I Take It Back. He's Not a Dick.

He’s a colossal dick.

"Everybody knows I love this president, but this is ridiculous," former-Special Adviser for Green Jobs Van Jones said Wednesday on CNN. "First of all, we do have a domestic spying program, and what we need to be able to do is figure out how to balance these things, not pretend like there’s no balancing to be done.”

[...]

Speaking to CNN, Jones challenged the president’s past behavior towards whistleblowers and suggested that Snowden, the 30-year-old leaker of classified National Security Agency documents, stands little chance of a fair trial in America.

“But much more important, he said something else that I thought that was really awful,” Jones continued. He said that if somebody like Snowden wanted to be a whistleblower, they could have gone ahead.

“Well, hold on a second, sir. That is — you are right now prosecuting more whistleblowers – not only than any American president, than every American president combined! So you can’t then come out on Leno and yuck it up and say, 'Well, whistleblowers, come on out and we’ll treat you right.' because you haven’t been doing that.”

  RT

US President Barack Obama has unveiled new NSA measures which he says will increase transparency and build public trust in government surveillance programs.

  RT

Oh, I’ll just bet they will.

President Obama told a packed room of journalists at the White House Friday afternoon that he will work to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act - the provision which currently allows the federal government’s intelligence agencies to collect domestic phone data.

The President also said that he will work to increase oversight with regards to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - the secretive judicial body that authorizes the government to collect data on communications coming in and out of the United States.

Obama said the reform will be accompanied with the roll-out of a new website which will provide Americans and people around the world the ability to learn more about the surveillance programs.

And that will be absolutely transparent and truthful, I’m sure.

Additionally, Obama said he is forming an outside advisory panel to review the surveillance programs, assigning a privacy officer at the National Security Agency and creating an independent attorney to challenge the government’s spy policies in court.

A "privacy officer" at the NSA.  Were there any snickers in the audience?  Let’s see….who will he pick for these new and important roles?  Check this out if you feel like believing there might be some substance in this move.

“No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot,” Obama said. “I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think the American people’s preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws. A thoughtful, fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place.”

So, after calling for this thorough review, I guess it slipped by him to also call for a "lawful, orderly examination" and "thoughtful, fact-based debate."

Again, I say, what a colossal dick. Here he says he “called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.” If so, then he must have been satisfied with the way things were, so why is he now saying he’s going to make some changes to make things better? And, as many have pointed out, if Edward Snowden hadn’t leaked this information, there would never have been “a lawful, orderly examination” of anything. No “thoughtful, fact-based debate.” Nada. Nothing. So, no matter what the American people’s preference, they would have gotten nothing but screwed even more.

“If in fact [Snowden] believes that what he did was right, then like every American citizen he can come here, appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case. If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community for the first time. So there were other avenues available for someone whose [conscience] was stirred.”

I refer you to Mr. Jones above:

“Well, hold on a second, sir. That is — you are right now prosecuting more whistleblowers – not only than any American president, than every American president combined! So you can’t then come out [...] and say, 'Well, whistleblowers, come on out and we’ll treat you right.' because you haven’t been doing that.”

Back to President Buggy Bear:

“If you are outside of the intelligence community, if you are the ordinary person, and you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying, ‘US, Big Brother looking down on you, collecting telephone records, etc.,’ well, understandably people would be concerned. I would be too if I wasn’t inside the government.”

  RT

Your POINT? Of course you’re not concerned if you’re “inside”.

“Drip-by-drip” leaks, said Obama, are being used by the media “to kind of maximize attention.”

And that is what is killing him. Watch out Glenn.

“I am comfortable that the program is currently not being abused,” said the President.

How very nice for you.

Now, what’s the latest drip? It’s also in the Guardian, by James Ball and Spencer Ackerman.

The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.

The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information.

[...]

The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.

  Guardian

My, my.