Listening to President Obama’s press conference today, as he outlined “reforms” to the intelligence-gathering if the N.S.A., I had this thought:
He’s missing that people aren’t simply worried that abuse might be happening in the N.S.A. programs. Rather, people think the programs themselves are the abuse. People want the programs changed and limited, not simply to be more awareness of them.
What do you all think?
Last week, I wrote up a post with several short and random items just listed out with some thoughts brought up by the NSA Surveillance leaks. I had a few ideas that I forgot to put in last time (and it would have made the post too long anyway), so here they are.
Egypt. Firstly, in the midst of continuing NSA leaks, and even the Director of National Intelligence admitting he lied under oath to Congress, is it wrong of me to be a little frustrated at Egypt right now? I mean, they’re taking up all of the news cycle coverage. Can’t we get a little time for a Constitutional crisis here? Stop stealing the spotlight.
(You too, Snowden, although I know it’s not all your fault.)
Law vs. Constitution. This is one I forgot to say last week. Everyone keeps wanting to stress that these surveillance and wiretapping programs were legal and law-abiding; that Congress and the Judiciary were fully aware of it.
Well, I already mentioned last week about the Judciary part of this, but as far as Congress goes, they’re right–it is indeed legal for the Executive branch to have been doing this stuff. But, there are two caveats to that.
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the long way home 