My LTE to the Inky on NSA spying

[Rich]

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20130608_Obama_defends_spying.html
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/malkin-claims-bushs-syping-was-okay-\
be


It's nice to hear that President Obama "...said he would welcome a debate on the
classified surveillance effort...," which sounds positive, but no knew that the
effort even existed until just a few days ago and there are no indications the
the President intends on making public any significant details. Someone of Fox
News the other day (Michelle Malkin speaking to the Fox & Friends crew on
Thursday, June 6th) compared President Bush's NSA spying program with President
Obama's NSA spying program and found the two "completely different." Slight
problem is that there was never much disclosure on Bush's part. There were and
are many, many details that have never been independently confirmed, so any
reasonably serious comparison of the two programs is simply not possible.
Spying on Americans via the National Security Agency (NSA) is not a
Republicans-Democrats issue, both sides clearly do it. It's the American people
who are surveilled and then left in the dark under both presidents.
It's also nice to hear that such spying helped to break up a plot concerning New
York's subways in 2009, but Bush claimed many times that his spying program
broke up lots of terrorist attacks and none of those claims could ever be
independently confirmed. The fact that many Congresspeople who were supposedly
briefed on the program are now denying they were ever informed adds to the cloud
surrounding this program.
President Obama is right, it would indeed be healthy to have a full discussion
about NSA spying on American citizens, but first we must have full disclosure.

Daily Kos has links to comments and editorials at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/08/1214451/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up-Complicity-of-Congress-in-Total-Information-Awareness

Rich