Obama's Cream Puff Plan to Reform US Surveillance Program

Townhall.com ^ | August 11, 2013 | Mike Shedlock

[Kaslin]

On Friday, president Obama announced a plan to reform NSA surveillance.

Don't expect much of anything to come out of it. It's a dog and pony show designed to make people feel better as opposed to any solid measures as to how much data government collects on everyone.

Here are excerpts from the above article with my comments interspersed.

Independent: President Obama told a packed room of journalists at the White House Friday afternoon that he will work to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act - the provision which currently allows the federal government’s intelligence agencies to collect domestic phone data.

The President also said that he will work to increase oversight with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - the secretive judicial body that authorizes the government to collect data on communications coming in and out of the United States.

Obama said the reform will be accompanied with the roll-out of a new website which will provide Americans and people around the world the ability to learn more about the surveillance programs.

Obama: "The US will “make public as much information about these programs as possible.”

Mish:  Expect to discover that the only thing "possible" is a bunch of government propaganda designed to purposely mislead the public about the extent of government data gathering activities.

Independent: Obama said he is forming an outside advisory panel to review the surveillance programs, assigning a privacy officer at the National Security Agency and creating an independent attorney to challenge the government’s spy policies in court.

Mish: The NSA advisory panel will have as much say as an advisory panel of ants at an anteater convention.

Obama: "No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” Obama said. “I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think the American people’s preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws. A thoughtful, fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place."

Mish: Snowden is a hero.

Obama: "So the fact is that Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies,” added Obama. “If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then like every American citizen he can come here, appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case. If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community for the first time. So there were other avenues available for someone whose conscious was stirred."

Mish: There were no other avenues that would have done anything about the blatantly illegal data gathering other than making everything public.

Obama: "If you are outside of the intelligence community, if you are the ordinary person, and you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying, ‘US, Big Brother looking down on you, collecting telephone records, etc.,’ well, understandably people would be concerned. I would be too if I wasn’t inside the government. It's not enough for me to have confidence in these programs. The American people have to have confidence in them as well."

Mish: Obama has confidence in something blatantly illegal, and he has the gall to insist you should have equal confidence.

Obama: "The question is: How do I make the American people more comfortable?”

Mish: The answer is: Stop the spying on US citizens and stop the spying on our allies as well.

Obama: "I am comfortable that the program is currently not being abused"

Mish: Even if one foolishly believes spying on US citizens is constitutional, Snowden proved without a doubt the program was repeatedly and purposely abused. And that makes the president is a blatant liar.

[The Duke]

The crap some spew about NSA being able to decode any encryption is pure baloney.

The don't have to work very hard if they are the ones who wrote the encryption product you're using.

[AtlasStalled]

Not a single thing will be changed. Some generalized talk about tightening standards to placate the masses, everything will be forgotten, and the program will go on as before and no doubt over time will become even more intrusive. Such is the world in which we live.

[drunknsage]

If the Feds gave a crap about security they would start instituting and enforcing standards within the DOD. As it stands, the Feds are getting their butts kicked by Anon and other hacker groups. That’s why they show up every year at Defcon and Blackhat groveling. The Secret Service has already embarrassed themselves by employing the most successful credit card hacker on the planet. He was operating right under their nose pulling off the biggest heist in history. Politicians and most businessmen are too ignorant to understand technology and have zero respect for security or IT outside of how it can make them money. My friend who works in a DOD industry told me all about how the execs dont follow security protocol. They just flaunt the rules because they are entitled and think they are special.

Meanwhile our Defense Industry has been hacked to pieces and our secrets stolen. The same will happen with the NSA databases and Obamacare. Soon harassment and blackmail will be the norm. The private details of our lives will be leaked, just like the IRS scandal, to our political opponents and nobody will be help accountable because the entire thing will be wrapped in secrecy.

[TArcher]

Mish: Snowden is a hero.

Hmmm. 

Which bastion of free speech and individual sovereignty did Comrade Snowden, hero of der peoplez Useful Idiot revolution, head to again?

 

"According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.

 

It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages.

 

The first stage being "demoralization".

 

It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least 3 generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.

