Via NR:
In
light of the president’s Friday’s statement on
the NSA surveillance controversy, National Review Online takes a look back
on some of the president’s previous statements on Americans’ right to privacy:
1.
December 15, 2005, Senate floor statement on the PATRIOT Act:
This is just plain
wrong. Giving law enforcement the tools they need to investigate suspicious
activity is one thing – and it’s the right thing – but doing it without any real
oversight seriously jeopardizes the rights of all Americans and the ideals
America stands for.
2.
February 16, 2006, Senate floor statement on the PATRIOT Act
Reauthorization:
Soon after the
PATRIOT Act passed, a few years before I ever arrived in the Senate, I began
hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning
that this law didn’t just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to
keep us safe, but powers it didn’t need to
invade our privacy without cause or suspicion.
3.
May 25, 2006, Senate floor statement on the nomination of General Michael
Hayden to the directorship of the CIA:
Over the last six
months, Americans have learned that the National Security Agency has been
spying on Americans without judicial approval. . . .
We don’t expect the
president to give the American people every detail about a classified
surveillance program. But we do expect him to place such a program within
the rule of law, and to allow members of the other two coequal branches of
government — Congress and the Judiciary — to have the ability to monitor and
oversee such a program. Our Constitution and our right to privacy as Americans
require as much. . . .
Every
democracy is tested when it is faced with a serious threat. As a
nation, we have to find the right balance between privacy and security,
between executive authority to face threats and uncontrolled power. What
protects us, and what distinguishes us, are the procedures we put in place to
protect that balance, namely judicial warrants and congressional review. These
aren’t arbitrary ideas. These are the concrete safeguards that make sure that
surveillance hasn’t gone too far. That someone is watching the watchers. . . .
We need
to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists while protecting
the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans. We have to find a
way to give the president the power he needs to protect us, while making sure
he doesn’t abuse that power.”
4.
September 27, 2006, Senate floor statement on the Habeas Corpus Amendment:
That is the true
genius of America — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles;
that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and
clothed and safe from harm; that we can say
what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door.
5.
October 30, 2007, Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC:
What we cannot
continue to do is operate as if we are the weakest nation in the world instead
of the strongest one, because that’s not who we are. And that’s not what
America has been about historically, and it is starting to warp our domestic
policies, as well. We haven’t even talked
about civil liberties and the impact of that politics of fear, what that has
done to us in terms of undermining basic civil liberties in this country,
what it has done in terms of our reputation around the world.
6.
December 24, 2007, “Right vs. Security: Candidates take
stance” Des Moines Register:
When I
am president, there will be no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens.
No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a
crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided
war.
7.
June 20, 2008, Campaign Statement on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act:
Given the grave
threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability
to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while
respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American
people. There is also little doubt that the
Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications
companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by
intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or
the required court orders.
That is
why last year I opposed the so-called Protect America Act, which expanded the
surveillance powers of the government without sufficient independent oversight
to protect the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans.
8.
June 25, 2008, press
conference:
QUESTION: Senator, last —
last January, you pledged to support a filibuster of a warrantless surveillance
bill that included retroactive immunity for telecommunications. Last week, the
House passed a bill that effectively gives the telecoms that immunity. You said
would support it.
In explaining the
change, you said it was — you were talking — it was in light of the security
threats facing the country.
Can you explain how
the security threats facing the country are any different today than they were
in January, when you said you would support a filibuster?
OBAMA: Well, the bill has
changed. So, I don’t think the security threats have changed. I think the
security threats are similar.
My view on FISA has
always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that
overrides the security interests of the American people. I do want
accountability and making sure that, as I have said before, somebody’s watching
the watchers, that you don’t have an administration that feels that it can make
its own determinations about when warrantless wiretaps are applicable without
going through a FISA court. . . .
I would
be happy with a system that discloses what’s happened and make sure that we
prevent violations of the American people’s privacy, even if the phone
companies are held harmless.
The issue was, can we
get to the bottom of what’s been taking place, and, most importantly, do we have safeguards going — in place going into the
future so that American civil liberties are not being violated?
9. July
3, 2008, “Response from Barack on FISA,” My.BarackObama.com:
In a dangerous world,
government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to
protect the American people. But in a free
society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I’ve said many
times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to
protect the civil liberties of the American people.
10.
February 23, 2012, Introduction to “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights“:
Americans have always
cherished our privacy. From the birth of our republic, we assured ourselves
protection against unlawful intrusion into our homes and our personal papers.
At the same time, we set up a postal system to enable citizens all over the new
nation to engage in commerce and political discourse. Soon after, Congress made
it a crime to invade the privacy of the mails. And later we extended privacy
protections to new modes of communications such as the telephone, the computer,
and eventually email.
