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from the keeping-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer dept.
Edward Snowden said that from contacts he has had with those in the White House and in President Obama's orbit, "we've come to understand that [Obama] was personally wounded as a result of these disclosures," which prompted Snowden to seek asylum outside the country.
[...] Snowden also addressed the notion of President Obama pardoning him. Based on communications he had with Obama's White House and those in the former president's orbit, Snowden realized he would not receive a pardon because the information Snowden leaked significantly damaged Obama's legacy.
[...] It had long been speculated, leading up to Obama's final hours in office, that he would grant Snowden a 11th hour pardon.
Snowden, however, disputed this notion saying, "I don't think it was a likely case. I'm not even sure it was a possible case, because the president himself was the one most personally embarrassed by these disclosures."
"[Obama] campaigned in 2007...on the platform of saying he would end exactly this kind of warrantless mass surveillance," Snowden continued. "In secret, instead of ending this programs, he entrenched them and expanded them. He made their reach greater, he made their use more common, he normalized what had been an unlawful and unpopular program of the George Bush administration and made it a new American tradition."
Will Obama's legacy come to be, as Snowden seems to suggest, that he normalized police state surveillance?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @05:44PM (2 children)
Under Bush the surveillance was conducted cowboy style - the people doing it had very little supervision and oversight.
Under Obama supervision and oversight was codified. Which is an improvement over what came before, but obviously not sufficient to the task.
Snowden himself has said that the spying isn't necessarily the problem, its the lack of public accountability. That the american people deserve to decide what should and should not be allowed and that we can't make those decisions if knowledge of the programs is with held from the people.
N.B. One of the people who fought against that cowboy style was Comey when he was Acting Attorney General. [cato.org] It is debatable whether he fought hard enough, because in the long run the Bush whitehouse just bypassed him anyway.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:40PM
Hitler just codified and industrialized the pogroms.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 05 2017, @09:21PM
Transparency of secret practices is a tricky business.
🌻🌻 [google.com]