 

Most of the activity of the department [KGB] was to compile huge amount / volume of information, on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion.  Publisher, editors, journalists, uh actors, educationalists, professors of political science.  Members of parliament, representatives of business circles.  "

--KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov

--Soviet Subversion of the Free Press (Ideological subversion, Destabilization, CRISIS - and the KGB)

 

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2095202/posts

 

FAIL

[TArcher]

[nobody will be held accountable because the entire thing will be wrapped in secrecy.]

Yeah but, "It's about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" so that's ok.

Ask your friend about the plethora of 7 figure projects in  fail mode... that nobody can talk about.

Juval Lowy told me he saw a report filled with pages and pages of them.

Fox, Mr. Charles E Fox - please come to the nearest secure tin can and string.

[familyop]

"The crap some spew about NSA being able to decode any encryption is pure baloney."

They can do so with remote control of systems using commercial, closed source operating systems--the most popular systems used in business and government offices.

"The don't have to work very hard if they are the ones who wrote the encryption product you're using."

That's why they keep saying that they have done just that--because they haven't (e.g., the official hoax about OpenBSD's ipsec years ago). Global corporates have allowed them to write back doors into the most popular, expensive, closed-source software though, or in some cases, done it themselves.

[familyop]

"Mish: Snowden is a hero."

I disagree with that. [Yep. Changed my mind.] Snowden claimed to be getting a message out about loose cannon surveillance, but he probably released too many documents and too much information unnecessarily to be accomplishing only that.

Foreign nations don't need technical information about our nation's military intelligence methods. He could have simply said that surveillance was to broadly used against civilians (as others have). That would have been enough. But he probably went much further than that, and his comments did lean a little too far toward counter-culture speech in topics other than surveillance.

[Kaslin]

We need to forgive him for lying. He can't help it. All liberals lie. It comes natural to them

The forgive him for lying part was said with my fingers crossed behind my back

[Liz]

The monstrous Obama govt we, the people, live under---is utterly capable of extraordinary crimes against its people.

<><> Benghazi do-nothing WRT slaughtered Americans

<><> Hillary's State Dept covers-up sex scandals---obstructs justice---scrubs investigations

<><> Holder's DOJ (labels journo Rosen a criminal--seizes AP dcumnts--snoops USSC/Congress' blackberries)

<><> IRS political targeting

<><> IRS steals 60 million private medical records

<><> HHS' Sibelius strong-arms Obamacare insurance providers for money

<><> secret NSA snooping

<><> IRS sending $45 Million/32,000 EITC refunds to illegals at ONE address.

<><> Snowden globe-trots w/ US secrets

<><> EPA uses phantom email accounts

<><> Holder's Fast and Furious gun-running; savage drug cartels kill two US border patrol agents

<><> 5 million Ohaha henchmen w/ top security clearance---Ntl security undermined

<><> govt wiretaps rose 71% last year alone

<><> O's drones shoot down Americans outside military parameters

<><> monstrous TSA travesties

<><> Solyndra and other green money-laundries

<><> sucking up to gays and other predator/perverts

<><> forces Boy Scouts to admit gays.

<><> Obamacare (and other laws) violated at will

<><> The Data Hub---HHS' database of personal info

<><> PP'hood profiteering---will control Data Hub

<><> forcing primitive populations w/ Third World loyalties on US taxpayers

<><> violating 2nd amendment rights

<><> empowering Planned Parnthood's abortion savagery

<><> PPhood genital-sniffers as O'Care navigator

<><> police state---monitoring license plates 24/7

<><> food foreign aid---EBT card abuse

<><> Obamas' non-stop luxe tax-pay vacays.

<><>DOJ advises Muslim council edgy social media posts violate civil rights/religious freedom---

<><> Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's inflammatory postings not mentioned

<><>DOJ asserts "global Christian terror" (?) rivals worldwide Islamic violence threats

<><> Obama orders shutdowns of coal-fired, electricity generating plants

<><> Big Brother-type surveillance/puniushments

<><> radical judges/Obama commissars hostile to 10th Amendment.

[Vaduz]

Not sure he has documents for fear they will come back to bite him bet he has other keep them con men know all the loopholes.