Tuesday, January 21, 2014

President Obama's NSA Reforms Is Greeted With Skepticism



US Allies Remain Skeptical of Obama’s Surveillance Reforms -- Voice of America

LONDON — There has been a muted response from U.S. allies to President Obama’s plans to curb the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Documents leaked by fugitive intelligence analyst Edward Snowden suggested the agency has been collecting electronic data on millions of American and foreign civilians, and had tapped the phones of foreign leaders.

The leaked documents revealed the National Security Agency had harvested data on the phone calls, emails and SMS messages of millions of people across the globe.

The president sought to quell anger among U.S. allies by extending some privacy protections enjoyed by U.S. nationals to foreign citizens.

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More News On Reaction To President Obama's NSA Reforms

Germany Cool to Obama NSA Reforms -- Times
Germany Says Obama’s Spying Pledges Fail to Address Concerns -- Bloomberg
Top German Prosecutor Considers NSA Investigation -- Spiegel Online
Lawmakers skeptical about Obama surveillance idea -- AP
Barack Obama's NSA reforms are 'insufficient,' Google, Apple, Yahoo and more tech giants say -- Newsday/AP
After Obama's NSA Speech, Tech Companies Wait and See -- Wall Street Journal

1 comment:

Intelligence.Architecture.Infrastructure said...

On second thought, my profound and unequivocal apologies to President Barack H. Obama. I think he did an excellent job of throwing the NSA and Surveillance issue back to the Private Sector and its cronies in the Congress.

The matter has to become a Constitutional Amendment and it has not snowballed for that magnitude. Not yet. Only one article thus far in the media tackles what I have been saying since 1996:

Madison Needs Google Glasses for Enlightenment.

The apotheosis of Madison as an emblem for opposition to mass surveillance is welcome. But the reasoning behind his beliefs has been misunderstood. He believed that the preservation of people’s “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” was “the first object of government,” but that a too-powerful government could undermine that goal. He was, therefore, more concerned with abuses of legislative and executive power than of unregulated commercial power.

As a result, the Bill of Rights, which he came to champion, constrains only government actors, not private ones. It applies to the government, not Google. Now that Google and AT&T can track us more closely than any N.S.A. agent, it appears that the Madisonian Constitution may be inadequate to defend our privacy and dignity in the 21st century.


NYTimes Sunday Review: Madison's Privacy Blind Spot - Private Sector.