Inadequate Reform

Obama’s proposals to fight against the excesses of espionage are just a timid advance.

Barack Obama announced on Friday [Jan. 17] a timid and confusing reform on the security programs of the United States. Even if this reform recognizes the legitimacy of the alarm unleashed in the last few months by this very subject, it is far from offering the necessary guarantees to assure respect for liberties and the right to privacy for all citizens. This was just a partial admission of the damage that was caused and a vague and accommodating answer.

President Obama admitted that the collection and storage of massive amounts of telephone data within the United States, revealed by Edward Snowden and carried out by the National Security Agency, is open to abuses that can lead to a violation of constitutional principles. However, instead of removing that program for good and immediately, Obama promised to gradually replace it, to the extent that the intelligence community, Congress and his own advisers provide him with alternative options. Meanwhile, he demanded that, at least, the espionage agencies request judicial permission before having access to the contents of the phone calls regarded as suspicious by that program. It is, undoubtedly, a step in the right direction.

Within his reform, Obama has not dealt with other recommendations from the committee, such as the ones related to the inclusion of independent voices and greater transparency within the secret court that looks after the intelligence services’ claims. Above all, the president’s point of view is not the same one as the experts’. According to them, that NSA program, apart from being possibly illegal, is useless because its efforts to fight against terrorism have almost been irrelevant in the last few years.

On the contrary, Obama took advantage of his speech to defend the NSA’s labor and explain its methods. It is easy to accept the need of modern democracies to update their espionage methods and run after their enemies in the fields they are currently acting in, including the Internet. Nonetheless, a country like the U.S. does not need to do it at the expense of such an extensive sacrifice of individual liberties. If we do not do it now, the population will ask for explanations after the next attack has happened: This is an unworthy argument of the leadership that Obama wants to represent. Not a single leader can let fear act for him or explain his decisions in an alarming manner. George W. Bush used similar excuses to defend torture or secret prisons.

It is not the first time that Obama stays at an unsatisfactory middle ground. The president himself having now mentioned Snowden honors him: Until Friday, that was an unpronounceable name in Washington’s high places. Despite some criticism, it is an implicit acknowledgement that sees this speech as an answer to Snowden and considers this slight advance toward greater transparency to be the success of this young former NSA contractor.