[Infowarrior] - POTUS outlines 4 'reforms' to regain public trust in surveillance

[Richard Forno]

(Note:  Rick initial comments in brackets in the text below.  Full transcript is at the URL at the bottom of this message)


TRANSCRIPT: President Obama’s August 9, 2013, news conference at the White House

By Washington Post Staff

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In other words, it’s not enough for me, as president, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well. And that’s why over the last few weeks I’ve consulted members of Congress, who come at this issue from many different perspectives. I’ve asked the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to review where our counterterrorism efforts and our values come into tension. And I directed my national security team to be more transparent and to pursue reforms of our laws and practices. And so today I’d like to discuss four specific steps, not all- inclusive, but some specific steps that we’re going to be taking very shortly to move the debate forward.

[Rick Note: The PCLOB was pretty dormant until recently.  Wonder why?]

First, I will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the program that collects telephone records. As I’ve said, this program is an important tool in our effort to disrupt terrorist plots, and it does not allow the government to listen to any phone calls without a warrant. But given the scale of this program, I understand the concerns of those who would worry that it could be subject to abuse.

So after having a dialogue with members of Congress and civil libertarians, I believe that there are steps we can take to give the American people additional confidence that there are additional safeguards against abuse. For instance, we can take steps to put in place greater oversight, greater transparency and constraints on the use of this authority.

So I look forward to working with Congress to meet those objectives.

[Rick Note: Really? Really?  (sorry, had to be snarky for a second.)

Second, I’ll work with Congress to improve the public’s confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISC. The FISC was created by Congress to provide judicial review of certain intelligence activities so that a federal judge must find that our actions are consistent with the Constitution.

However, to build greater confidence, I think we should consider some additional changes to the FISC. One of the concerns that people raise is that a judge reviewing a request from the government to conduct programmatic surveillance only hears one side of the story, may tilt it too far in favor of security, may not pay enough attention to liberty.

And while I’ve got confidence in the court and I think they’ve done a fine job, I think we can provide greater assurances that the court is looking at these issues from both perspectives -- security and privacy. So specifically, we can take steps to make sure civil liberties concerns have an independent voice, in appropriate cases, by ensuring that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary.

[Rick Note:  "in appropriate cases" leaves plenty of wiggle room. And if they're cleared to access the FISC, how will this public advocate be able to tell the public if/when there are transgressions or abuses w/o violating their secrecy oath?]

Number three, we can and must be more transparent. So I’ve directed the intelligence community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. We’ve already declassified unprecedented information about the NSA, but we can go further. So at my direction, the Department of Justice will make public the legal rationale for the government’s collection activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

[Rick Note: What they declassified was still heavily redacted.  When the leaker's information is more useful for public debate than what's officially released,  problems of trust and having a "complete understanding" remain.]

The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full-time civil liberties and privacy officer and release information that details its mission, authorities and oversight. And finally, the intelligence community is creating a website that will serve as a hub for further transparency. And this will give Americans and the world the ability to learn more about what our intelligence community does and what it doesn’t do, how it carries out its mission and why it does so.

[Rick Note: Having the IC set up a hub for meaningful public transparency?  Clearly the Administration is not without a sense of humour.  I'm reminded of Sir Humphrey's great quote on government transparency efforts: "we should always tell the public everything they can find out from other sources."]

Fourth, we’re forming a high level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in a haystack of global telecommunications, and meanwhile technology has given governments, including our own, unprecedented capability to monitor communications.

[Rick Note: If it's the same group of tech execs who met with POTUS yesterday to discuss surveillance stuff, that meeting was held in secret and its discussions were not disclosed.  Also, it doesn't change the completely risk-averse culture permeating Washington's mindset that feels it must try and stop anything bad from happening anywhere at anytime, and thus initiated these programs to begin with.]

So I’m tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities, particularly our surveillance technologies, and they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy, particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy and our foreign policy.

[Rick Note: "Forming a committee and 'writing a report' is always something governments do during times of crisis.  The key is what will happen after the report is submitted.  Will it be public? Will it be redacted?  Will it lead to any meaningful changes? Sounds good, but the devil is in the details.]

So all these steps are designed to ensure that the American people can trust that our efforts are in line with our interests and our values.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-august-9-2013-news-conference-at-the-white-house/2013/08/09/5a6c21e8-011c-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_print.html

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