where "security through obscurity" really is an aid. That has always been the tension between intelligence agencies and public oversight, it's not like NSA originated the problem.
OFailey 13y ago
Obama is "surprised to find out that people don't trust him". Barry, that's what happens when you get caught lying almost every time you open your mouth. Clearly your mother didn't teach you much.
yew 13y ago
Mr. Obama hasn't changed more than would be expected over several years and, while I can't speak with certainty, I would be very surprised to find out that he was lying about his views during the presidential campaign (I don't know about his promises). He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration. Even postulating some revolutionary secret information seems to me to be unnecessary. Obama has always trusted himself. Most people do. What's changed is that the president is now someone who is trusted by Obama. Everything that's happened up to this point falls nicely out of those circumstances.
gumby 13y ago
There is an interesting case of regulatory capture nobody seems to be discussing. From the article: `"But they said his views have been shaped to a striking degree by the reality of waking up every day in the White House responsible for heading off the myriad threats he finds in his daily intelligence briefings. `“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting....' and then: `Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden...[we all know what]' Every morning the president gets a propaganda dose from the very people he needs to reign in. OF COURSE they are going to tell him the sky is falling in and that they are the only ones holding it back. And since it's exciting and secret there is no cross check or balance. He should be seizing the example of Snowdon's releases to realize that the books are being cooked. Instead he's been completely taken in by the briefing books. It's really no different from Joe Barton being taken in by BP. Back in the Reagan era Alan Kay told me about his very short time as a white house advisor. Reagan's briefing book wasn't even a book, it was a three minute video. I'm sure it REALLY played up the Soviet threat, yet the security apparatus was as astonished as anyone else when the USSR collapsed.
dleibovic 13y ago
Mr. Obama was angry at the revelations, privately excoriating Mr. Snowden as a self-important narcissist who had not thought through the consequences of his actions. I could not disagree more with that sentiment.

249 points by mjstahl 13y ago

coob 13y ago

What is it, do you think, that causes former critics of spying to become 'overseers'? The Presidency is limited to two terms, so it's not like it's being used to weild power. Are there honest intentions related to safety, or is it all about money/lobbying?

Skalman 13y ago
Was he ever that critical? From the article: > Mr. Obama was a sponsor of a bill in 2005 to raise the standard required for federal agents using ... national security letters ... He joined other Democrats fighting the renewal of the Patriot Act until it was amended to address civil liberties concerns, then voted for its extension in 2006 after a compromise, breaking with Mr. Wyden who voted no. > “The rhetoric was probably sharper than his votes.” By summer 2008, with the Democratic nomination secured and the White House now a real possibility, Mr. Obama voted for legislation essentially ratifying Mr. Bush’s surveillance programs.
brown9-2 13y ago
When you are the head of (one branch of) the government and you know that people will blame you foremost for any attacks or intelligence failures, I think almost anyone would tend to see these types of powers and programs differently than when they were merely one of 100 senators.
rrggrr 13y ago
Perhaps it's about supporting the people who have to collect and analyze Intel in the face of withering public criticism. The rank and file are skilled and intelligent and can find work elsewhere. If the President doesn't defend the value of their work then many will bail. He may still be a vocal critic behind the scenes.
Spooky23 13y ago
The Federal government is a byzantine web of regulation, conflicting rules, agendas and actions. Big programs have tentacles so intertwined into things, it's difficult/impossible to unwind and even figure out what they are doing. Think of it from the President's perspective -- getting someone whom he trusts in a position to actually know anything about the programs probably takes a year. Say you have someone on top whom you trust and the President says "dismantle X program". The bureaucracy is awesome and effective at slowing things down. Keeping up the pressure to do something that the bureaucrats don't want requires alot of energy. And with something like Intelligence, attacking the people running those programs means that they won't be motivated to make the President look good. So from the President's perspective, you have to invest massive energy, take body blows when things don't go well and distract yourself from whatever it is that you ran for office for. It's a high cost, and the benefits are minimal -- nobody is going to carve your head into the side of a mountain for shutting down some Top Secret program that nobody knew about anyway.

