Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

There’s that word “fully” again. And there’s a great deal of evidence that court has become little more than a rubber stamp, turning down a whopping .03% of the requests submitted.

And so not only does that court authorize the initial gathering of data, but I want to repeat, if anybody in government wanted to go further than just that top-line data and wanted to, for example, listen to Jackie Calmes’s phone call, they’d have to go back to a federal judge and — and — and indicate why, in fact, they were doing further — further probing.

Again with the listening to phone calls. Handwaving.

Now, with respect to the Internet and emails, this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States. And again, in this instance, not only is Congress fully apprised of it, but what is also true is that the FISA Court has to authorize it.

Given that the NSA intercepts 1.7 billion emails a day, I find it hard to believe that they’re all to or from foreigners, unless an usually high percentage of them are Nigerian princes.

So in summary, what you’ve got is two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress. Bipartisan majorities have approved (on them ?). Congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. There are a whole range of safeguards involved. And federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout.

For this summary of lies and half-truths, see the fisking of the previous lies and half-truths.

And we’re also setting up — we’ve also set up an audit process when I came into office to make sure that we’re, after the fact, making absolutely certain that all the safeguards are being properly observed.

Which is it? You’ve set it up, or you’re going to set it up? And we should trust you for that same sterling oversight you’ve observed for Benghazi, Pigford, and the IRS? Speaking of “audit processes.” Bad choice of words there, O…

Now, having said all that, you’ll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago

No, as a matter of fact, I don’t. You give so many speeches, and say so little in each of them.

about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mindset.

Translation: “I’m a 9/10 Democrat.” How Obama’s love of drone strikes, and his decision to intervene in the Libyan civil war (and now, possibly, the Syrian civil war as well) tie into shifting out of a “perpetual war mindset” remains unclear. As does how we get Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and various other terrorist groups (some backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran) to stop killing Americans. It would probably be quite easy to “shift out of a perpetual war mindset” if fighters for radical Islam weren’t waging perpetual war on us.

I specifically said that one of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how were we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy, because there are some trade-offs involved.

So far the “trade offs” of your foreign policy seem to be “keep fighting long enough to avoid being accused of losing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not doing enough in either place to actually win.”

And I welcome this debate.

Given how thin-skinned you are, how negatively you react to people criticizing you, and how poorly you performed debating Mitt Romney, I rather doubt that.

And I think it’s healthy for our democracy. I think it’s a sign of maturity, because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate. And I think it’s interesting that there are some folks on the left, but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it who weren’t very worried about it when it was a Republican president. I think that’s good that we’re having this discussion.

You know what debate we weren’t having 5 or 6 years ago? “Why is the IRS targeting the Administration’s political opponents?” And we weren’t having that debate because George W. Bush wasn’t using the IRS to target his political opponents. Unlike you.

We also weren’t having this debate because we really believed that Bush was committed to fighting the war on terror. Unlike you. Moreover, we weren’t having this debate back when there were 22 classified wiretap orders because that didn’t seem excessive. Now that there are 1,769 classified wiretap orders, under an Administration known for abusing its power, it’s a lot more urgent concern. We didn’t have that debate under a Republican because he didn’t have the documented pattern of abuse of power you do. Was it short-sighted of our representatives to sign off on the more expansive measures of the Patriot Act? Obviously so, though how could they have known your abusive administration was coming down the pike so soon?

But I think it’s important for everybody to understand, and I think the American people understand, that there are some trade-offs involved. You know, I came in with a health skepticism about these programs.

Sure you did…right up until you realized you were in charge of them. See also: Lord Acton.

My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards.

How convenient that everything is secret so we can’t evaluate these “improvements” your team has made.

But my assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks.

Maybe. But how many did they prevent, and at what cost? Which of those 1,769 secret wiretap orders were more effective than the previous 22?

And the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content — that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing.

I’m sure that Obama feels that any encroachment’s on other people’s privacy are entirely acceptable, just as he feels spending more of other people’s money on higher spending and taxes is just fine and dandy. And I don’t think that gathering phone and email data for every American is “worth doing.” Or constitutional.

That’s — some other folks may have a different assessment of that. But I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.

No one (at least among conservatives or libertarians) believes that you can reach 100% security, because human beings are inherently imperfect creatures. But we’re not asking for “100% privacy,” we’re demanding the level of freedom and privacy guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America. And the TSA seems to be closing in on 100% inconvenience for 0% effectivety. 100% privacy and 100% security are both unreachable, but 100% secret surveillance of a free nation’s phone calls and emails is intolerable.

And [all?] I can say is, is that in evaluating these programs, they make a difference [to] anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity. And the fact that they’re under very strict supervision by all three branches of government and that they do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the emails of U.S. citizens or U.S. residents, absent further action by a federal court, that is entirely consistent with what we would do, for example, in a criminal investigation.

Both the scandal and the leak of same proves that the supervision isn’t “very strict.”

Once again Obama stands up his “listening to every phone call” and “reading every email” strawmen to give them another pummeling. And I severely doubt that any police department in any city has ever sworn out a warrant that said “give me the phone records for every call in [for example] New York City over the last month.” This is the sort of abuse that can only be carried out by the vast, unaccountable, black budget national security state. Worse still, your Administration’s unwillingness to name and confront the threat posed by radical Islam has made us all less safe still.

I think, on balance, we — you know, we have established a process and a procedure that the American people should feel comfortable about. But again, this — these programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate. And if there are members of Congress who feel differently, then they should speak up.

They are.

Joe the Plumber certainly remembers how “happy” you and your supporters are to have “debates.” Funny how you and your supporters willingness to abuse and leak government information was already on display even before you were elected. We should have taken that as a sign.

That ends the fisking of Obama’s answer to Calmes’ question. This is already so long I think I’ll go ahead and post it, and save the fisking for Obama’s answer to the other question he allowed to a later post.