Ride the Lightning

President Wants Us To Be Comfortable with NSA's Surveillance

August 14, 2013

After being outed by Mr. Snowden, with the consequent predictable turmoil, the President announced last Friday that he has a plan to make American citizens more "comfortable" with the surveillance activities of the NSA.

He released a more detailed legal justification for domestic spying and called for more openness and scrutiny of the NSA’s programs to reassure a skeptical public that its privacy is not being violated.

The ACLU says it is "too little, too late" although it is happy to see any move toward more transparency and oversight.

It did not appear that the President wanted to curtail any of the surveillance, just that he wanted Americans to understand it, and to feel protected against government intrusion. The trouble is, we know now what the government is capable of and some of what it has actually done. In a world where the government has such extensive surveillance available to it, "trust me, I'm from the government" is likely to fall on deaf and cynical ears.