Official Oversight Board Say NSA Spying Illegal, Obama Disagrees

[ringpriest]

In a recently released report (pdf link), the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (established by Congress in 2004 but mostly inactive until quite recently) found that the NSA's phone surveillance program is illegal, has minimal benefits, and should be shut down. Despite the fact that his own appointees to the Oversight Board find the program illegal (and useless), the Obama Administration continues to support the NSA.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

He should of just said it was bad. At this point it would look better on him. Oh well I guess. If he disagrees I can't change his mind.

[Deleted]

I wonder what he's going to say when it gets ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

[Masark]

I wonder what he's going to say when it gets ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

This supreme court? They'll breakdance around the issue by ruling that whoever is suing doesn't have standing.

[Skroe]

It was just advisory. Ho hum. Obama disagrees, decision is made.

I was gonna post a thread titled 'Snowden Loses', but this'll do nicely.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/..._on_a_pr_blitz

Edward Snowden has a problem: The revelations for which he abandoned his country, his girlfriend, and his career have -- so far, at least -- failed to inspire meaningful Congressional or White House efforts to rein in the National Security Agency.

Since stepping into the public light, Snowden has talked a lot about democracy, and on Thursday he emerged once more for an online Q&A to talk politics, surveillance, and, yes, democracy. Snowden has made a point of rarely granting interviews, but Thursday's appearance was the second time the self-proclaimed whistleblower has submitted himself to questioning just this week. In an interview with the New Yorker published Tuesday, he emerged from hiding -- digitally, anyway -- to deny charges leveled at him by the powerful chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, that he has been in bed with the Russian security services. On Thursday, he told his online audience that he may be willing to return to the United States if Congress enacts significant whistleblower reform, that "not all spying is bad," and that the most controversial intelligence practices that he has unveiled had actually been somewhat worthless as counter-terrorism tools.

By Snowden's standards, the two interviews constitute something of a PR blitz, and while it's impossible to know his true motivations for doing so, it appears quite clear that he has come to realize the NSA is winning the battle to retain its powers with the only constituency that really matters: President Obama. In a speech Friday, Obama unveiled a series of proposed reforms to the intelligence community that amounted to little more than cosmetic changes geared toward addressing public outrage at the Snowden revelations. Meanwhile, rival bills to put new restrictions on the NSA are currently making their way through Congress, but it's not clear if either will pass.
Both the White House and Congress have clear motivation for their go slow approach. Neither would want to be blamed for scaling back intelligence programs if another major terror attack were to occur on American soil. That's the flip side of democratic politics in the post-9/11 era: Fear of terrorism makes it extremely difficult for elected officials to say no to the demands of America's spies.

On Thursday, the first question Snowden agreed to answer was whether "it is possible for our democracy to recover from the damage NSA spying has done to our liberties." Yes, he said: "We can correct the laws, restrain the overreach of agencies, and hold the senior officials responsible for abusive programs to account." Sure, it's a possibility, but will any of those things happen? So far, the answer seems to be no. Obama declined to endorse the more aggressive recommendations of the advisory panel he appointed to review intelligence gathering. And despite the fact that Snowden documents show that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, quite clearly lied to Congress when he said the NSA doesn't collect data belonging to Americans, he hasn't been fired or otherwise disciplined.
It's not all gloom and doom for Snowden, especially on the legal front. Late last year, federal District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone record was in all likelihood unconstitutional. A later ruling by District Judge William Pauley went in the opposite direction and concluded that the NSA's methods were a legitimate intelligence tool.

Those rulings may have set the stage for a showdown at the Supreme Court, where it is unclear how the justices will rule. One prominent national security lawyer, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, is highly skeptical that the justices will be willing to end a program that the White House has loudly and repeatedly described as essential to national security. As a result, Wittes doubts that the justices will be willing to end the program and potentially bear a degree of alleged responsibility the next time a major terrorist attack occurs in the United States. "When everything's said and done, I can't count five votes on the Supreme Court to bear that kind of responsibility for the next bad thing that might happen," Wittes wrote in December.

Still, with Section 215 of the Patriot Act -- the provision used to authorize bulk collection of telephone records -- set to expire on June 1, 2015, other legal observers doubt that the Supreme Court will even take up the issue. Given that uncertainty, the judiciary is the wildcard in the NSA reform effort. Will they or won't they strike down bulk collection? No one really knows -- and that isn't particularly convenient for Snowden.

Snowden has had some success in changing the conversation about surveillance -- according to the latest Pew poll, 40 percent of Americans approve of government collection of telephone and Internet data and 53 percent disapprove -- but that sense of outrage has not been sufficient to spur official Washington into action.
And so Snowden has emerged to push intelligence reform. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal privacy watchdog, concluded that the mass collection of phone records has "minimal" benefit in fighting terrorism, a conclusion which was echoed by Obama's own review panel. Snowden latched on to the newly revealed finding to make the case for ending such bulk collection. "There is simply no justification for continuing an unconstitutional policy with a 0 percent success rate," he argued.

