NYT editorial: 'Turn Off the Data Vacuum'

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

In the days after one of the biggest national security leaks in United States history revealed the existence of vast, largely unchecked government surveillance programs, President Obama said he would “welcome” a robust national debate over the appropriate balance between protecting national security and respecting individual privacy and civil liberties.

The answer has now landed squarely on Mr. Obama’s desk, with the release late Wednesday afternoon of a remarkably thorough and well-reasoned report calling on the government to end its bulk phone-data collection program and to increase both the transparency and accountability of surveillance programs going forward.

... The surveillance programs began before Mr. Obama’s presidency, but he allowed them to continue and grow in unprecedented ways. Lately, he has expressed an openness to reforming the programs themselves and the operations of the intelligence court. One important step would be to support legislation in Congress that would achieve many of the panel’s goals, and codify them to restrain future presidents.

But Mr. Obama need not wait for Congress to act to implement the reforms he said he wants. He can quickly adopt his panel’s recommendation and end the ineffective and constitutionally dangerous dragnet surveillance.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/opinion/turn-off-the-data-vacuum.html

[winter is coming]

1. The panel's still recommending collecting metadata on all calls.

That's not ending "the ineffective and constitutionally dangerous dragnet surveillance."

[woo me with science]

2. Thank you. nt

[JDPriestly]

3. I thought it recommended leaving the data with the communications companies until the FISA

court grants a specific subpoena. Do you have a link?

[winter is coming]

4. You're right, that is the current proposal. My apologies.

I mis-parsed the first paragraph quoted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4197111

I've got to say, though, that I'm skeptical that this would be more than a rearranging of the deck chairs. There's still the underlying assumption that there's a need to collect information about all of us that overrides privacy considerations. IMO, the government has failed to establish a legal right or a legitimate need to collect such information, and the years of denials and minimalizations that have been made about government surveillance give me no reason to believe we're not being lied to again now. As long as someone's collecting the information, government agencies will likely find a way to exploit it, despite "safeguards".