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The White House on Thursday disputed the findings of an independent review board that said the National Security Agency’s mass data collection program is illegal and should be ended, indicating the administration would not be taking that advice.

“We simply disagree with the board’s analysis on the legality of the program,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

He was responding to a scathing report from The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which said the program ran afoul of the law on several fronts.

“The … bulk telephone records program lacks a viable legal foundation,” the board’s report said, adding that it raises “serious threats to privacy and civil liberties” and has “only limited value.” The report, further, said the NSA should “purge” the files.

The president did not go nearly as far when he called last week for ending government control of phone data collected from hundreds of millions of Americans.

Carney claimed the president, in his address last week, did “directly derive” some of his ideas from the board’s draft recommendations. But he made clear that Obama does not see eye to eye with them on the legitimacy of mass phone record collection.

“The administration believes that the program is lawful,” he said.

Full article: http://www.foxnews.c … tion-program-should/

President Obama delivered a speech on Friday outlining his plans to address the widespread outrage over the domestic surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. However well-intentioned, the president’s proposals indicate he just doesn’t get the constitutional notion of delegated powers.

Implicit in the Fourth Amendment is the principle that the government should remain powerless unless and until an individual is reasonably suspected of having committed a crime. It isn’t even allowed to search one’s person or papers (viz. phone records, emails) to collect the proof it needs until it persuades a judge that it has probable cause.

The only reason the Fourth Amendment offers any protection is it prescribes an adversarial process. The judicial branch is predisposed to refuse to issue a warrant until the executive branch provides sufficient evidence of probable cause.

Furthermore, the judiciary represents a separate branch of government with its own independent powers. When the judge refuses to issue a search warrant, it’s not a recommendation. It’s an order for the executive branch not to search.

Most importantly, court proceedings are supposed to be held in public, so the people can verify directly that the courts administer justice and their orders are followed by the executive.

Thus, the courts check the executive and the people check the courts. Both the executive and judicial branches are bound by Congress, which is checked by the people via the Constitution.

All of these checks rest upon the assumption that power will be abused if it is not forcibly limited. In the president’s own words, “it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us.”

These checks and balances don’t exist under current FISA law. The FISA court operates in secret, so the people aren’t there to verify directly that they administer justice properly. Neither can they see for themselves that the executive actually carries out the court’s instructions.

via Obama’s proposed NSA reforms prove he doesn’t understand checks and balances

When we learned the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the phone data of every American last June, it posed a serious constitutional question: Do we no longer have a Fourth Amendment?

On Friday, Jan. 17, President Barack Obama essentially responded, “No, we really don’t.”

via President Obama’s reforms at the NSA won’t protect Americans’ privacy from continued government intrusion