Saturday, January 18, 2014

Surveillance With A Smile

By Ilana Mercer

Barack wants to win Boobus back with his trademark bedside manners. The president still thinks that a slushy speech is all it’ll take to get Boobus Americanus to submit again—and who can blame Obama? It’s worked so far.


“In August, media-enabled megalomaniac Obama told a rapt press corps that, in his magnanimity, he’d be prepared to ‘jiggle’ his surveillance apparatus here and there to better allay unnecessary fears (‘provide greater assurances,’ as the president put it).” Recent contradictory court rulings (detailed in “Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go POOF”) have sped things up. The Dictator will issue his NSA decree tomorrow, Friday.

Via the AP:
On Friday, Obama will unveil a much-anticipated blueprint on the future of those endeavors. His changes appear to be an implicit acknowledgement that the trust he thought Americans would have in the spy operations is shaky at best. His focus is expected to be on steps that increase oversight and transparency while largely leaving the framework of the programs in place.

The president is expected to back the creation of an independent public advocate on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves the bulk collections and currently only hears arguments from the government. And seeking to soothe international anger, Obama will extend some privacy protections to foreigners and increase oversight of the process used to decide on foreign leader monitoring.

In previewing Obama’s speech, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that the president believes the government can make surveillance activities “more transparent in order to give the public more confidence about the problems and the oversight of the programs.”

The offending party (BHO and his bandits) gets to nominate an advocate to advocate for the victim (the spied upon).

Sounds fair.

ILANA Mercer is a classical liberal writer, based in the United States. She pens WND's longest-standing paleolibertarian column.  ILANA is a fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. She is the author of "Into the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa."  ILANA's website is WWW.IlanaMercer.com . She blogs at www.barelyablog.com

Copyright 2014 Ilana Mercer

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