Politics

Obama picked a Friday before a three day weekend to talk about NSA non-reform.

"Just how massive is this scandal? The Washington Post has reported that the NSA hacks into 500,000 American buddy lists and 600,000 American address books every day, and the Guardian of London reported last week that the NSA seizes 200,000,000 American text messages every day. This is in addition to seizing the content of all cellphone- and landline-generated telephone conversations and copies of all emails sent or received in the United States. And all of that is in addition to seizing all bank records, utility bills and credit card bills of everyone in the United States."

It's for our own good.

"In a thinly disguised effort to change the subject, Obama’s Friday speech focused on where the seized data is stored, rather than on whether the government in a free society is empowered to collect it. He proposed that the data seized by the NSA be stored at non-government locations that he did not identify and kept there and be made available to the NSA after approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court."

That's funny.

"So, that silent exhale of relief from the NSA last week was generated by the realization that this third-party storage proposal will not restrict the massive spying one iota.
Added to this placebo is the president’s proposal to employ a Defender of the Constitution (what a great job title!) to appear before the FISA court, along with lawyers for the NSA, and argue against the NSA’s wishes. This is another diversion that would add another level of unconstitutional and irrelevant complexity to the present scheme."

Exactly.