President Obama Should Shut Down the NSA’s Mass Spying Before It’s Too Late

[Batu69]

Modern surveillance programs would be a disaster under President Trump

President Obama has just 71 days until Donald Trump is inaugurated as our next commander-in-chief. That means he has a matter of weeks to do one thing that could help prevent the United States from veering into fascism: declassifying and dismantling as much of the federal government’s unaccountable, secretive, mass surveillance state as he can — before Trump is the one running it.

During the Obama administration, warrantless spying programs have vastly expanded, giving the government more power than ever before to constantly monitor all of us by collecting our emails, texts, phone records, chats, real-time locations, purchases, and other private information en masse. This indiscriminate spying isn’t just happening in some National Security Agency bunker. It has reportedly spread throughout dozens of agencies, from local police departments to the Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service, and more.

Trump has repeatedly called for more government surveillance. And he has made it very clear exactly how he would use such powers: to target Muslims, immigrant families, marginalized communities, political dissidents, and journalists.

Our next President has shown utter disregard for the U.S. Constitution, exposing himself as an open enemy of press freedom, repeatedly saying he would ban all members of a major world religion from entering the country, and lashing out at political opponents with censorship and lawsuits that make a mockery of free speech. Let’s not forget that he has also called for women who seek abortions to face punishment, has boasted about sexual assault, and is currently facing multiple court cases related to sexual harassment and abuse.

The surveillance apparatus that has grown in this country since 9/11 has always been wrong. Surveillance technology, often used without a warrant, has been repeatedly abused to target specific racial, ethnic, and religious groups. The government listens in on activists from groups like Black Lives Matter to Standing Rock. We’re collecting more data than we know what to do with. Experts agree this information overload is not effective at stopping violent attacks. In fact, it has undermined, rather than strengthened, public safety and security.

In Trump’s hands, these programs could become more dangerous than ever before. Too many of these efforts operate shrouded in secrecy, without meaningful oversight from the public, the courts, or even elected officials. The precedent set by expanding executive power during the last several administrations means that Trump, and the officials he appoints, will be able to use these pervasive snooping programs for their own political ends, almost completely unrestricted, and without transparency.

Mass surveillance has already had a statistically measurable chilling effect on freedom of expression. Imagine how much more harm it could do in the hands of President Trump. The future of our most basic rights and freedoms is at risk.

This is exactly why unfettered government spying programs are so dangerous. No matter what their creators’ intentions may be, their use can quickly spiral out of control. The recent prosecutions of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, which the Obama administration has normalized over the last decade, will only embolden Trump to abuse his new power to surveil, censor, and incarcerate dissenters to the fullest extent possible.

The country is now counting on President Obama. This is his last chance to secure his legacy as the President who, in his final hours in office, did something extraordinary.

He should shut down the NSA and related mass surveillance programs. He should physically destroy the databases where the sensitive personal information of hundreds of millions of people are illegally stored. He should release Chelsea Manning and pardon Edward Snowden. He should support efforts in Congress to curtail location-tracking and other dangerous data collection. He should declassify and reveal to the public any programs that he does not have the power to end. He should drag them into the light of day so we have a fighting chance of stopping them during Trump’s reign.

He should bulldoze the data centers, computers and all, if he has to. He alone has the power to dismantle the U.S. surveillance state, before it falls into the wrongest of hands.

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[46&2]

I think the genie has escaped the bottle so to speak. Will be impossible to put him back now!

[steven36]

2 hours ago, 46&2 said:

I think the genie has escaped the bottle so to speak. Will be impossible to put him back now!

All kind of things the liberal media says that Obama needs to do today because  there butt hurt and eating  crow  because the one they wanted didn't get in and without a liberal in office  the White House  will no longer back the press  like they been doing for the last 8 years ,,,but that's just it hes been in Office almost 8 years and didn't do nothing but mess up health care  . The only NSA reform was too reform but re enable NSA spying  powers after the patriot act expired .  He signed the freedom bill into law so they could keep spying  so why would he stop it now ? It was a bill wrote by a Republican Rand Paul. Even if he tried to reverse what he signed it would never make it too congress in time and they are not going help him so it's not reality . The patriot act was law  seven years  of his term he done nothing  only reason anything was done was because it expired .

 

 

. If it would of been up too Obama they would been no  reform at all  Anything he does will be reversed by the Republicans starting next year anyway so it's too late for him to do anything he had 8 years and done nothing and that's why the American voters chose Trump because there sick of the democrats doing nothing.and just going along for the ride

 

 

Hillary Clinton had no interest in persevering  freedom .to begin with and Obama  was all mouth and didn't do nothing but help them to keep spying.. I'm a independent and i didn't like it.

 

Quote

Hillary Clinton: Well yeah but how much is too much? And how much is not enough? That's the hard part. I think if Americans felt like, number one, you're not going after my personal information, the content of my personal information. But I do want you to get the bad guys, because I don't want them to use social media, to use communications devices invented right here to plot against us. So let's draw the line. And I think it's hard if everybody's in their corner. So I resist saying it has to be this or that. I want us to come to a better balance.

Quote

 

This will not do. The answer elides the fact that Clinton has not been a passive actor in surveillance policy. "What the rules are" is something that she was responsible for helping to decide. She served in the United States Senate from 2001 to 2009. She cast votes that enabled the very NSA spying that many now regard as a betrayal. And she knew all about what the NSA wasn't telling the public. To say now that the NSA should've been more transparent raises this question: Why wasn't Clinton among the Democrats working for more transparency?

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/hillary-clintons-evasive-position-on-nsa-spying/386024/

Just like it's too late for Obama  it's too late for Clinton..if she would had different views she most likely would had won but she  had no interest in stopping NSA spying .

[nIGHT]

There is no need to be this over paranoid.

It is already there, so what could go wrong under Trump's hand? Right?
 

[steven36]

2 hours ago, nIGHT said:

There is no need to be this over paranoid.

It is already there, so what could go wrong under Trump's hand? Right?
 

It's just left wing rubbish , Anti Trump Propaganda  The press is liberal for the next 4 years there going disrespect him and act likes  hes not even president . there on the left and No one knows what Trump is going too do . He said a lot of things campaigning they all do but once he gets in there and gets briefed he will see how scary the world is and that  will calm  him down . And the president  dont have as much power as people think. he dont want too do nothing to be impeached  and if congress dont agree with it it want pass .