Obama's Confusing NSA Speech

Last June, The Guardian published leaked data via National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden that revealed the boundless surveillance of private electronic communications, both domestic and foreign, by the US government. Always skeptical of unchecked political power, the American public largely condemned such a flagrant use of surveillance. Passionate opinion editorials labeled the NSA an undemocratic institution in direct contrast to core American principles, with some even comparing the NSA to the East German Stasi and George Orwell’s dystopian political machine in 1984. Libertarian-Republicans such as Senator Rand Paul somewhat shockingly sided with leftist Democrats such as Vermont Senator Peter Leahy to contend that the NSA’s surveillance methods clearly violate the Fourth Amendment’s declaration that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

Meanwhile, mainstream Democrats and Republicans defend the NSA surveillance against this deluge of public outrage as a necessary precaution to ensure such security. “New bombs are being devised, new terrorists are emerging, new groups ... and I think we need to be prepared,” Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein opined last weekend. Former CIA Director Michael Morell shares Feinstein’s support of NSA metadata surveillance, stressing that “had the program been in place more than a decade ago, it would likely have prevented 9/11. And it has the potential to prevent the next 9/11. It needs to be successful only once to be invaluable.”

President Obama finally addressed the NSA debate last Friday in a historical allusion-filled and passionately patriotic speech that told the American people and lawmakers absolutely nothing. While promising that the NSA would no longer monitor communications of allied governments, Obama also stated that “our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments ... around the world.” While advocating that the NSA cede control of metadata containing phone and email correspondence to another collection facility, he did not demand the cessation of such data collection. While stating that judicial approval should, in the future, precede metadata’s investigational use, he also implied that exceptions would be made to this rule in extreme cases of national security. And, most remarkably, Obama provided no hints as to what form his proposed new system of metadata collection would take, a vagueness that implies his intention to merely create a new government agency with the same surveillance processes.

I do not oppose any of the President’s statements in this speech, but I wish he was more straightforward with the American people instead of accompanying every vaguely appeasing pledge with glaring loopholes. What President Obama should have said, plain and simple, is that the NSA’s boundless information acquiring must continue, unchanged and uninhibited.

While checks and balances remain a vital part of our governmental structure, our government cannot be inhibited by procedure in matters of national safety. The information gathered by the NSA over the last decade cannot be utilized by the government “only following prior judicial approval ... because the whole purpose of this program is to provide instantaneous information to be able to disrupt any plot that may be taking place,” Senator Feinstein emphasized in response to Obama’s statement. Not only is the NSA’s surveillance prudent, it is also non-invasive. The government is not eavesdropping on our phone calls: all that its metadata is confirmed to include are lists of the numbers you call and their duration. The ‘uninhibited’ collection of such metadata for surveillance purposes does not abridge one’s rights to privacy any more than traffic cameras at intersections.

In this digital age, our personal information is everywhere, from our emails and phone calls to the pornography we search on Google and the ‘private’ Facebook messages we send our friends. This information will never be used against us unless we ourselves abuse these methods of information conveyance. Former CIA operative Joseph Wippl agrees, rationalizing that “the government does not look into our communications, because frankly the government does not care unless you are implicated in terrorism or some type of crime. There’s a billion and a half pieces of data picked up every day. I mean, my God, who would look at any of it?”

Of course, as young Americans who read 1984 in high school and grew up influenced by Reaganian governmental distrust, we remain extremely unsettled by the notion that the government could know about the texts we sent our friends after that crazy J-Term party last Friday. But while I am not especially trustful of our government, America is not at all reflective of Orwell’s dystopia. Unless you are a vocal political extremist, breaking serious laws, or knowingly texting members of terrorist groups, you should be as alarmed by the NSA’s continued surveillance as by the peevish ‘hide your personal information’ spam shared on friends’ Facebook statuses.