Between Privacy and Security
Joseph P. Williams, U.S. News & World Report, December 11, 2015
Briefed early in his first term that the National Security Agency was spying on U.S. citizens – and that the program theoretically could have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the catalyst for its creation – an anxious President Barack Obama, preparing to visit survivors of the U.S.S. Cole bombing in Yemen, asked his legal team to check it out.
Days later, White House Counsel Greg Craig and Attorney General Eric Holder reported back: The secret program, titled “Stellar Wind” and authorized by former President George W. Bush, nudged the line between security and privacy. Yet they recommended that the new president consider the massive data collection program a national security necessity, and mend it – not end it.“The issue was, ‘Get it within the rules, so it can continue to be useful,’” Charlie Savage, author of “Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency” and national security reporter at The New York Times, recounted Wednesday at a National Press Club luncheon on national security.
Six years after the president’s high-stakes decision, the program’s usefulness in preventing terrorism and its impact on citizens’ privacy was highly controversial, but it’s taken on a new significance after last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and last week in San Bernardino, California, Savage says.
Progressives who cheered his 2009 inauguration now fret that Obama the Law Professor has become Bush the Cowboy, Savage points out. Meanwhile, Bush supporters who insisted on a powerful leader in the war against terror aren’t shy about declaring, “I told you so” to the left, he adds.
Panelist Matthew Waxman, an attorney who served in several senior level national security positions under Bush, rejected what he said were “caricaturish generalizations” that his former boss circumvented or ignored the law. While top administration officials wanted a bold presidency “free from legal restraints,” and not a deliberative one bound by law, they acted on their sincere interpretation of the Constitution, according to Waxman.
“There are some pros and cons” to Bush’s and Obama’s styles, he says, adding that balancing the two “is probably most appropriate.”Co-panelist Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel under Obama whose portfolio included national security, rejected the “binary” description of his boss as a peacenik-candidate-turned-pro-surveillance wartime president. He argues Obama has altered or rejected Bush-era national security programs, errs on the side of liberty when possible and has kept the nation safe while respecting legal boundaries his predecessor pushed against.
While there have been compromises, “We need to be very clear about the different ways national security legal policy is constructed,” Bauer says, noting Obama has unequivocally ended torture and repeatedly promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Wikileaks’ Assange: Big Brother is the New Normal
It’s game over in the global war for privacy: society lost and must learn to live with constant surveillance, says Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, the global hacking organization that unearths and publishes government secrets. Speaking by videophone at an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Russia Today network, Assange says the state trumped privacy because spying on citizens in the name of national security has become so easy, effective and accepted that more governments are doing it, and it’s getting cheaper.“The reason it will not [be rolled] back is that the cost of engaging in mass surveillance is decreasing by about 50 percent every 18 months, because it’s the underlying cost that’s predicated on the cost of telecommunications, moving surveillance intercepts around and computerization and storage,” he says. That means so-called free societies from America to Australia could soon look to North Koreans for tips like speaking in code words, using subtext to cloak controversial views and learning the holes in mass-surveillance networks, says Assange.
Privacy Concerns Stall Cybersecurity Bill
Worried that the the new legislation could make consumers more vulnerable to domestic spying as well as cyber-theft, privacy advocates and some lawmakers are pushing Congress to sidetrack a bill aimed at preventing the sort of high-profile, personal data theft-driven hacks that have targeted Home Depot, Target and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Though the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leaning hard on Congress to protect industry, the three bills designed to encourage private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat information with the government and one another have stalled. On Wednesday, 19 civil liberties groups sent a letter to President Obama, saying they’re worried the congressional negotiations on a compromise will strip the legislation of protections, including the requirement that information be submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the National Security Agency.
Stat of the Week: 65 percent of American adults believe there aren’t adequate limits on the telephone and Internet data collected by the government (courtesy of Pew Research Center).
Joseph P. Williams, U.S. News & World Report, December 11, 2015
Briefed early in his first term that the National Security Agency was spying on U.S. citizens – and that the program theoretically could have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the catalyst for its creation – an anxious President Barack Obama, preparing to visit survivors of the U.S.S. Cole bombing in Yemen, asked his legal team to check it out.
Days later, White House Counsel Greg Craig and Attorney General Eric Holder reported back: The secret program, titled “Stellar Wind” and authorized by former President George W. Bush, nudged the line between security and privacy. Yet they recommended that the new president consider the massive data collection program a national security necessity, and mend it – not end it.“The issue was, ‘Get it within the rules, so it can continue to be useful,’” Charlie Savage, author of “Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency” and national security reporter at The New York Times, recounted Wednesday at a National Press Club luncheon on national security.
Six years after the president’s high-stakes decision, the program’s usefulness in preventing terrorism and its impact on citizens’ privacy was highly controversial, but it’s taken on a new significance after last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris and last week in San Bernardino, California, Savage says.
Progressives who cheered his 2009 inauguration now fret that Obama the Law Professor has become Bush the Cowboy, Savage points out. Meanwhile, Bush supporters who insisted on a powerful leader in the war against terror aren’t shy about declaring, “I told you so” to the left, he adds.
Panelist Matthew Waxman, an attorney who served in several senior level national security positions under Bush, rejected what he said were “caricaturish generalizations” that his former boss circumvented or ignored the law. While top administration officials wanted a bold presidency “free from legal restraints,” and not a deliberative one bound by law, they acted on their sincere interpretation of the Constitution, according to Waxman.
“There are some pros and cons” to Bush’s and Obama’s styles, he says, adding that balancing the two “is probably most appropriate.”Co-panelist Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel under Obama whose portfolio included national security, rejected the “binary” description of his boss as a peacenik-candidate-turned-pro-surveillance wartime president. He argues Obama has altered or rejected Bush-era national security programs, errs on the side of liberty when possible and has kept the nation safe while respecting legal boundaries his predecessor pushed against.
While there have been compromises, “We need to be very clear about the different ways national security legal policy is constructed,” Bauer says, noting Obama has unequivocally ended torture and repeatedly promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
Wikileaks’ Assange: Big Brother is the New Normal
It’s game over in the global war for privacy: society lost and must learn to live with constant surveillance, says Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, the global hacking organization that unearths and publishes government secrets. Speaking by videophone at an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Russia Today network, Assange says the state trumped privacy because spying on citizens in the name of national security has become so easy, effective and accepted that more governments are doing it, and it’s getting cheaper.“The reason it will not [be rolled] back is that the cost of engaging in mass surveillance is decreasing by about 50 percent every 18 months, because it’s the underlying cost that’s predicated on the cost of telecommunications, moving surveillance intercepts around and computerization and storage,” he says. That means so-called free societies from America to Australia could soon look to North Koreans for tips like speaking in code words, using subtext to cloak controversial views and learning the holes in mass-surveillance networks, says Assange.
Privacy Concerns Stall Cybersecurity Bill
Worried that the the new legislation could make consumers more vulnerable to domestic spying as well as cyber-theft, privacy advocates and some lawmakers are pushing Congress to sidetrack a bill aimed at preventing the sort of high-profile, personal data theft-driven hacks that have targeted Home Depot, Target and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Though the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leaning hard on Congress to protect industry, the three bills designed to encourage private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat information with the government and one another have stalled. On Wednesday, 19 civil liberties groups sent a letter to President Obama, saying they’re worried the congressional negotiations on a compromise will strip the legislation of protections, including the requirement that information be submitted to the Department of Homeland Security, rather than the National Security Agency.
Stat of the Week: 65 percent of American adults believe there aren’t adequate limits on the telephone and Internet data collected by the government (courtesy of Pew Research Center).
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