Obama has repeatedly downplayed the scope of the surveillance programs after leaks of top-secret documents by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, but he eventually addressed the rising public criticism. Documents showed the NSA is collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Verizon customers as well as emails through nine companies including tech giants Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook. He announced he would form a “high-level group of outside experts” that “protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while respecting our commitment to privacy and civil liberties” in early August, when he unveiled a series of proposals designed to provide more oversight on the government’s ability to spy on Americans. He also declassified documents, created a website to release information and name an NSA civil liberties and privacy officer. The members of the review group are Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush; Michael Morell, Obama’s former deputy CIA director; law professor Geoffrey Stone, who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama’s presidential library in Chicago; law professor Cass Sunstein, administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama; and Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton. “At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,” said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. mcclatchydc/2013/10/01/203818/obama-spy-panel-is-loaded-with.html
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:44:37 +0000
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