PRESIDENT OBAMA HIT HIS DATAMINING REMARKS OUT OF THE PARK YESTERDAY: "He looked like he had grown into the suit," a friend said - POTUS, taking a question after making a statement on Obamacare in San Jose yesterday : "[T]he programs that have been discussed over the last couple days in the press are secret in the sense that they're classified. But they're not secret in the sense that when it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program. ... [N]obody is listening to your telephone calls. ... [W]hat the intelligence community is doing is looking at [is] phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people's names, and they're not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism. ... [I]f the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they've got to go back to a federal judge ... [S]ome of the hype that we've been hearing over the last day or so -- nobody is listening to the content of people's phone calls. ... [I]f anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and want to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes' phone call, they would have to go back to a federal judge ... Now, with respect to the Internet and emails -- this does not apply to U.S. citizens and it does not apply to people living in the United States. ...
"So in summary , what you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress, bipartisan majorities have approved on them, Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved, and federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout. ... [W]e've also set up an audit process, when I came into office, to make sure that we're, after the fact, making absolutely certain that all the safeguards are being properly observed. Now, having said all that, you'll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mindset, I specifically said that one of the things that we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy? ... I welcome this debate. ... I think it's a sign of maturity, because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate. And I think it's interesting that there are some folks on the left but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it who weren't very worried about it when there was a Republican President. ...
"I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of safeguards. But my assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on the privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content, that on net, it was worth us doing. ... But I think it's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. ...
"I don't welcome leaks , because there's a reason why these programs are classified. ... I will leave this office ... sometime in the ... next three and a half years, and after that, I will be a private citizen. And I suspect that, on a list of people who might be targeted so that somebody could read their emails or listen to their phone calls, I'd probably be pretty high on that list. It's not as if I don't have a personal interest in making sure my privacy is protected. But I know that the people who are involved in these programs, they operate like professionals. And these things are very narrowly circumscribed. They're very focused. And in the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, then I think we've struck the right balance." |