grandalf 13y ago

The headline might as well be a more Onionesque "After gaining power, politician turns out not to actually hold the strongly principled views he expressed while campaigning". I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power. Generally speaking, the vast majority of power holders agree that aggressive spying is a good idea. This is closely related to their strong preference for maintaining the status quo across the board. We should not be surprised that Obama did not reverse any of Bush's controversial decisions because they were not actually controversial among those with power or with the potential to gain power. Generally speaking, when an issue is touted as being highly controversial between the major parties, it consists of 98% solid agreement and 2% hyped up disagreement. The disagreement and the "fray" are part of the choreographed propaganda undertaken by powerful interests to create the illusion of dissent.

rayiner 13y ago
Talking about "majority of power holders agree" is so disingenuous. See: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/poll-public-supports-nsa-spying-on-their-email-neighbors-and-foreign-leaders http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/poll-public-supports-nsa-sp... ("As we’ve written about before, the American public has widely supported the NSA’s activities before and after the scandal. I’m no fan of the secretive spying, but if the government appears to be acting slowly on surveillance reform, it could be because they’re responding to constituents."). And this is a poll of people. If you polled likely voters, who skew older (i.e. more who lived through the cold war), you'd see even healthier margins in support of the NSA. Also, it's a bit of historical revisionism to paint Obama as extremely anti-surveillance. Yes, he opposed certain of Bush's programs, but look at the whole picture. He's answer to "what would you have done instead of going into Iraq?" was "I would have hit Afghanistan harder!" He was a candidate who was self-conscious about the perception of Democrats as being "weak on security" and campaigned to avoid that label. And on his second go, he campaigned as "the guy that killed Osama." He's been quite consistent as someone who wants to project a lot of U.S. military power abroad, and in the grand scheme of things the NSA is part and parcel of that.
- 13y ago

redknight666 13y ago

It is also good for the press, if he is going to do anything is another matter.

wwwtyro 13y ago

“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. This strikes me as backwards. Seems that a president with a steely spine would be strong enough to maintain the rights of citizens in the face of such challenges.

mikepurvis 13y ago
I wonder if the real answer is to simply reject that workflow. I can't imagine functioning in an environment where I'm being daily bombarded with information about dozens or hundreds of potential "threats" which never become anything. What if the president simply told his advisors that he would take a weekly instead of daily briefing on these issues?
- seunosewa 13y ago
  He'll look bad when his failure to react to some threat on time leads to some unfortunate incident.

rfnslyr 13y ago

What is honestly the point of even concerning ones self with politics anymore? There has been nobody I've talked to in real life that has their head in the game completely, who knows what they are talking about, myself included. Nothing is going to change, it's a big boys club, debating it, writing about it, all fruitless.

brown9-2 13y ago
This seems like a really sad and poor way to concern yourself with how our society governs itself.
- rfnslyr 13y ago
  There's just no way to do it from the bottom. All these protests, all this (sl)activism, it doesn't do anything. You either need to dedicate your life to politics and get into the club and start working from the inside, and pray some holy fucking deity that there are others like you, or nothing will change. Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. There isn't enough time in the day to concern yourself with shit that matters. Nobody wants to come home after working 8 hours with a two hour commute to dip their head into politics, just to even begin to know what's happening. Where do you go? The mainstream media? Where do you inform yourself? The reality is people just want to go home, flick the TV on, spend some time with the kids, and maybe if they're lucky, devote a few extra hours to a hobby every week. This scenario occurs in the poor, it occurs in the rich. It takes a very very special type of person to run a country. You need people who are basically insane. Who have no problem getting up every day and just doing that one thing they do, all day, every day. That isn't 99% of the population. If the top tier of our government is run by similar people at the bottom, we're screwed.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    > Maybe severe violent revolt but I literally don't ever see that happening. I always find this sentiment (or various forms of "wiping the slate clean") to be quite amusing. It is historically more likely for a society to be less free after violent revolution than the opposite. Radicals who believe in a cause strongly enough to engage in revolution also tend to be ideologues who, once in power, want to remake society in the mold of their own viewpoint. The historically successful revolutions have been conservative ones. For example, the Glorious Revolution in which Parliament asserted its supremacy over the King of England. In another example, modern democratic Spain arose with the restoration of the monarchy!

