Obama Dodges Questions,the NSA Snoops Around

Barack Obama’s speech on the activities of the National Security Agency may have calmed down the agency itself, as well as corporations, but not citizens.

On Jan. 17, Obama delivered a long-awaited speech concerning presidential policy on the issue of the NSA’s activities, which encompass collection and storage of data on electronic communications. The White House has had its hands full in the last few days — detailed documents have been drawn up, professional information for the media has been taken care of and the president himself spent a long time giving a speech in front of the Department of Justice. All of that had to be taken care of before the first lady’s birthday. A botch-up in the matter of the most important upcoming statement of the Obama administration could have certainly spoiled the first couple’s celebrations, so nothing could go wrong.

Everything went according to plan. Obama succeeded in satisfying nearly everyone, except for those he was not going to appease from the very start. The Guardian, one of the newspaper offices that published the information on the NSA’s apparatus of mass invigilation, therefore complains that those who counted on any conciliatory words directed at Edward Snowden, or on an actual limit on the agency’s competencies, have no reasons to be satisfied. Happy, on the other hand, can feel the much more serious players — those whom Barack Obama really addressed.

So, what did Obama really say? He assured the agency that it plays a key role in providing for national security: Collection of data, without going into such details as of what or how, “enables the development of foreign policy and the protection of American citizens and citizens of the allied countries against any harm.”* The program of metadata analysis will not be suspended, although the issue of data storage is still in question. Concerned male and female citizens were appeased by the president and reminded that law courts — including the infamous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees, among others, the NSA’s activities — will observe security agencies more rigorously, and they themselves will take certain measures to create more transparency. He promised international partners a “rise in trust”* — though a guarantee of it would be presented by not spying on “ordinary people” and not using racial profiling, which would consider such factors as race, nationality or confession in order to determine potential suspects. So, it is exactly something that — if one happens to trust official statements of American diplomacy — does not exist at all, if it ever had. Internet giants instead received an assurance that they will be able to disclose government demands to make their user data accessible more freely in matters “concerning national safety” — at least some of them.

Out of all these assurances, the ones that Obama directed — even if not directly — at the coalition of Internet corporations sound most interesting. Not because Google, Facebook and Yahoo got all they wanted: Quite the opposite is true, and exactly for the reason why the speech made on Jan. 17 did not refer to most of their demands. Next to all these strivings for more transparency, the only new perspective is made up of experts on technology and civil liberties, which Obama had promised to install in FISC courts. So, why can Silicon Valley be happy, even if it is not popping the champagne bottles yet?

This very speech does not put an end to the lobbying being done by Internet giants in Congress, the Senate or Justice Department. Consent to some of the demands paves the way for other negotiations. The allies received assurances, the citizens words of comfort, and companies an implicit invitation to further talks.

It is not about a conspiracy theory — no one seems to be deluded that consistent and generously funded lobbying on the part of technological corporations is about to begin just now. It happens 365 days a year, regardless of the president’s schedule. What should ring an alarm bell is that, after Jan. 17, these very corporations secured a better starting position when it comes to fighting for further concessions on the part of the NSA. How do we know that?

The U.S. government is not used to negotiations on matters of national security. For this reason, it does not treat European partners seriously, does not conduct public consultations on the matter of the agency’s powers, but does chase Edward Snowden — which all causes the movement for change in the NSA’s policy to gain momentum in Congress very slowly.

Meanwhile, it continues to “work together, in order to maintain the current dynamics of change.”* At least, this is how the very technological firms put it in their commentary.

The companies fight for change in the NSA’s policy, which would be favorable to them, but also not necessarily to the detriment of the citizens. The closing of “back doors,” as methods of spying on social media without any formal approval are called, will be for the better of the Internet giants and users of their services. However, not all possible scenarios are so peaceable.

Inviting only corporations to the table is certainly detrimental to the discussion about supervision and broadly defined civil liberties. Any future solutions undertaken without the consent of the citizens — even if Mitt Romney claims that “corporations are people” — will be only partial in the best case scenario. The worst-case scenario would be for state supervision to lose with private supervision in a battle for our data.

It will be interesting to see whether next Jan. 17 will be celebrated more boisterously in the White House or Silicon Valley.

*Editor’s note: Correctly translated, these quotes could not be verified and appear to sum up or paraphrase a position expressed in other words.