The President of the United States, Barack Obama, in his much-anticipated speech on Friday, proposed a series of changes to the NSA's surveillance activities that have caused an uproar in recent months. As we also expected from iGuRu.gr, important aspects of the matter were not mentioned at all and he very diplomatically avoided bringing to the fore important changes that had been proposed to him by the team that had undertaken the evaluation of the secret service.
Here are five things Obama said won't change or didn't mention them at all during the duration of the NSA speech.
1. Other mass surveillance and data collection programs.
The US president's reference to the telephone metadata collection program, and his announcement of its semi-termination, may have fooled some Americans (until it was revealed that the service continues as normal) since the NSA will not stop collecting, almost all records from their phone numbers calls. The difference is that the database and the analysts who will be able to process the data will no longer be under the jurisdiction of the NSA. Obama backed the proposal, put to him by the Secret Service's internal review team, to take the database off the hands of the NSA.
But what about the massive collection of Internet metadata used to build social data graphs of Americans? Obama willfully ignored the fact that he is in violation of Section 702 of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) bill. What will happen to the SMS collection? What will happen to the collection of millions of electronic data post officeand instant messages, from Americans and non-Americans?
Obama did not say anything about all of this. These programs are likely to continue.
2. Public prosecutor at the FISA court.
The NSA's internal evaluation team has recommended the appointment of a "Public Interest Prosecutor" to represent the interests of the common citizen, such as the protection of privacy and individual liberties before the Secret Service.
Obama did not raise the issue of a public prosecutor, but as he said, there should be a panel of experts to participate in the proceedings of the FISA Court. But it will not intervene in every case. You will only hear their voices "in important cases", when the court will have to decide on broader privacy decisions and how the NSA conducts surveillance. In short, the existence of an advocate for individual freedoms in the FISA court is "unnecessary" and possibly counterproductive. But think about what "production" we are talking about.
3. NSA's efforts to undermine encryption standards
In September, as it passed, documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA is undertaking multifaceted efforts to undermine and weaken encryption and security standards to enable the secret service to gain access to communications that public opinion Internet believes it is safe.
Both the NSA and the FBI have been accused of undermining encryption. Of course, both departments have denied these allegations. The NSA is also reportedly giving the security company RSA 10 a million dollars in a secret contract to secure weaker encryption protocols.
Read: New scandal: NSA has paid 10 million to RSA to weaken encryption
In light of these revelations, the internal evaluation team endorsed the powerful encryption technology, arguing that the US government should "in no way overturn, undermine, weaken or make vulnerable commercial encryption software available."
[ads2]Obama did not say anything about it in his speech. Obviously, US Secretaries have never wanted and continue not to want encryption in the hands of a simple citizen.
4. Judicial review of national security letters
Το FBI χρησιμοποιεί επιστολές εθνικής ασφάλειας για χρόνια, ζητώντας από τις τηλεφωνικές εταιρείες και τις εταιρείες παροχής Internet, να παραδώσουν δεδομένα πελατών τους. Οι επιστολές αυτές αποτελούν ένα ιδιαίτερο είδος,διοικητικής κλήτευσης που δεν απαιτεί από το FBI να πάρει η δικαστική έγκριση πριν από την έκδοσή τους. Οι επιστολές μεταφέρουν απλά τις διαταγές που αναφέρουν στους παραλήπτες να μην αποκαλύψουν την ύπαρξή τους, στο στόχο (αλλά και στο ευρύ κοινό) του οποίου τα δεδομένα έχουν ζητηθεί, ούτε καν μετά από χρόνια την version of the letter.
The experts of the NSA secret action review committee have proposed a reform of the law to require a judge to be approved for each letter of this kind. Obama has approved more transparency, but not judicial oversight.
5. Spying on data centers across the world
Documents released by Snowden in October reported that the NSA has the ability to collect data from all Internet users by intercepting the links linking Google and Yahoo data centers.
Obama made no comment on this.
In short, Obama's statements were made for firefighting purposes and not to bring about reform of the NSA, which remains virtually untouched. We had no illusions about the fact and it would be utopia to believe that the US would change its imperialist policy.
