It's hard to imagine anyone who's paying attention still believes Obama is anything but a corporate tool; however, for the blindly partisan, Wall Street's Boy has just confirmed his 1% credentials by instigating Change in the NSA that will likely give future generations of Americans little Hope of privacy
"In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic.
"It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America's most significant political scandals.
"Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama's much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for 'reforming' the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy.
"The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are 'serious questions that have been raised'.
"They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again.
"And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.
"This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable.
"In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury.
"In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary 'safeguards': a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community."
Obama's NSA 'Reforms' Are Little More Than a PR Attempt to Mollify the Public | Common Dreams
"But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government's requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government's lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch.
"As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government.
"Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee's heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House.
"As the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees 'more often treat senior intelligence officials like matinee idols'".
"In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic.
"It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America's most significant political scandals.
"Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama's much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for 'reforming' the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy.
"The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are 'serious questions that have been raised'.
"They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again.
"And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.
"This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable.
"In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury.
"In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary 'safeguards': a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community."
Obama's NSA 'Reforms' Are Little More Than a PR Attempt to Mollify the Public | Common Dreams
"But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government's requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government's lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch.
"As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government.
"Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee's heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House.
"As the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees 'more often treat senior intelligence officials like matinee idols'".
