| Detroit Free Press | - |
WASHINGTON
- President Barack Obama vigorously defended the government's
collection of massive amounts of information from phone and Internet
records on Friday as a necessary defense against terrorism.
Obama defends gathering of phone records as part of terrorism fight
4:45 PM, June 7, 2013
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1
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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama vigorously
defended the government’s collection of massive amounts of information
from phone and Internet records on Friday as a necessary defense against
terrorism. He assured Americans, “Nobody is listening to your telephone
calls.”
“We have to make choices as a society,” Obama said in his first remarks about news of the huge scope of government surveillance. “It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience.”
It was reported Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers.
The leaked document first reported by the Guardian, a British newspaper, gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon’s land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies, too.
Another secret program reported Thursday scours the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine U.S.-based Internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.
Obama said he came into office with a “healthy skepticism” of the programs and increased some of the “safeguards” on them. He said Congress and federal judges have oversight on the programs, and a judge would have to approve monitoring of the content of a call and it’s not a “program run amok.”
He said government employees “are not looking at people’s names and they are not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata they might identify potential leads of people who might engage in terrorism.”
The president’s remarks followed an unusual late-night statement Thursday from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America’s security will suffer.
Clapper said the government is prohibited from “indiscriminately sifting” through the data acquired. It can be reviewed only “when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” He also said only counterterrorism personnel trained in the program may access the records.
“We have to make choices as a society,” Obama said in his first remarks about news of the huge scope of government surveillance. “It’s important to recognize that you can’t have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience.”
It was reported Wednesday that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone records of hundreds of millions of U.S. phone customers.
The leaked document first reported by the Guardian, a British newspaper, gave the NSA authority to collect from all of Verizon’s land and mobile customers, but intelligence experts said the program swept up the records of other phone companies, too.
Another secret program reported Thursday scours the Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas who use any of nine U.S.-based Internet providers such as Microsoft and Google.
Obama said he came into office with a “healthy skepticism” of the programs and increased some of the “safeguards” on them. He said Congress and federal judges have oversight on the programs, and a judge would have to approve monitoring of the content of a call and it’s not a “program run amok.”
He said government employees “are not looking at people’s names and they are not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata they might identify potential leads of people who might engage in terrorism.”
The president’s remarks followed an unusual late-night statement Thursday from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who denounced the leaks of highly classified documents that revealed the programs and warned that America’s security will suffer.
Clapper said the government is prohibited from “indiscriminately sifting” through the data acquired. It can be reviewed only “when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization.” He also said only counterterrorism personnel trained in the program may access the records.
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