Yeah, I hate it when this starts out with Trump bashing. Obama is much more guilty. I am not an american, so I don't exactly understand what the term 'liberal' means. Spying on your own people without warrant?
Ideology is basically meaningless. American politics is entirely tribalism.
The Democrats spent 8 years decrying the myriad ways the executive branch violated the Constitution under George W. Then Obama takes power and basically continues or expands nearly all of them, and with only a small handful of exceptions, the Democrats stop caring and forget entirely.
The Republicans spend 8 years decrying overspending and the national debt under Obama, even organizing an enormous 'Tea Party' movement predicated around resistance to it. Then, as Trump is taking power, they rally around a budget that will increase the national debt by 50%.
Ideology is an extremely loose set of guidelines that are only really adhered to in a coherent way by a tiny handful of true believers (folks like Bernie Sanders or Justin Amash). By and large, politics is purely about power -- once you win, all that matters is erasing any past victories claimed by the other party and then doing whatever will please your donors so you can win the next time.
American politics is good cop - bad cop, which one is good or bad depends on political affiliations. Both have the exact same goals with minimal deviation besides what words are being read from the teleprompter. Political hardliners cancel each other out and solidify the power of the base.
Have you considered that Obama's regulating the distribution before Trump comes in and the main issue is that the FBI is both an intelligence and law enforcement agency?
I mean, if the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security weren't in this group of 16, wouldn't the discussion be completely different?
Lastly, who says the minimization that the NSA had been doing itself so far didn't just consist of removing noise? The requests have been and will continue to be confidential after all.
Obama is a proponent of very strong intelligence agencies which certainly must be criticized, but the hysteria and fear-mongering that's happening right now completely misses the issues that have to be solved first, imho.
More discussion here - https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5o1ovy/with_only...