Jakarta Globe – Bloomberg, Roger Runningen, December 8, 2013
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| A general view of the headquarters of the National Security Administration (NSA) in Fort Meade, Maryland, USA, on June 7, 2013. (EPA Photo/Jim Lo Scalzo) |
Washington.
US President Barack Obama plans to propose curbs on the National Security
Agency to guard against unwarranted snooping in Americans’ private affairs.
The
president is scheduled to get a report next week from a five-member panel of
lawyers and former security officials that’s reviewing the spy agency’s
sweeping collection of communications data worldwide. It was created after the
leaks of secret government documents by former government security contractor
Edward Snowden.
“I’ll be
proposing some self-restraint on the NSA and to initiate some reforms to give
people more confidence,” Obama said yesterday in an interview on MSNBC’s
“Hardball With Chris Matthews” program. Americans, he said, “rightly are
sensitive to needs to preserve their privacy and to maintain Internet freedom,
and so am I.”
Obama’s
action on recommendations from the Review Group on Intelligence and
Communications may have consequences for Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple.
Technology companies are facing the loss of billions of dollars in overseas
business, stricter regulations and erosion of consumer trust as a result of
revelations that the NSA gained access to private networks to conduct
surveillance.
Obama
didn’t specify what kinds of limits he has in mind. He defended the agency’s
data collection in general, citing the threats to US banks, increasing online
crime and terrorism.
‘Bad
actors’
“If we’re
going to do a good job of preventing a terrorist attack on this country, a
weapon of mass destruction getting onto the New York subway system, etcetera,
we do want to keep eyes on some bad actors,” he said in the interview before an
audience of mostly students at American University in Washington and broadcast
last night.
The
president said the disclosures from material leaked by Snowden over several
months “have identified some areas of legitimate concern,” though some of the
reporting on the material has been “highly sensationalized.”
Obama said
the surveillance disclosures, along with the botched rollout of the
government’s health-care website and allegations of Internal Revenue Service
scrutiny of Tea Party groups, have contributed to an erosion of the public’s
trust in government.
“The
cynicism and the skepticism is deep,” he said. Little attention is given when
the government does something well, Obama said. “If we do something that is
perceived, at least initially, as a screw-up, it’ll be on the nightly news for
a week.”
2016 campaign
Obama
declined to handicap the contenders for the Democratic nomination for president
in 2016. Among the potential candidates are his vice president, Joe Biden, and
his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Asked to
compare their presidential qualifications, Obama replied “not a chance.”
“Here’s
what I’ll say: Both Hillary and Joe would make outstanding presidents and
possess the qualities need to be outstanding presidents,” Obama said.
Reflecting
on five years as president, Obama said: “It makes you humbler, as opposed to
cockier, about what you as an individual can do.”
“It’s hard,
it can be frustrating, you’ve got to have a thick skin.”
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