Obama Claims that the Reports of NSA Spying on US Citizens Show that the System Works

Inadvertent, My Ass

The fact that Barack Obama is being sent out to tell blatant lies by the state security apparatus like some sort of poodle does not fill me with confidence.

No I'm serious. He is saying that because the system sorked", because a strongly worded report was issued:

President Barack Obama said in an interview that aired Friday that recent revelations the National Security Agency had collected Americans' emails prove that oversight for such surveillance programs is working properly.

Obama told CNN's "New Day" the data collection was "inadvertent" and attributed it to "technical problems," which were then presented to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"The court said, 'This isn't going to cut it. You're going to have to improve the safeguards, given these technical problems.' That's exactly what happened," he said. "So the point is, is that all these safeguards, checks, audits, oversight worked."

He claims that the errors were unintentional.  He is lying through his teethe:

Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials' and lawmakers' statements that no willful violations occurred.

"Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA's authorities have been found," the NSA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. "NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities."

The incidents, chronicled in a new report by the NSA's inspector general, provide more evidence that U.S. agencies sometimes have violated legal and administrative restrictions on domestic spying, and may add to the pressure to bolster laws that govern intelligence activities.

The inspector general documented an average of one case per year over 10 years of intentionally inappropriate actions by people with access to the NSA's vast electronic surveillance systems, according to an official familiar with the findings. The incidents were minor, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence.

BTW, one a year is a lie from the inspector general is a gross understatement, because we know that for years, NSA agents listened to and recorded for later amusement phone sex between overseas soldiers and their loved ones:

There have been allegations of abuse. Back in 2008 it was widely reported that NSA employees were listening to phone sex calls between American soldiers and their partners. NSA employees would save these calls and share them around for their own personal amusement. This is a textbook example of abuse. This is the kind of invasion of privacy that deeply concerns most Americans.

The most likely reasons we haven’t heard about more abuses is because the NSA is incredibly secretive, basically never audited, and the Obama administration has engaged in such an aggressive war on whistleblowers people are scared to come forward.

I would also note that one of the controls that Obama taunts is the FISA court, and they say that the NSA program was unconstitutional and also that the NSA lied to them:

In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.

“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.

This really is a profile in cowardice.

Update:
I did not realize that the video clip was auto-playing. I have corrected this. Sorry.