Obama's NSA Proposals Fall Far Short of Real Change
The White House's tepid plan aims to calm the public, not curtail the government's surveillance programs.
President Barack Obama speaks about the National Security Agency and intelligence agencies surveillance techniques at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, January 17, 2014.(SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
The White House promised Friday that it was ending the NSA's most controversial surveillance program "as it currently exists." But make no mistake, it's still going to exist.
In fact, what President Obama has announced will have little operational effect on the National Security Agency's collection of Americans' data. And, significantly, the administration has attempted to dodge some of the biggest decisions, passing the ball to Congress, which will likely do nothing if recent trends hold.
Much of the attention in the run-up to the speech involved the NSA's retention and search of so-called metadata—calling records, including calls made by U.S. citizens, that help the government identify potential terrorist relationships. And the president didn't come close to what privacy advocates have wanted—a sharp culling of the program or its outright termination.
Instead, the goal of Friday's announcement —as it has always been—was to reassure a skittish public both here and abroad that the program is being used responsibly. "This is a capability that needs to be preserved," a senior administration official said.
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