Gadgetory

today President Obama formally introduced his plan to reform the American surveillance system building on the recommendations made by a White House review panel despite some welcome proposals the speech offered little real change and what the President did propose will have to go through Congress and intelligence agencies first the strongest proposed reform is an end to the government database that stores virtually all american phone records obama promised to quote and the program as it currently exists we don't know where those records will be going moving them back to phone companies or into a private database could present privacy problems the NSA complains it might not be able to look up individual records quickly enough we'll hear more about the ideas in March when intelligence agencies present their proposals for moving the database Obama promised to create more oversight for surveillance outlining a plan for more transparency and new posts that would advocate for civil liberties he also reassured non-americans that their privacy was being respected and that they wouldn't be targeted because of race or religion it's going to be up to intelligence agencies to carry that out in an extraordinarily difficult job one in which actions our second guest success is unreported and failure can be catastrophic the men and women of the intelligence community including the NSA consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people they're not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your emails when mistakes are made which is inevitable in any large and complicated human enterprise they correct those mistakes the US has been hot water for spying on world leaders and Obama promised that if your is close friend he'll just pick up the phone and call you that didn't stop him from pointing the finger at other countries though no one expects China to have a open debate about their surveillance programs or Russia to take privacy concerns of citizens and other places into account but let's remember we are held to a different standard precisely because we have been at the forefront of defending personal privacy and human dignity at the same time the NSA isn't going to stop spying anytime soon the president described surveillance playing a crucial role throughout America's history from Paul Revere spying on the British to more recent counterterrorism efforts launched after 911 in fact 911 came up a lot the tragedy of 911 911 another 911 911 in aftermath of 911 911 911 a horror of September 11th 911 many of the review panel's proposed reforms are dropped entirely the president didn't mention the NSA's programs for collecting email in bulk or breaking into the private networks of companies like Google and Yahoo it seems likely those programs will continue with only minimal changes in oversight the new reforms offer some hope but little change the next test will come when the CIA NSA FBI in Congress decide what to do with President Obama's proposals