[sam-mueller]

FTA: One might wish that President Obama could put up such a principled defense for his scurrilous conduct in handing over the security of the American people to secret courts and universal surveillance.

What exactly is Obama's defense? I know myself and others are extremely disappointed in his direction, despite voting him in for a second term. Yet it doesn't seem like he's made any attempt at justifying his direction. Does he even feel obligated? Has he directly addressed the issues of his hypocritical back-flopping on prosecuting whistleblowers, or blatant disregard to our privacy rights? Is he just ignoring the backlash?

[rayiner]

Here's my hypothesis. Obama is thinking about the situation like a lawyer and as a result he can't understand why there would be such a vociferous objection now of all times.

As the recently declassified FISC opinion shows, most of the NSA program is broadly within well-established law. Third-party doctrine means it's not illegal to get data from third parties like Google or Facebook, and it's well-accepted that 4th amendment protections don't apply to foreigners. The U.S. has been surveilling foreigners for decades now, and has been gathering records from third parties like banks, etc, for decades as well. The legal nit to pick with the NSA's recent efforts seems to be that it's doing searches on purely domestic communications that indadvertedly get caught in the nets (though it also seems that the NSA isn't trying very hard to make the nets finer). But you can't object to the very foundations of the program purely on legal principles.

If you're looking at it from a legal point of view, it seems like a lot of uproar over something that's bad, but not something that's bad down to its foundations.

But to the digerati, it's a much bigger deal, and as someone who is not in that group I think Obama can't appreciate that point of view. The idea of getting e-mails from Google strikes a chord with many people in a way that the idea of getting bank records from banks doesn't. The digerati oppose electronic surveillance on principle, and don't care if analogous programs have existed in other areas for decades.

Incidentally, I don't expect Obama, or old line politicians like Feinstein or Pelosi to "get it" any time soon. This seems to be a "you either get it or you don't" issue. Either you have a visceral aversion to the idea of electronic surveillance or you don't. It's much more an emotional issue as anything else, and Obama's not an emotional guy. He's also a big government liberal, so he doesn't have any reason to oppose the NSA program on those grounds. He's got the most aggressive foreign policy and national security policy of any Democratic president since, well I don't even know who. He's the second-coming of Reagan on that front. He has no reason to view this as anything other than some NSA programs that stepped out of line and need to step back on the right side of the line.

[dragonwriter]

> As the recently declassified FISC opinion shows, most of the NSA program is broadly within well-established law.

The recently declassified FISC opinion shows that the NSA had a pattern of lying to the FISC about what the NSA program actually did to get it approved as within the law by the FISC, but that most of the parts the FISC had managed to find out about at the time of the opinion were still within (in the FISC's view) existing law.

Of course, if the NSA was repeatedly caught misrepresenting material facts in non-adversarial proceedings where there is no opposing party to independently seek evidence, challenge evidence, etc., how much of what remains is also misrepresentation? We don't know, and even the FISC can't know, because they can't know what they haven't yet caught the NSA lying about, but they certainly know that the NSA is willing to lie -- including to FISC -- as long as they can get away with it.

And because of that, neither we nor FISC have any idea -- from the opinion or after it -- how much of the actual NSA program is even remotely justifiable under the law.

[rayiner]

Even if you assume the NSA was lying to the FISC, what does the solution look like? A program much like the existing one, with a stronger external check on ensuring domestic communications aren't collected? You appoint a Special Counsel in the DOJ to prosecute perjury by NSA analysts? You think that'll make Hacker News happy?

The technology crowd objects to electronic surveillance conceptually. I think a large portion don't even like the idea that Google and Facebook could be forced to hand over data pursuant to a real warrant or subpoena, and that's so well established I couldn't tell you what century it was when that power didn't exist.

[dragonwriter]

> Even if you assume the NSA was lying to the FISC

"Assume"? They were caught repeatedly lying to the FISC.

> what does the solution look like?

That's a hard question, but getting enough people even starting to think about it first requires getting recognition of the problem.

[rayiner]

It's a hard question, but the threshold issue is: how far is that solution from the status quo? If you start reasoning from the set of principles you can reasonably impute onto Obama just based on his politics, the answer is: not that far. And if you want to know why he doesn't seem that concerned about the whole situation, there's your answer.

[jacquesm]

The digerati do not oppose surveillance on principle. They oppose surveillance en masse without proper oversight (such as real warrants looked at on an individual basis by a judge and signed off by that judge, not some electronic rubberstamp or similar) which effectively turns a significant portion of the population of the globe into suspects ahead of any crime they might commit.

If that doesn't freak you out I don't know what will.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with the 'Amsterdamse Bevolkingsregister' affair during WorldWar II but maybe if you're not you could spend a half hour reading up on it.

Long story short, without that registry a lot of Jews would have survived the war. I'm categorically against any registration of personal data or communications if it is not for a specific crime brought to the attention of a judge who considers the case serious enough to issue a specific warrant.

[lukifer]

I had been hoping that Obama's relative youth would put him closer to digerati territory, but it would seem that we're not there yet, despite his legendary social meda campaign and BlackBerry addiction. I think most people still think about spying in terms of WW2 and spy movies: individual humans listening to individual telephone calls of known targets. Obviously they don't have the resources to care about your "personal life", so they're just hunting the Worst of the Worst, right?

Only when one is savvy enough to understand that (a) a database never forgets, and (b) a well-mined database never shuts up, does the real danger of these programs become apparent.

...of course, there's also the possibility that Obama does understand all of this, either because he's somehow checkmated by the agencies and their knowledge, or he's part of the club and genuinely believes in naked power. But your theory is probably the most likely.

[pkinsky]

>Obviously they don't have the resources to care about your "personal life", so they're just hunting the Worst of the Worst, right?

Even this argument is flawed, there are FBI documents showing they very much cared about the personal life of noted communist agitator Martin Luther King.

[jlgreco]

I don't think there will ever be "digerati" in politics. Among the kids entering college this year, there are future mayors, future congressmen, and possibly even a future president or two. These aren't the kids that will one day identify as digerati; their paths diverge quickly.

[euroclydon]

OT, but I don't see how you can say his foreign policy is so robust. His Middle East policy is orders of magnitude less agressive that the Bushes militarily and Clinton's diplomatically.

[etiam]

I think Barack Obama is going to try to keep his public distance from the surveillance debacle. Classic power player tactics; the Machiavellian Prince is to be kept clean and associated with only good news. Dirtying themselves with dispensing punishment or handling scandals and bad news is for underlings - disposable if their sullied reputation becomes too much of a liability.

[einhverfr]

I voted for Obama in 2008 but after watching his first term decided that there was no way I could legitimize a second term. I voted Johnson and said loud and clear that Johnson was running on Obama's 2008 civil liberties platform, while Obama had been running as fast as he could in the wrong direction.

Obama has long ignored any backlash. During the OWS protests, he gave a jobs speech where he called for deregulation of Wall St. He knows nobody on the left will dare oppose him.

But what this means is that half the nation breathes a sign of relief, that we are being screwed by "our guy" instead of "the other guy" because if the same policies were put in place by someone from the other party, that would be a disaster.

[jaekwon]

There was a blip of news last week or so when Obama said that somebody would be appointed to provide oversight over the NSA programs, and that thing would become more transparent. I don't think anything has happened since except a slow trickle of news that paint a picture that gets worse and worse.

The closest we got to any change was the vote in Congress lead by Amash, which failed. People are getting disappointed, more people are wanting "out" in various ways.