aNewDomain.net — President Obama, in his long awaited speech on cyber security and the NSA, followed the classic DC playbook of spin. The President made cosmetic repairs to the image of NSA, and provided much needed damage control to friendly foreign leaders, but it hit neither hard nor fast, it pulled no punches. Questions is, do you trust the President after his speech?.more on https://anewdomain.net2014/01/17/us-president-barack-obama-nsa-speech-full-video/
Image credit: www.gopbriefingroom.com
Obama’s speech was meant to pacify the situation, not to change anything fundamental. The 4th amendment, it would seem, has been relegated to an issue that only the ACLU should worry about. Not the President. His concern is your security, and yet we are not secure from his government. He has the power to control all cyber information gathered by the NSA, which is beyond substantial, and has yet to truly change cyber policy.
Obama himself? He has nothing to hide. He tells us, in so many ways, over and over again, forget about true privacy. True privacy is a dated concept. Not cool anymore. And forget about encryption as a tool — it was not even mentioned in the speech.
The old adage, “Do not listen to what the politician says, but watch what they do” seems truer than ever.
Obama the senator, in 2007, criticized Bush for “false choices between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” See the New York Times article. Well, he just made such a false choice. Being the most powerful man in the USA for the last five years, who has a spoken history of educated action towards powerful reform seems to fall flat now. He acts against his own words.
While he is the commander-in-chief of all cyber options, it still seems that he’s been blind to the abuse of power by the NSA. Or, worse, fully aware. The Snowden leaks forced Obama, and the world’s concept of Internet security, into a process he never contemplated as urgent or a priority.
His deputy national security adviser Rhodes said in the NYT “We have the ability to do essentially anything technologically. So do we have the appropriate legal and policy overlay to ensure that is focused?”
The speech clearly says, no. The Obama advisers have not given the American citizens and Silicon Valley companies a clear road-map that would inspire greater confidence. Building trust in the global Internet and its capabilities was a decade-long process. The NSA, now like a child with a new toy, found an easy backdoor and broke it down quickly, without questions. President Obama has not found the way to deal with his own security establishment. But did he really try? Meanwhile the NSA’s massive dragnets for phone and Internet data, as well as its efforts to undermine cryptography standards will go on. See Ted Rall about the quantum program https://anewdomain.net2014/01/17/ted-rall-nsa-quantum-please-tell-nsa-lying/
It is up to you, the citizens to make a difference and protect your rights.
For the video of the speech:
For aNewDomain.net, I’m David Michaelis.
Based in Australia, David Michaelis is a world-renowned international journalist and founder of Link Tv. At aNewDomain.net, he covers the global beat, focusing on politics and other international topics of note for our readers in a variety of forums. Email him atDavidMc@aNewDomain.net.
At this point in cyber history, the point of reference for the US Gov is not individual privacy. It is the American/western cyber territory that is tectonically evolving faster than you and I could blink- and which is yet to play out its more ‘final’ boundary against such rivals as China and Russia in search for global domination.
It is a strategic . That is not to say privacy should not be enshrined..But I assume the meta data centres of the NSA have a finite capacity to achieve goals.
The lava is still red hot.
The fertile vulcanic earth only come much later.
Silicon Valley will have to walk the military/civilian tight rope for many years to come.
You can bank on that!
[…] more, click here. And check out my analysis here on the Obama NSA speech. In the EFF infographic below, see how the EFF ranks Obama on 10 points […]