pixelmonkey 13y ago

From the article: "Mr. Obama was acutely aware of the risks of being seen as handcuffing the security agencies. 'Whatever reforms he makes, you can be sure if there’s another incident — and the odds are there will be in our history — there’ll be someone on CNN within seconds saying if the president hadn’t hamstrung the intelligence community, this wouldn’t have happened,' Mr. Axelrod said." And so, the wheel keeps turning...

zephjc 13y ago
If theres ever a time to do the right thing, it's in the President's second term: it's all downhill, what the pundits say doesn't matter to re-electability, since there is none (unless you plan on going to another office later on...)
- privong 13y ago
  > (unless you plan on going to another office later on...) Just curious, has a president ever done that?
  - ForHackernews 13y ago
    Yes. William Taft went on to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after being President: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Howard_Taft Reportedly, he hated being President and wished he'd never done it, but loved being a judge.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - triangleman 13y ago
    Famously, John Quincy Adams served in the House for nine terms (17 years) after his single term as president, where he spent most of his time fighting to abolish slavery.
  - noarchy 13y ago
    Andrew Johnson won election to the Senate shortly before his death, in 1875. This was after several attempts to win political office in his post-Presidency years had failed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Post-presidency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#Post-presidency

supersystem 13y ago

Just seems like a worse version of http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/16/131216fa_fact_... By the way if your getting most of your updates on this subject from HN, you're most likely out of the loop. Since a lot of the insightful content doesn't make it. IIRC there's even a penalty on this subject on HN.

Sambdala 13y ago

“He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration,” said the former Obama aide Okay, so given the trend of these powers is to increase, and he's not going to be in power after 2016, does he trust the next guy with even more powers, or the guy after that with even more than that? When civil liberties advocates visited to press him to do more to reverse Mr. Bush’s policies, Mr. Obama pushed back. “He reminded me that he had a different role to play, that he was commander in chief and that he needed to protect the American people,” The role of President isn't to follow through on the platform you were elected on?

mcone 13y ago

What's interesting is that the article suggests that Obama himself did not know extent of the NSA's activities. ("At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden... just how far the surveillance had gone.") If that's true, it seems to indicate that Obama is not an overseer at all. Have our worst fears been confirmed? Is the NSA an unstoppable organization that reports to nobody except itself?

adventured 13y ago
The military industrial complex has been running the United States since WW2. It's best to take Eisenhower's speech as the acknowledgement of that. It was a sitting President issuing a dire warning of what can only be described as a coup to a free Republic. The political power, the money, the might, the lobbying, the military budget slush fund, the endless scandals, the wars. It's pretty clear the military-industrial combination has done the most to shape the last five or six decades of America's existence.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
This is a good point. We have this fetished ideal of the POTUS as this mastermind, but I imagine a great deal of things are purposely hidden from him or hidden via apathy/politicking/corruption and "lets not involve the president on this," kind of thing. I'm also curious what would happen if we had a president who was strictly anti-intelligence and anti-military. I imagine that's a quick way towards impeachment or getting deposed. There are way too many powerful people and way too much money in intel/military to just reform it. Can you imagine moving to a military budget on par with Russia? Ever? If anything, we're a military power first and a democracy last. The fact that we can casually lie about war justifications, end the lives of 130,000 civilians, get into almost 1T in debt for it, and have it considered uncontroversial by American citizens and politicians speaks a lot about our values and our system.
scintill76 13y ago
No kidding. This is either a lie "Golly, I had no idea, I am shocked! Until this news story blows over.", or a scary truth. If a contractor for the NSA was able to find more shocking abuses of liberty than the Commander in Chief knew of, it would seem what little oversight there is, is completely ineffective. Both look bad for NSA and Obama, both should compel us to demand more transparency. P.S. Some would say Snowden should have gone the sanctioned whistleblower route to bring this to the attention of the proper parties such as Pres. Obama. Personally I am not optimistic that that would have been effective. I believe Snowden has claimed trying to start conversations with superiors, and NSA claims he never did such a thing.

