HE PREFERS TO VOTE "PRESENT" - AGAIN. OR MAYBE HE WANTS TO "LEAD FROM BEHIND" - AGAIN.Obama doesn’t want to take responsibility for NSA reform?
Posted by Daniel Crane on January 17, 2014
United States President Barack Obama is expected on Friday to announce changes to some of the surveillance programs operated by the US National Security Agency, but insiders say he’ll task Congress with tackling the NSA’s more contentious activities.
A group of five experts hand-picked by the commander-in-chief said in a report released last month that they recommend the White House consider implementing no fewer than 46 changes that would alter the way the NSA and the American intelligence apparatus at-large conducts surveillance. On Friday the president will finally weigh in on that panel’s findings, but preliminary reports suggest he’ll heed but a fraction of those few dozen suggestions and ask members of the House and Senate to mull over the remaining recommendations, leaving reform largely in the hands of a divided Congress.
Pres. Obama will likely announce new limits on the NSA program that lets the government collect in bulk the telephone metadata records pertaining to millions of Americans daily, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, but will rely on Congress to, as the paper puts it, “determine the program’s future.”
Mike Morell, a former deputy of the US Central Intelligence Agency and a member of the president’s review group, testified before the Senate on Tuesday that the metadata collection program “has not played a significant role in preventing any terrorist attacks to this point,” but endorsed it nonetheless.
“It is absolutely true,” Morell said, “that [the program] has not by itself disrupted [or] prevented terrorist attacks in the United States, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important going forward.”
“Many of us have never suffered a fire in our homes but many of us have homeowners insurance,” he added.
When Morell and his colleague published their findings last month, the group wrote, “In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk metadata creates potential risk to public trust, personal privacy and civil liberty.” To remediate these issues, the panel said, the government should consider a number of possible alternatives, such as letting telecommunication companies hold the data and instilling a public advocate to investigate federal requests for private information.
The Post now reports that the president will recommend some limitations to that program, but put the fate of most operations in the hands of Congress.
Read more at RT News
http://wholetruthmedia.com/2014/01/17/obama-doesnt-want-to-take-responsibility-for-nsa-reform/
