President Obama today has announced that he is changing the structure of the program under which the NSA collects the phone records of essentially all Americans. This so called meta data includes the number called, the number from which the call is placed, the duration of the call and the location where the call is placed and received. The collection of this stuff has prompted outrage by many civil libertarians. The NSA says that it needs to collect the data since the phone companies do not keep it long term and therefore it would be lost to them if an occasion arose when it was needed. Under Obama's plan, an outside contractor of some sort would gather and hold the data.
Is he kidding? This is really his plan? Who is he going to hire for this task: Edward Snowden? If it was bad for the government to collect and hold all this data from which they could invade the privacy of millions of Americans, is it really any better to have a private contractor do that. Remember that a private contractor will be subject to fewer controls and oversight than the government, but it will have all of the same confidential information in its possession.
What will happen if the contractor just happens to be owned to a great extent by George Soros? What about the Koch brothers; what if they go into this business? Does Obama really think that a private entity is better than the government in this regard?
One thing you have to give to Obama. We have had few presidents who have been able consistently to take problems facing the nation and always find a way to make them worse. On that score, Obama is a genius. He can take problems and make them into catastrophes.
Is he kidding? This is really his plan? Who is he going to hire for this task: Edward Snowden? If it was bad for the government to collect and hold all this data from which they could invade the privacy of millions of Americans, is it really any better to have a private contractor do that. Remember that a private contractor will be subject to fewer controls and oversight than the government, but it will have all of the same confidential information in its possession.
What will happen if the contractor just happens to be owned to a great extent by George Soros? What about the Koch brothers; what if they go into this business? Does Obama really think that a private entity is better than the government in this regard?
One thing you have to give to Obama. We have had few presidents who have been able consistently to take problems facing the nation and always find a way to make them worse. On that score, Obama is a genius. He can take problems and make them into catastrophes.
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