wmeredith 13y ago

“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.” That's the whole problem. The NSA spying is being sold as if it stops terrorist attacks. It does not. They have not cited a single incidence.

jasonlotito 13y ago
I'm agains the NSA spying as well, but saying they haven't cited anything isn't the same thing as proving they haven't stopped terrorist attacks. Please don't read more into this than what I said.
- wmeredith 13y ago
  The NSA existing in a state that doesn't stop terrorist attacks is the status quo (it's the same as them not existing at all). It doesn't need proving. If they want to spy on everyone in the world all the time and their reasoning is that it makes Americans safer, then the burden of proof is very much on them.
  - gbhn 13y ago
    Not to mention that terrorists aren't the only thing the president is charged to protect citizens against.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    the burden of proof is very much on them But who do they have to prove it to? The public, or the people they actually report to?
    - wmeredith 13y ago
      They're salaries are paid in tax dollars. The public is who they report to.

fit2rule 13y ago

What I'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect endure that turns him into an alien lizard from hell? I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-Presidentiality, Obama was real. After-President'ness, he's become some obscure caricature of all other Presidents who came before him.. So is there some sort of secret Presidential chamber that all the past Presidents get to donate their DNA to, which gets injected into The New Guy, to make him into some sort of transformed hybrid clone, or something? I seriously wonder sometimes, if the enemies of the USA haven't realized that the real backdoor to infiltrating America and bringing it to its knees is in the Presidential Training Program that goes on with newly elected victims. It sure seems like the President of the USA gets a new skin, anyway .. I've only been watching for the last 4 Presidents or so ..

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Perceval 13y ago
> What I'd really like to know is what process does the President-elect endure that turns him into an alien lizard from hell? A Truman-era bureaucrat coined the phrase, "where you stand depends on where you sit." When Obama was outside the executive branch and had only a year of Senate experience before embarking upon his presidential campaign, he had a very different set of interests and responsibilities. As a junior, back-benching senator with no Washington DC experience, Obama had very few capabilities or political capital. People who are weak decry the power of the strong and seek to limit it. When Obama became president and was given responsibility not just for Illinois, but for the United States and its allies, he assumed a very different set of responsibilities, interests, and capabilities. Obama entered office with a tremendous amount of political capital and the full panoply of executive branch powers at his disposal. The powerful do not generally seek to limit their own power or to accept limits placed upon them. This happens to every candidate-turned-president, but with some it's more extreme than others. Some presidents enter office with executive branch experience, e.g. Bush Sr. or Eisenhower. Some enter with tremendous political capital and experience with DC politics, like LBJ a.k.a. the "master of the Senate." The transformation is not so great with these presidents. Some enter with almost no political experience whatsoever, like Obama. The subsequent transformation is much more jarring, because the change in their power is much starker. > I mean, seriously .. its like black and white with Obama. Pre-Presidentiality, Obama was real. After-President'ness, he's become some obscure caricature of all other Presidents who came before him.. On the contrary, pre-presidential Obama was fake. He was in campaign mode from his entrance on the national scene in 2004 through 2008. You cannot honestly believe that the campaign image of a politician is the "real" version of that person. Presidential Obama is the real Obama. Abraham Lincoln said, "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." This is who Obama is. There's a reason why presidents seem to feature greater continuity than change, and part of that reason is that the responsibilities of the office don't change according to the president, rather the president must change in order to perform the responsibilities of the office. Many wildly different personalities can occupy the office, but the office structures and constrains those personalities. Idealists often have a consequence-free vision of what presidents ought to do (a "deontological" ethic). But politics does not work that way. Max Weber contrasted the (deontological) "ethic of ultimate ends" with the "ethic of responsibility" in his essay "Politics as a Vocation," which I urge you to read. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-vocation.pdf http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/ethos/Weber-vocation.pdf Responsibility is a different ethical standard than what individuals on their own would be held to. And what an individual ought to do is very often different from what someone responsible for the lives of others ought to do. And the actions a responsible political figure ought to undertake are often morally repugnant to the private individual. But it is a mistake to judge the leader by the standards one would use to judge a private citizen. Weber says as much: > "It follows that as far as a person's actions are concerned, it is not true that nothing but good comes from good and nothing but evil from evil, but rather quite frequently the opposite is the case. Anyone who does not realize this is in fact a mere child in political matters." Isaiah Berlin in his famous article on Machiavelli (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-special-supplement-the-question-of-machiavelli/?pagination=false http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1971/nov/04/a-speci...) puts it even more starkly: > If you object to the political methods recommended because they seem to you morally detestable, if you refuse to embark upon them because they are, to use Ritter’s word, “erschreckend,” too frightening, Machiavelli has no answer, no argument. In that case you are perfectly entitled to lead a morally good life, be a private citizen (or a monk), seek some corner of your own. But, in that event, you must not make yourself responsible for the lives of others or expect good fortune; in a material sense you must expect to be ignored or destroyed. > To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterize, to amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop halfway because of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique, is a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst of both worlds. And there are at least two worlds: each of them has much, indeed everything, to be said for it; but they are two and not one. One must learn to choose between them and, having chosen, not look back. > There is more than one world, and more than one set of virtues: confusion between them is disastrous. One of the chief illusions caused by ignoring this is the Platonic-Hebraic-Christian view that virtuous rulers create virtuous men. This, according to Machiavelli, is not true. Generosity is a virtue, but not in princes. A generous prince will ruin the citizens by taxing them too heavily, a mean prince (and Machiavelli does not say that meanness is a good quality in private men) will save the purses of the citizens and so add to public welfare. A kind ruler—and kindness is a virtue—may let intriguers and stronger characters dominate him, and so cause chaos and corruption.

