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Obama and the N.S.A.: Why He Can't Be Trusted

105 points by ruswick 13y ago

smoyer 13y ago
Quite a few people didn't trust him enough to vote for him during the last two presidential elections ... since he can't run for another term, I'm guessing he doesn't care if the people that did vote for him trust him anymore.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
moocowduckquack 13y ago
Is very hard to trust anyone over pervasive suveillance. That is partly why it is so poisonous. Public political figures are obvious intelligence targets, if only for budget protection.
obblekk 13y ago
In the NYT article it mentioned something about him trusting himself not to go too far. I guess it's this feeling of enlightened ruler that always goes too far.
- pstack 13y ago
  Unfortunately, so many citizens feel this way, too. It never occurs to them that the government never gives power back. Look at the Patriot Act. It just keeps going and going and going. It never occurs to them that when you give a president some obscene unchecked powers (and especially when you have a legislative branch that abandons their responsibility to be a check and balance and becomes a bunch of bi-partisan yes-men, you are giving that power to every president that comes afterward. Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think about it. We like to blame "the government", but I'd blame most of our current situation on an entire population that we have failed to educate on civics and how government works. They don't even know the basics and they give up or dismiss so much, because they don't know better.
  - PythonicAlpha 13y ago
    This is correct. But your explanation is a little simplified. The people don't "give" power. In many cases, government takes it. The parliaments give the power to government -- but they are not the people. They are elected people and belong partly to the established system. The problem that you describe can be better called: The people don't resist enough, that the system is taking the power and changing the rules so freedom is vanishing. I see it in my country: Before election day it was clearly visible that the government is selling our freedom for good contacts to the US and they turned a blind eye to anything the US did. It was totally visible to all. But they where reelected even with a surplus. So most people just did not care enough. Some extra money or personal benefits where more important than democracy or freedom. I am sure, that this notion in the western countries will retaliate heavily on us. I really fear, that now all the nightmares of Orwell and others could come true and humanity will sink into hell of its own devise.
  - hga 13y ago
    "Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think about it." Not just "think"; my political awareness begins with Nixon's first term, and Obama "feels" a lot like him, certainly a lot more than any following president. Check around, many other of us older types have noticed this. Just look at the analogous IRS situations, only in Nixon's days they mostly ignored his requests.
    - pstack 13y ago
      That's why I said it is what we have today. Right down to spying on dissidents and political adversaries and blackmailing and extorting them for personal, political, and economic gain.
ctdonath 13y ago
The Founding Fathers of the USA were concerned about writing a Bill Of Rights because any natural right not enumerated therein might be construed as not being a right at all. This is where we are with pervasive surveillance: being incapable of imagining/comprehending a surveillance system of this scale, it never dawned in them to protect anything more than "persons, papers and effects". At a time when just overhearing a conversation was hard enough to require concerted effort, they could not dream of a day when a significant percentage of every conversation among 300,000,000 people could be monitored and catalogued automatically at a not-prohibitive cost. Methinks: had they known, they would have not hesitated to prohibit it as explicitly as they did infringement of arms possession. Alas, the courts adhere only to the letter of the Constitution, not its spirit.
- alexeisadeski3 13y ago
  How do originalists regard digital privacy and speech protections? I'm pretty sure that they do afford all rights and protections to digital messages as to written letters, is that correct?
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    It's not just the content, it's the metadata. Instant and total awareness of implied content thru comprehensive data mining goes far beyond what the Founding Fathers could imagine.
    - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
      I know that it's not just the content. Originalists don't require that the 'Founding Fathers' have known the future: Originalists allow assault rifles to be protected under the 2nd. They allow, presumably, emails and internet newspapers to have full 1st protections. Thus my question is... have any originalists weighed in on this particular subject?
- jessriedel 13y ago
  It's perfectly consistent to think that non-enumerated rights should be protected by lawmakers without thinking that judges should enforce them. Remember, judicial review isn't even codified in the constitution. (If the framers had both considered and wanted judicial review, they obviously would ave written it in.) If we let judges infer non-enumerated rights, they could do anything. It's one thing to allow an unelected person interpret written word, but it's crazy to let the effectively create new rights based on their personal conceptions. Instead, the failure is with lawmakers.
00rion 13y ago
There's another possibility. The NSA has blackmailed Obama into protecting their interests. If Obama makes substantial changes to the NSA and then is outed for something that the NSA would have known about, he may have been blackmailed.
- hga 13y ago
  Well discussed in this related topic sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045 I and many others simply don't buy that premise in our modern no shame culture.
PythonicAlpha 13y ago
Obama just got to much trust in advance. Everybody seemed to think, because his predecessor was such a catastrophe, Obama must be some kind of savior. But he isn't. He even got the peace noble price just for his announcements. Nothing more. Still his announcement is there, that he will close Guantanamo. It is announced but nothing done. He is the savior of announcements. Also people thought, that he would finish up with the bad ruling of his predecessor. But even the known cases of torture in Iraq did not have any consequences (besides those of letting some stupid low level soldiers be the escape goats). One of the first doings of Obama was a big amnesty for any wrongdoings of intelligence people. That already showed a foreshadow what we could expect of Obama. I guess, either Obama is a Wolfe in savior-skin, or he is a sheep in a wolfs-skin and so much under pressure from some side, that he has to obey and shut up, no matter what he really wanted in the first place ... I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the cover pages are less mighty as we shall think.
- mistermann 13y ago
  > I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the cover pages are less mighty as we shall think. This is the correct answer. The presidency is now almost entirely a figure head, a proxy for the people that really control the actions of the United States.
- vidarh 13y ago
  I don't think even the announcements mattered - he got the peace prize for not being Bush. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief that the US didn't vote in another half-insane Republican. Obama's policies were relatively unimportant - he was the lesser of two evils, where the greater evil was pretty much the anointed successor of Satan from the point of view of large parts of the world (his policies didn't matter either; he could've been replaced by Mother Theresa and the taint of association with Bush would still have been there). That's how badly Bush alienated even huge numbers of people internationally who have traditionally been very right wing and very pro-US. Consider that e.g. Clinton was very well liked internationally, yet he got nothing like the reception Obama got. Obama's election was the first and only time where I heard of tons of non-Americans going to parties celebrating the US election. There was a very real sense of elation, especially given the kick in the face and disappointment and total and utter disbelief the Bush re-election created last time around.
wturner 13y ago
I don't mean to sound conspiratorial but I get the impression that when someone becomes president their is a manner by which the intelligence community implicitly says "Ok , you're the president now...here's how the world really fucking works". The end result being a host of very convincing cultural assumptions that are hard to argue with if you're on the inside and driving the wheel.
- hga 13y ago
  Actually, as a candidate, at some point they start getting read in on national security matters, so this "indoctrination" begins even before the election.

