Disapproval for Obama, Praise for Snowden

The New York Times criticizes [U.S. President Barack] Obama because he doesn’t acknowledge [former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) associate Edward] Snowden’s achievement.

After more than six months, the U.S. president finally addressed the consequences of the NSA scandal in a major speech. The expectations were not very high. Nevertheless, the disappointment in America and Europe has been great after the U.S. president’s announcement Friday of plans to control the intelligence agency and its data collection a little more. According to The New York Times, “A lot of his reforms are frustrating, imprecise and vague when it comes to implementing them.”* Instead of drastically reducing data collection and restricting the NSA’s access to the pool of telecommunication companies, Obama gave the government no deadline for developing alternative solutions. However, the best solution is obvious and already available, but not being used: to table the issue. According to the newspaper, one of Obama’s biggest mistakes was refusing to acknowledge the revelations of Edward Snowden, who still has to live in exile. If the president wants to win back the trust of the American people, he needs to frankly admit “the things that made the American people nervous in regards to their intelligence agency and [to] provide stricter safety measures.”*

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung sees nothing but improvement: “Obama’s suggestions are more than consolation. He showed some interest in the debate that Edward Snowden caused ….” That at least is something.

Süddeutsche Zeitung also emphasizes the significance of Snowden by the headline [summarized here as] “human and machine”** and points out Obama’s entrapment in dealing with this affair. “Obama, once an opponent of the surveillance state, now lives in a convenient partnership with a computer organism named National Security Agency,” according to the newspaper. “The transformation in the first term is an example of the influence [that] machines have on humans. America’s intelligence organizations turned around or seduced a president that once deeply mistrusted them. Obama, who is a critic of government overreach, should have already told the American people in his first term what he discovered in the White House in 2009. He should have initiated a debate. Instead, he kept the secret to himself. He did not want to share NSA, much less to let it be divided up. Obama probably would have never disclosed himself what now Edward Snowden has revealed …. The NSA case is not just an example of how technology influences politics and the legal system, but also the difficulty of removing a technology once it’s already implemented. Obama’s strange relationship with the surveillance machine NSA was similar to the common people and their smartphones. One becomes addicted to [the] feeling of having everything under control, to be connected at all times. At the beginning, humans steer the machine until the time comes when the machine steers humans. Edward Snowden recognized this danger, not Barack Obama.”

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.

**Editor’s note: An English translation of the full original title is “When the Machine Steers Humans.”