1. A Call to Placate, Not Fix
Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian's reporter who has pivotal in releasing the Edward Snowden leaks, sees Obama's speech as an attempt to pacify the U.S. public without changing much of anything. In an op-ed, he writes:
The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are 'serious questions that have been raised.' They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite; to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.
2. No Actual Reform
Say what you will about Senator Rand Paul's other politics, but he's usually on point when it comes to defending the Fourth Amendment. After listening to Obama's speech, Sen. Paul said, "I didn't hear any lessening of the spying on Americans or collecting records of Americans. I heard that trust me, I'm going to put some more safeguards in place, but I'm going to keep right on collecting every American's records."
Paul is not alone in this perspective. Though Obama called for minor reforms, none of them would undermine the major objection the NSA program in the first place: the massive collection of private information of innocent American citizens.
3. Obama Wants to Hand Over the Data to Someone Else… To Be Determined
As Mark Murray, Senior Political Editor at NBC News, points out, Obama's plan is to take the mass collection of data out of the hands of the government and give it to… well, someone else."
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