At the same time, Snowden seems to have realized that he can't engage in an endless public fight with the intelligence community and its many defenders. "Not all spying is bad," he said on Thursday -- a comment that was his most conciliatory public remark to date about the NSA and the U.S. intelligence community.
The U.S. government, however, remains anything but conciliatory. While Snowden said Thursday that his return to the United States would be "the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself," law enforcement officials have shown very little interest in meeting any of Snowden's conditions for returning home, including his demand for an open trial before before a jury. On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder said that Snowden needed to be "held accountable for his actions," and while he said he would be willing to "engage in conversations" about a plea deal, he made clear that that was an unlikely outcome.
"People have really gotten hung up on the idea of whether he's a whistleblower or something else," Holder said. "From my perspective, he's a defendant. He's a person that we lodged criminal charges against. I think that's the most apt title."

Snowden may have escaped Holder's clutches, but few other things have gone his way. Meaningful intelligence reform has stalled on Capitol Hill and the White House has proposed only minimal changes to the NSA programs Snowden has tried so hard to derail. His increasing public presence is a good barometer of where things stand: the more we hear from him, the worse things are going.

Things are going ill for the world's most famous escaped internet troll.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Skrosec on damage control.

[Skroe]

I wonder what he's going to say when it gets ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court?

Read the above. The chances of it happening are slim to none.

- - - Updated - - -

Skrosec on damage control.

Damage control? DAMAGE CONTROL? That's a joke. That was written in Foreign Policy at 1pm... today. It's not my thoughts. It's the thoughts of one of the two major Foreign Policy publications in the US.

And furthermore I posted it at 10:29 pm forum time and you replied at 10:30 pm . So unless you read the entire thing and thought about it in 1 minute (an impossibility), you responded without even reading, which just further illustrates the sheer stupidity of more NSA debate. People will believe whatever they want to, facts be damned. In fact, the very article has Holder basically saying exactly that. I even bolded it at the bottom for you before you replied - how people are pointlessly hung up on a label for Snowden.

Be it your replying without reading the contents of a post, or Therionn up there thinking that the Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional even though the artcile I linked has has a national security lawyer at the Brookings Institution, you know, someone who gets paid for thinking about this kind of stuff, saying it's extremely unlikely that will happen, people will believe what they want to believe because it's comfortable for them.

I take comfort in that my position is policy backed by policy makers, and others position is a wish and hope. The position I back is winning. The article I linked, pretty conclusively backs that up. Snowden is losing. Badly.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

No it's you being damage control. You will do whatever it takes to get Snowden to burn because you have a very unhealthy hatred of him and hide it behind big walls of text. You don't convince me.

[Skroe]

No it's you being damage control. You will do whatever it takes to get Snowden to burn because you have a very unhealthy hatred of him and hide it behind big walls of text. You don't convince me.

HAHAHHAHAHAH!!!

Alright. What's the definition of a fanatic again? Because you're fulling it pretty wonderfully by hammering away at the same point despite no progress.

Why would I be on damage control when my position effectively won when Obama got up in front of the US and rearranged the furniture and called it change. Why would I be on damage control if I feel like I'm winning?

How funny. Really. I read your post and came out the other side smiling.

Oh and for the record, it's not just Snowden. It's his world view. I want people who agree with him to lose on this policy issue, and just as importantly, know you lost. Snowden is just a guy. That guy in prison is 'nice'. I'm more interested in the comprehensive defeat of a cornucopia of ideas and their believers feeling it. That's the victory I want. I want the Supreme Court of the United States upholding NSA spying, and I want Snowden's supporters to see it happen.

[PACOX]

Congress (mainly just people who just want to besmirch Obama) and Obama can argue about the NSA all day. SCOTUS has the final say.

[Skroe]

Congress (mainly just people who just want to besmirch Obama) and Obama can argue about the NSA all day. SCOTUS has the final say.

And on that note:
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/..._on_a_pr_blitz

Those rulings may have set the stage for a showdown at the Supreme Court, where it is unclear how the justices will rule. One prominent national security lawyer, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, is highly skeptical that the justices will be willing to end a program that the White House has loudly and repeatedly described as essential to national security. As a result, Wittes doubts that the justices will be willing to end the program and potentially bear a degree of alleged responsibility the next time a major terrorist attack occurs in the United States. "When everything's said and done, I can't count five votes on the Supreme Court to bear that kind of responsibility for the next bad thing that might happen," Wittes wrote in December.

And this is the Center-Left Brookings Institution.

Anyway, to dinner I go... laughing my way out the door.

[ringpriest]

I take comfort in that my position is policy backed by policy makers, and others position is a wish and hope. The position I back is winning. The article I linked, pretty conclusively backs that up. Snowden is losing. Badly.

Your position is supporting a bunch of clowns in a black comedy routine that has cost tens of billions.

Congresscritters are increasingly coming out in opposition to the NSA's domestic spying. Multinational corporations based in the United States are losing billions because of the intelligence community activities Snowden exposed. There's a public debate that refuses to go away. Multiple lawsuits are snaking their way through the courts with more to come. America's allies have repeated and publicly taken issue with the actions Snowden has exposed. Bruce Schneier is dissecting the NSA daily on his blog. The RSA conference is turning into a disaster because of their backdoor dealing with the NSA. Multiple independent government boards with members picked by Obama have condemned the NSA. The NSA's own officals have repeatedly backpedaled, and admit they've accomplished nothing. The president's attempt to quiet the furor with a speech has gone over like a lead balloon. The government is publicly debating offering Snowden amnesty because they still don't know what he took. I could go on, but the trend is clear to everyone except those who willfully deny it.

Even if the U.S. government 'gets' Snowden tomorrow, he's already won.