Justice
Brandeis taught us that privacy is the ‘right to be let alone,’ but we also
know that privacy is about much more than just solitude or secrecy. Citizens
who feel protected from misuse of their personal information feel free to
engage in commerce, to participate in the political process, or to seek needed
health care. . . .
Never has privacy
been more important than today, in the age of the Internet, the World Wide Web
and smart phones. In just the last decade, the Internet has enabled a renewal
of direct political engagement by citizens around the globe and an explosion of
commerce and innovation creating jobs of the future. Much of this innovation is
enabled by novel uses of personal information. So,
it is incumbent on us to do what we have done throughout history: apply our timeless
privacy values to the new technologies and circumstances of our times. . . .
One thing should be
clear, even though we live in a world in which we share personal information
more freely than in the past, we must reject
the conclusion that privacy is an outmoded value. It has been at the heart of
our democracy from its inception, and we need it now more than ever.
From
John Sexton:
A "Dear
Colleague" letter signed by then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) in 2005 urged
an end to "government fishing expeditions" under Section 215 of the
Patriot Act to gather records on American citizens indiscriminately. The letter
was also signed by eight other Senators, including John Kerry (D-MA) and Chuck
Hagel (R-ND), who currently serve in President Obama's Cabinet as Secretary of
State and Secretary of Defense, respectively.
The letter is provided below.
The
December 14, 2005 letter was passed around in the Senate to gather support for
specific changes to the Patriot Act. Sen. Obama was particularly concerned
about sections 215 and 505, which give the government two legal means to
collect extensive business records (the FISA court and national security
letters, respectively). Sen. Obama's "Dear Colleague" letter argues
that the requirements for making these requests need to be tightened:
The conference report
would allow the government to obtain library, medical and gun records and other
sensitive personal information under Section 215 of the Patriot Act on a mere
showing that those records are relevant to an authorized intelligence
investigation. As business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have
argued, this would allow government fishing expeditions targeting innocent
Americans. We believe the government should be required to convince a judge
that the records they are seeking have some connection to a suspected terrorist
or spy, as the three-part standard in the Senate bill would mandate.
The
letter goes on to argue that a stricter standard "will protect innocent
Americans from unnecessary surveillance and ensure that government scrutiny is
based on individualized suspicion, a fundamental principle of our legal
system."
That
focus on individualized suspicion was echoed in a public statement Sen. Obama
made on the Senate floor one day after the letter was issued. He said it was time "to show the American people
that the federal government will only issue warrants and execute searches
because it needs to, not because it can."
Later
in his speech, he added:
If someone wants to
know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through
every personal record or private document - through library books they've read
and phone calls they've made - this legislation gives people no rights to
appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their
plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.
Though
that seems to have been directed at the use of national security letters, the
principles would seem to apply to the collection of data and records under
section 215. As reports last week indicated, the NSA has been collecting
everything to which it has access and maintaining a gag order on companies that
turn over the data.
The
Chamber of Commerce letter which prompted some of Sen. Obama's concerns was
sent to Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) two months earlier on October 4, 2005. It
made clear that business groups are concerned about the use of section 215, in
part, because of the potential expense of complying with expansive demands for
records.
Section 215 of the
Act currently allows the Justice Department to obtain secret orders for
business records and other tangible items from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court. We support the revision in the Senate bill that requires a
statement of fact and some linkage between the records sought and an individual
suspected of being a terrorist or spy. As written, the government merely has to
certify that the records sought are relevant to an authorized investigation,
without stating any underlying facts for the court or judge or showing any
nexus with an actual suspect of investigation. As a result, the current Act does
not impose any limit on the breadth of records sought, or protect records that
are privileged or proprietary. Without such facts, let alone any probable cause
of wrongdoing, an unreasonable burden and expense is imposed on businesses to
supply potentially large quantities of information that are difficult to
collect and transmit, including trade secrets or other sensitive information.
The
Chamber and other business groups were worried about the cost of replying to
these broad demands for data, but Sen. Obama's letter and speech do not mention
costs. His specific concerns were the legality and morality of collecting data
on Americans who are not suspected of a crime and who will not be made aware
that their data has been collected. Those concerns continued through the 2007
campaign, when presidential candidate Obama gave a major speech in which he called for an end to some of these same
practices.
The
information leaked last week to the UK Guardian seems to indicate that
the President had a change of heart. It's not clear how the broad dragnet of
phone metadata or the PRISM collection of email and other data is compatible
with Obama's previously expressed concerns about "government fishing
expeditions."
SoRo: As Rex Reed of The New Yorker
wrote, Obama's speeches on civil liberties are now regarded as 'hilarious...
perhaps the greatest comic masterpieces since A Night at the Opera.'
Related reading:
http://tinyurl.com/mzq6a2c
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