“Retired general Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, called on President Obama Monday to show “some political courage” and reject many of the recommendations of the commission he appointed to rein in NSA surveillance operations,” Susan Page reports for USA Today. “‘President Obama now has the burden of simply doing the right thing,’ Hayden told USA TODAY‘s Capital Download. ‘And I think some of the right things with regard to the commission’s recommendations are not the popular things. They may not poll real well right now. They’ll poll damn well after the next attack, all right?'”
MacDailyNews Take:
The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America. – Edward Snowden
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
“Obama, who received the report from the five-member advisory committee just before he left to vacation in Hawaii, has promised to make ‘a pretty definitive statement’ in January about its 46 recommendations,” Page reports. “He appointed the panel in the wake of a firestorm over disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about surveillance of all Americans’ telephone calls and spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other friendly foreign leaders.”
“The commission, led by former acting CIA director Michael Morell, said the recommendations were designed to increase transparency, accountability and oversight at the NSA,” Page reports. “Snowden’s revelations have fueled objections by civil liberties advocates that the NSA goes too far in collecting information about Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. This month, a federal judge in Washington called the program ‘almost Orwellian,’ although a few days later, another federal judge in New York said it was legal. In the interview with USA TODAY’s weekly video newsmaker series, Hayden said the vast data on Americans’ phone records are ‘far safer and privacy is far more secured with NSA holding the data than some third party.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. – Thomas Jefferson
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. – Ronald Reagan
United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
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