105 points by ruswick 13y ago

Quite a few people didn't trust him enough to vote for him during the last two presidential elections ... since he can't run for another term, I'm guessing he doesn't care if the people that did vote for him trust him anymore.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

moocowduckquack 13y ago

Is very hard to trust anyone over pervasive suveillance. That is partly why it is so poisonous. Public political figures are obvious intelligence targets, if only for budget protection.

obblekk 13y ago

In the NYT article it mentioned something about him trusting himself not to go too far. I guess it's this feeling of enlightened ruler that always goes too far.

pstack 13y ago
Unfortunately, so many citizens feel this way, too. It never occurs to them that the government never gives power back. Look at the Patriot Act. It just keeps going and going and going. It never occurs to them that when you give a president some obscene unchecked powers (and especially when you have a legislative branch that abandons their responsibility to be a check and balance and becomes a bunch of bi-partisan yes-men, you are giving that power to every president that comes afterward. Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think about it. We like to blame "the government", but I'd blame most of our current situation on an entire population that we have failed to educate on civics and how government works. They don't even know the basics and they give up or dismiss so much, because they don't know better.
- PythonicAlpha 13y ago
  This is correct. But your explanation is a little simplified. The people don't "give" power. In many cases, government takes it. The parliaments give the power to government -- but they are not the people. They are elected people and belong partly to the established system. The problem that you describe can be better called: The people don't resist enough, that the system is taking the power and changing the rules so freedom is vanishing. I see it in my country: Before election day it was clearly visible that the government is selling our freedom for good contacts to the US and they turned a blind eye to anything the US did. It was totally visible to all. But they where reelected even with a surplus. So most people just did not care enough. Some extra money or personal benefits where more important than democracy or freedom. I am sure, that this notion in the western countries will retaliate heavily on us. I really fear, that now all the nightmares of Orwell and others could come true and humanity will sink into hell of its own devise.
- hga 13y ago
  "Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think about it." Not just "think"; my political awareness begins with Nixon's first term, and Obama "feels" a lot like him, certainly a lot more than any following president. Check around, many other of us older types have noticed this. Just look at the analogous IRS situations, only in Nixon's days they mostly ignored his requests.
  - pstack 13y ago
    That's why I said it is what we have today. Right down to spying on dissidents and political adversaries and blackmailing and extorting them for personal, political, and economic gain.