ck2 13y ago

Like anyone ever in any kind of law enforcement position: "it's okay when we do it"

nathan_long 13y ago

OK: once he got in office, it turned out that watching everyone seemed like a good idea. But here's the thing: it's unconstitutional. It's illegal. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized". Meaning: 1) You can't read my email without a warrant and 2) you need specific suspicions of me to get one. Any interpretation that says the grocery list in my pocket is covered by the fourth amendment, but every electronic communication I make is NOT covered, is insane. "Houses, papers and effects" was the writer's way of saying "everything I can think of belonging to that person." Email and phone metadata and GPS location weren't imagined, but can you seriously say they would have been excluded? So: balancing security with privacy is a hard thing. It is. But pooping on the constitution isn't a solution. You want to surveil everything? Say so openly, explain your case, and try to repeal the fourth amendment. We're America: we decide by voting. Secretly discarding the highest laws of the land is tyrannical, whatever the justification.

rayiner 13y ago
This has been debunked to death. The issue isn't "houses, papers, and effects" not encompassing e-mail, but the "belonging to that person" aspect. Phone metadata doesn't "belong" to you. It belongs to your phone company. They generated it, they store it--you never even see it. It's also quite questionable how much of say your Facebook data "belongs" to you. Or your GPS location data. It's about you, but much or all of it is generated by some company and stored by that company, and you are often even not aware of it nor do you have access to it. You have little to no recourse if they lose it, destroy it, or misuse it. You can't even make them let you see it. Indeed, I strongly agree with your use of the word "belong" because I think the use of "houses" and "persons" purposefully puts the 4th amendment on a strong property rights foundation.[1] But viewing the 4th amendment through the lens of property rights (i.e. "everything I can think of belonging to that person") makes most of what the NSA is doing quite legal! Things that are about you do not necessarily belong to you. If I write down every time my neighbor enters and leaves his house, that's mine, not his. Is Facebook tracks what you click on and your cellular company tracks your GPS location or your phone company tracks who you call, that's their data, not yours. [1] The prevailing Supreme Court view of the 4th amendment is broader than this property rights view, but still embraces third party doctrine which makes much of what the NSA is doing legal. And certain Justices seem partial to the property rights formulation.

