"Using the discovery of a lack of further threats after a bombing happened undetected to justify spying on all Americans? That's crazy."

President Obama: NSA Surveillance Was Necessary To Make Sure Boston Bombings Weren't Part Of Bigger Plot

from the sorry-about-the-explosions... dept

by Mike Masnick

Huffington Post has an article about how President Obama is meeting with many of the biggest Congressional critics of the NSA surveillance programs to discuss their concerns. However, on Wednesday he also met with larger groups in the House and Senate, where he continued to stand behind the programs. At the very bottom of the article is this stunning tidbit:

Obama reiterated his call for a "balance" between privacy and national security, but also invoked the Boston Marathon bombings as an example of where data collected by the NSA helped "identify whether there was a great plot."

Right. So, after there was a bombing which no intelligence agency spotted beforehand, he's now claiming that the NSA got to jump into action to find out that there wouldn't be any more bombings because there was no bigger plot. We're not even in the silly debunked realm of "preventing terrorist events" anymore. Now we're at "Great work everyone! We found out that there's no larger plot to worry about -- sorry about the explosions and related mess." Using the discovery of a lack of further threats after a bombing happened undetected to justify spying on all Americans? That's crazy.

When that's the best you can do to defend this program, something is clearly wrong. The program didn't prevent the bombing. It may have allowed law enforcement to be more confident that there wasn't a larger plot behind it slightly faster than regular police work did, but that's not exactly a reason to violate everyone's privacy, now is it?

Link:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130731/18005724032/president-obama-claims-boston-bombings-reinforce-need-nsa-surveillance.shtml