Ride the Lightning

How Much Is Obama Changing the NSA's Surveillance?

January 21, 2014

Not so much as many of us had hoped.

President Obama announced on Friday that he will place new limits on intelligence agencies’ bulk collection of phone call records. But he rejected or simply didn't address other recommendations made by his panel of outside advisers to rein in the surveillance.

The New York Times created a nice graphical representation of the panel's recommendations and how the President's speech did or did not address them. Hat tip to Dave Ries for pointing me to such a nice simple summary of the speech vs. the recommendations.

My favorite part of the speech was when he said something to the effect of "If I want to know what foreign leaders are thinking, I'll just call them up and ask them." Sounds good, but of course we know they will often lie or equivocate, so I suspect that while the NSA will not listen in directly to those leaders, there will be other methodologies employed.

And how come I wasn't invited to Mrs. Obama's Saturday night dance party? It got more play than the President's speech.

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