President Barack Obama defended top secret National Security Agency spying programmes as legal in a lengthy interview on Monday, and called them transparent — even though they are authorised in secret.
“That’s why we set up the FISA court,” he said, referring to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorises two recently disclosed programmes: one that gathers US phone records and another that is designed to track the use of US-based internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.
He added that he has named representatives to a privacy and civil liberties oversight board to help in the debate over just how far government data gathering should be allowed to go – a discussion that is complicated by the secrecy surrounding the FISA court, with hearings held at undisclosed locations and with only government lawyers present. The orders that result are all highly classified.
“We’re going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and balances in place ... that their phone calls aren’t being listened into; their text messages aren’t being monitored, their emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere,” Obama said.
A senior administration official, on condition of anonymity, said the president had asked director of National Intelligence James Clapper to determine what more information about the two programs could be made public, to help better explain them.
Obama is in Northern Ireland for a meeting of leaders of allied countries. As Obama arrived, the latest series of Guardian articles drawing on the leaks claims that British eavesdropping agency GCHQ repeatedly hacked into foreign diplomats’ phones and emails with the US help, in an effort to get an edge in such high-stakes negotiations.
Obama’s announcement follows an online chat Monday by Edward Snowden, the man who leaked documents revealing the scope of the two programmes to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers.
Obama repeated earlier assertions that the programmes were a legitimate counterterror tool and that they were completely non-invasive to people with no terror ties – something he hoped to discuss with the privacy and civil liberties board he’d stood up.
Congressional leaders have said Snowden’s disclosures have led terrorists to change their behaviour, which may make them harder to stop – a charge Snowden discounted as an effort to silence him.