Glenn Greenwald: "Obama's NSA 'Reforms' are Little More than PR Attempt to Mollify the Public

[KoKo]

Glenn Greenwald..does a Visit Back to "Guardian" for Column on Obama's NSA Speech!
Obama is draping the banner of change over the NSA status quo. Bulk surveillance that caused such outrage will remain in place

In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic. It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America's most significant political scandals. Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama's much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for "reforming" the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy.

The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are "serious questions that have been raised". They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic "reforms" so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.

This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable. In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury. In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary "safeguards": a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community.

But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government's requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government's lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch. As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government.

Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee's heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House. As the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees "more often treat … senior intelligence officials like matinee idols".

As a result, the committees, ostensibly intended to serve an overseer function, have far more often acted as the NSA's in-house PR firm. The heralded mid-1970s reforms did more to make Americans believe there was reform than actually providing any, thus shielding it from real reforms.

MUCH MORE! The 754 COMMENTS at END OF THIS COLUMN WELL WORTH WATCH for COMMENTARY AND THE EMBEDDED LINKS!

And so Glad to See Greenwald Back in Fit Form for a Bit....



http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/17/obama-nsa-reforms-bulk-surveillance-remains

[Thinkingabout]

1. Well, I guess we have Obama's answer, he had his committee look it

Over and decided the program was basically okay and therefore only needed fine tuning. He also gets Intel and security of which only goes to a few. I think if it ever gets to SC they will read the Fourth Amendment and let the NSA work stand.

[truedelphi]

3. And never forget for a moment -

These NSA programs are very expensive!

But hey! This Administration and all the Blue Dawgs and all the Republicans have the Social Security Fund to plunder to help pay for it. As long as they keep the members of the catfood commission working overtime, convincing us the government is very very broke, and simply can't make ends meet without those 2.4 trillions of funds!

[NYC_SKP]

2. Nothing short of a wholesale dismatling of the NSA is enough.

I'm afraid that this effort is little more than window dressing.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Koko, have you seen the site "countercurrents" before?

Just another one I stumbled across:

http://www.countercurrents.org/index.htm

[KoKo]

5. Thanks for that link...some interesting International Viewpoints

and I liked their articles on the "Commons" and how we might want to work for that and steps we could take in the Left Side Bar!

It's interesting...and hope folks will take a look!