socrates1998 13y ago

I just don't get why people don't believe politicians. We are lied to all the time by them. We don't need the US Congress. We don't even need the President in it's current version. We can vote on legislation ourselves. We can approve a budget ourselves. We can veto stupid and corrupt laws. We do everything else online, why can't we govern online? The people in power don't want this to happen, so they convince us they are actually doing something.

pessimizer 13y ago

>Mr. Obama was told before his inauguration of a supposed plot by Somali extremists to attack the ceremony[...]. Although the report proved unfounded, it reinforced to Mr. Obama the need to detect threats before they materialized. “The whole Somali threat injected their team into the realities of national security in a tangible and complicated way”[...] So a non-existent threat was what made Obama decide that the surveillance state was necessary. Great decisionmaking here.

mbateman 13y ago

Everything that's wrong with the current intelligence approach in a sentence: "And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration." This completely vindicates Snowden's point about the current system being one of policy instead of law, and of enabling turnkey tyranny.

abvdasker 13y ago
I think it's a symptom of corruption of the system's built-in checks and balances. The executive branch is much more powerful now than it used to be, and is the only branch that is composed entirely of a single party. The only politically homogenous branch is now far-and-away the most powerful.

equalarrow 13y ago

Sigh, I guess this is nothing new. Obama's the ultimate (in my mind) say one thing, do another. At least with Bush we knew he was just a bad guy that didn't give a shit for anything other that war, greedy buddies, and a good walk on the ranch. With Obama, yah, he came in as the 'outsider' (typical of all candidates I suppose) with all these things he would 'Change' (Shepard Fairey anyone?). But alas, it's been one disappointment after another. Net neutrality, spying, real universal healthcare, not going after politicians of the Bush area that blatantly broke all kinds of laws, etc. All a sham. It's playing out like a sci-fi story where anyone can be an enemy of the state, just choose your own adventure: leaker, no fly list, dissident, downloader, photographer/videographer; the list goes on and one. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as this isn't really a democracy anymore. Every law, decision pretty much has to have some 'but what about business/economy?' question. Excessive lobbying makes sure these decisions/rules will never change short of revolution. The fact that corporations are 'people' and that they have no donation limits anymore, pretty much ends what the founding fathers fought for - we the people. The message of the 21st century america: get rich. Get above the law and above the fold of the 99%. Go where the rules don't apply to you. Go where you make the rules for everyone else.

afterburner 13y ago
"At least with Bush we knew" The vast majority of people took Bush at his word for a long time, especially on matters of war. The recognition of the deceit in the mainstream came long after.

audiodude 13y ago

Reminds me of this comic: http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-Darkness-Bind-Them-112729303 http://deep-hurting.deviantart.com/art/And-in-the-Darkness-B...

eof 13y ago

My heart sunk when Obama won the election the first time; not because I wanted McCain to win, or that I had any actual hope that one of the third-parties could win; but because everyone was so happy. I was in Burlington, VT; about as liberal a town as you will find in the USA; and there was a strong anti-war movement. That anti-war movement bought Obama's promises hook-line-and-sinker and the same people that were out holding signs and going to rallies were canvasing for Obama. There was a march through the streets when the counting was done; people cheered as if we were finally turning a new leaf. I hope, so deeply, that people will have learned their lesson; that, if some politician you have never heard of suddenly starts getting a ton of press and magically enters your consciousness; he is being tapped by big players to do so. Obama, more than any other public figure in the last twenty years is proof positive that there does indeed exist a shadowy cartel that are fucking with us for power. If you believe Obama started out pure-at-heart and was 'corrupted' after becoming president; you are naive beyond all comprehension. Remember early, early when Obama was asked about marijuana? One of the easiest, most obvious blatantly fucked up policies our government carries out.. something that every single non-political marginally liberal person is absolutely crystal clear on should be legal for adults: he laughs derisively like it's a terrible idea. Why? What is it about Obama being so full of hope and change and feel-goody liberalness that makes him laugh at marijuana? Talk to 50 non politician democrats and you will find 49 think it's obvious to legalize marijuana. But talk to 50 politician democrats, and you will find maybe half of them. The higher up you go, the less likely they are to be pro legalization. Why? Because their interests aren't yours. If you think that there will be ever be a 'main stream' candidate that will represent your interests over the 'shadowy cartel' of government interest and lobbyists, you are sorely mistaken; and we all pay the price.

