Obama does not believe he has violated the privacy of any American

[BeyondGeography]

From FTN today:

President Obama's Chief of Staff Denis McDonough told Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation" Sunday that the president does not believe he has violated the privacy of any American.

Read the exchange below:

Schieffer: Well, let me just get you on the record here now. Does the president feel that he has violated the privacy of any American?

McDonough: He does not.

Schieffer: You feel that that has been taken care of? You know, I think back to what Ronald Reagan used to say, "Trust, but verify." But in this situation, it seems to me the government may be asking us to trust it but they can't verify why we ought to trust, in some cases.

McDonough: Well, I think you'll hear the president talk about this in the days ahead, Bob, and you'll hear him say again what he said in a speech earlier this month at the war college, at the National Defense University. You'll hear what he said when he responded to reporters last week on this question, which is we do have to find the right balance, especially in this new situation where we find ourselves with all of us reliant on internet, on e-mail, on texting.

So we find ourselves communicating in different ways, but that means the bad guys are doing that as well. So we have to find the right balance between protecting our privacy, which is sacrosanct in the president's view, and protecting the country from the very real risks and threats that we face.

So the president's not saying-- and this goes to the heart of the changes he made in 2009. The president is not saying, "Trust me." The president is saying, "I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this program, to understand it, to be briefed about it, and to be comfortable with it." That's why we've done things like we did in 2009 and 2011, by presenting a classified white paper, inviting every member of Congress, 535 members, to see that piece of paper. To study it and to come to us with questions.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/obama-does-believe-he-has-violated-privacy-of

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. CYA

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Well that is nice

I don't have to trust the President on this... in fact, I don't.

[uponit7771]

3. on meta data i don't either...data was not customers

[dkf]

4. Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance

In the midst of revelations that the government has conducted extensive top-secret surveillance operations to collect domestic phone records and internet communications, the Justice Department was due to file a court motion Friday in its effort to keep secret an 86-page court opinion that determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying.

This important case—all the more relevant in the wake of this week's disclosures—was triggered after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, started crying foul in 2011 about US government snooping. As a member of the intelligence committee, he had learned about domestic surveillance activity affecting American citizens that he believed was improper. He and Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), another intelligence committee member, raised only vague warnings about this data collection, because they could not reveal the details of the classified program that concerned them. But in July 2012, Wyden was able to get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify two statements that he wanted to issue publicly. They were:

* On at least one occasion the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court held that some collection carried out pursuant to the Section 702 minimization procedures used by the government was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

* I believe that the government's implementation of Section 702 of FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] has sometimes circumvented the spirit of the law, and on at least one occasion the FISA Court has reached this same conclusion.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/justice-department-electronic-frontier-foundation-fisa-court-opinion

[Cha]

5. Of course he hasn't. K&R.

[JimDandy]

6. So it's ok for Obama to ignore

whether 350,000,000 Americans are "comfortable" with their every communication being seized by the NSA, as long as 535 Congress members are shown a classified white paper and are asked to be comfortable with it.

I'm not comfortable with that, but then, how comfortable us minions feel about our constitutional rights being stomped on is not what Obama is interested in.

Comfortable, comfortable, comfortable...the cozy "word of the day".