ctdonath 13y ago

The Founding Fathers of the USA were concerned about writing a Bill Of Rights because any natural right not enumerated therein might be construed as not being a right at all. This is where we are with pervasive surveillance: being incapable of imagining/comprehending a surveillance system of this scale, it never dawned in them to protect anything more than "persons, papers and effects". At a time when just overhearing a conversation was hard enough to require concerted effort, they could not dream of a day when a significant percentage of every conversation among 300,000,000 people could be monitored and catalogued automatically at a not-prohibitive cost. Methinks: had they known, they would have not hesitated to prohibit it as explicitly as they did infringement of arms possession. Alas, the courts adhere only to the letter of the Constitution, not its spirit.

alexeisadeski3 13y ago
How do originalists regard digital privacy and speech protections? I'm pretty sure that they do afford all rights and protections to digital messages as to written letters, is that correct?
- ctdonath 13y ago
  It's not just the content, it's the metadata. Instant and total awareness of implied content thru comprehensive data mining goes far beyond what the Founding Fathers could imagine.
  - alexeisadeski3 13y ago
    I know that it's not just the content. Originalists don't require that the 'Founding Fathers' have known the future: Originalists allow assault rifles to be protected under the 2nd. They allow, presumably, emails and internet newspapers to have full 1st protections. Thus my question is... have any originalists weighed in on this particular subject?
jessriedel 13y ago
It's perfectly consistent to think that non-enumerated rights should be protected by lawmakers without thinking that judges should enforce them. Remember, judicial review isn't even codified in the constitution. (If the framers had both considered and wanted judicial review, they obviously would ave written it in.) If we let judges infer non-enumerated rights, they could do anything. It's one thing to allow an unelected person interpret written word, but it's crazy to let the effectively create new rights based on their personal conceptions. Instead, the failure is with lawmakers.

00rion 13y ago

There's another possibility. The NSA has blackmailed Obama into protecting their interests. If Obama makes substantial changes to the NSA and then is outed for something that the NSA would have known about, he may have been blackmailed.

hga 13y ago
Well discussed in this related topic sub-thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7070045 I and many others simply don't buy that premise in our modern no shame culture.

PythonicAlpha 13y ago

Obama just got to much trust in advance. Everybody seemed to think, because his predecessor was such a catastrophe, Obama must be some kind of savior. But he isn't. He even got the peace noble price just for his announcements. Nothing more. Still his announcement is there, that he will close Guantanamo. It is announced but nothing done. He is the savior of announcements. Also people thought, that he would finish up with the bad ruling of his predecessor. But even the known cases of torture in Iraq did not have any consequences (besides those of letting some stupid low level soldiers be the escape goats). One of the first doings of Obama was a big amnesty for any wrongdoings of intelligence people. That already showed a foreshadow what we could expect of Obama. I guess, either Obama is a Wolfe in savior-skin, or he is a sheep in a wolfs-skin and so much under pressure from some side, that he has to obey and shut up, no matter what he really wanted in the first place ... I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the cover pages are less mighty as we shall think.

mistermann 13y ago
> I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the cover pages are less mighty as we shall think. This is the correct answer. The presidency is now almost entirely a figure head, a proxy for the people that really control the actions of the United States.
vidarh 13y ago
I don't think even the announcements mattered - he got the peace prize for not being Bush. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief that the US didn't vote in another half-insane Republican. Obama's policies were relatively unimportant - he was the lesser of two evils, where the greater evil was pretty much the anointed successor of Satan from the point of view of large parts of the world (his policies didn't matter either; he could've been replaced by Mother Theresa and the taint of association with Bush would still have been there). That's how badly Bush alienated even huge numbers of people internationally who have traditionally been very right wing and very pro-US. Consider that e.g. Clinton was very well liked internationally, yet he got nothing like the reception Obama got. Obama's election was the first and only time where I heard of tons of non-Americans going to parties celebrating the US election. There was a very real sense of elation, especially given the kick in the face and disappointment and total and utter disbelief the Bush re-election created last time around.

wturner 13y ago

I don't mean to sound conspiratorial but I get the impression that when someone becomes president their is a manner by which the intelligence community implicitly says "Ok , you're the president now...here's how the world really fucking works". The end result being a host of very convincing cultural assumptions that are hard to argue with if you're on the inside and driving the wheel.

hga 13y ago
Actually, as a candidate, at some point they start getting read in on national security matters, so this "indoctrination" begins even before the election.