dllthomas 13y ago
So, if your analysis is correct... what do we do about it?
- eof 13y ago
  vote third party only

discardorama 13y ago

If this thinking, that "we will do anything to prevent another terrorist attack, including give up our liberties", is acceptable, then why isn't giving up guns acceptable to prevent the next school massacre?

mpyne 13y ago
What if I told you, that there is a large gulf of possibility between "doing anything" and "doing nothing"?

lasermike026 13y ago

The big lie is that surveillance has to do with nation security. It doesn't. You build a surveillance system to suppress political descent not stop terrorist attacks. Business has big plans and they don't want some republic to vote and screw things up for them. They have world to conquer. Follow the money.

mildavw 13y ago

The mere hand-wringing that current leaders are doing over this is so disturbing to me because of where I see it taking the country. It's not hard to imagine, say, Carl Rove or his ilk giving someone at the NSA a wink and a nod that they'll be taken care of if their candidate wins office. The NSA leaks or hands off information that tilts the election their way. Given that collection of all of this data is A-OK, no step in this process is blatantly illegal anymore. If I were Ron Wyden, this is what I'd be saying. "Do you want your representatives picked by the NSA? Because that's the logical path we're going down." The ability read/listen to all electronic communication without warrants gives the NSA too much power for this not to happen.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

It is not probably a good idea surround yourself with the people you need to control. Obama spends most of his time going to eat-dinner with the same rich people that benefit from printing money. The rest of the time it is with the praetorian guard that "protects" him. Anybody believes he is going to make the same people he surrounds most of the time furious? The same people that put him in charge? This people are the eyes and ears of the "king of the world". He is living in a bubble.

rummikub 13y ago

His administration's descent on this issue has been disappointing. I mean how is the quote any different than something that would have come out of the previous administration? “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

> At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone. If this is meant to be taken at face value, and it's at least plausible given how the US government seems to operate, how can Obama not follow it up with at least a strong commitment to making the American security apparatus more clear and transparent?

mpyne 13y ago
Probably because unlike crypto, this is one of those areas where "security through obscurity" really is an aid. That has always been the tension between intelligence agencies and public oversight, it's not like NSA originated the problem.

OFailey 13y ago

Obama is "surprised to find out that people don't trust him". Barry, that's what happens when you get caught lying almost every time you open your mouth. Clearly your mother didn't teach you much.

yew 13y ago

Mr. Obama hasn't changed more than would be expected over several years and, while I can't speak with certainty, I would be very surprised to find out that he was lying about his views during the presidential campaign (I don't know about his promises). He has more information than he did then. And he trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration. Even postulating some revolutionary secret information seems to me to be unnecessary. Obama has always trusted himself. Most people do. What's changed is that the president is now someone who is trusted by Obama. Everything that's happened up to this point falls nicely out of those circumstances.

gumby 13y ago

There is an interesting case of regulatory capture nobody seems to be discussing. From the article: `"But they said his views have been shaped to a striking degree by the reality of waking up every day in the White House responsible for heading off the myriad threats he finds in his daily intelligence briefings. `“When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting....' and then: `Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden...[we all know what]' Every morning the president gets a propaganda dose from the very people he needs to reign in. OF COURSE they are going to tell him the sky is falling in and that they are the only ones holding it back. And since it's exciting and secret there is no cross check or balance. He should be seizing the example of Snowdon's releases to realize that the books are being cooked. Instead he's been completely taken in by the briefing books. It's really no different from Joe Barton being taken in by BP. Back in the Reagan era Alan Kay told me about his very short time as a white house advisor. Reagan's briefing book wasn't even a book, it was a three minute video. I'm sure it REALLY played up the Soviet threat, yet the security apparatus was as astonished as anyone else when the USSR collapsed.

dleibovic 13y ago

Mr. Obama was angry at the revelations, privately excoriating Mr. Snowden as a self-important narcissist who had not thought through the consequences of his actions. I could not disagree more with that sentiment.