White House Steps Up Defense of Surveillance Programs

President Obama doesn’t think the privacy of American citizens has been violated by recently disclosed surveillance efforts carried out by the National Security Agency and other government entities and will make his case more directly on the subject in the coming days.

That’s the word from White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough who appeared on the CBS Sunday morning talk show “Meet the Press.”

Asked directly by host Bob Scheiffer if Obama feels the privacy of Americans has been violated, McDonough said, “He does not.”

Additionally, he said, Obama took a skeptical look at existing surveillance programs when he first took office in 2009 and made substantive changes to them. The White House, he said, took pains to get Congress involved in authorizing the programs. Every member of Congress, McDonough said, has been briefed on the programs, and they were approved after a vigorous debate.

If the president is going to make a stronger case about the operation, privacy protections and other aspects of Prism and other surveillance programs, it would be a logical follow-on to a deal struck between the government, Facebook and Microsoft late Friday, allowing those companies to disclose how many national security requests they’ve received.

Here’s a preview of at least some of that defense. The Associated Press is reporting this morning that terrorist plots in the U.S. and at least 20 other countries were broken up using data collected from the programs. The story cites unnamed intelligence officials who go on to say that fewer than 300 phone numbers were checked against a database of millions of phone records gathered by the NSA.

The disclosures were made to members of Congress on Saturday. Intelligence officials say they’d like to declassify more details about the plots themselves so that Americans can have a sense about the benefits of the surveillance programs, but they haven’t gotten that far yet. Problem is that doing so might reveal still-secret counter-terrorism tactics.

Facebook disclosed Friday that it had received requests for information on as many as 19,000 accounts during the last half of 2012. Microsoft made similar disclosures the next day. Google and Twitter are still arguing with the government over the terms of the disclosure they’d like to make.

Americans say they are pretty comfortable with expanded government surveillance

A Pew Research Center poll conducted from June 6 to 9, prompted by revelations of an extensive domestic surveillance program involving the National Security Agency found that a large number of US citizens are comfortable with trading privacy for security.

The poll found that 56 percent of Americans considered it "acceptable" for the NSA to get "secret court orders to track calls of millions of Americans to investigate terrorism," while 41 percent of those surveyed found this "not acceptable."

This was the first time Pew had asked that specific question. It has asked the question "should the government be able to monitor everyone's e-mail to prevent possible terrorism" for a number of years. For that proposition there is less support, perhaps because it doesn't include any judicial oversight. In 2002, 45 percent said they supported e-mail monitoring, while 47 percent said they didn't support that. In June 2013, 45 percent still indicated they supported e-mail monitoring, but the number of Americans opposed to it rose to 52 percent.

The overall picture is still one in which large numbers of Americans are deeply frightened by terrorism and want the government to devote significant resources to combat it, notwithstanding the fact that terrorism is not much of an actual threat. On balance, most people polled indicated security is more important to them than privacy, which is the reason that expanded surveillance powers and the use of secret courts have been so popular among lawmakers.

Pew writes:
Currently 62% say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy. Just 34% say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats. These opinions have changed little since anABC News/Washington Post survey in January 2006. Currently, there are only modest partisan differences in these opinions: 69% of Democrats say it is more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even at the expense of personal privacy, as do 62% of Republicans and 59% of independents.

The polling did find a meaningful gap between older and younger Americans on this issue, with older Americans being less concerned about privacy.

"While six-in-10 or more in older age groups say it is more important to investigate terrorism even if it intrudes on privacy, young people are divided: 51% say investigating terrorism is more important while 45% say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible threats," Pew writes.

While the poll finds bipartisan support for surveillance, the way the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans have shifted on the issue since President Obama took office is once again evidence of the power of partisanship, rather than principle, in how voters see the world. For instance; the number of Democrats who say they think invading Iraq was the right choice has surged since Obama took office, and the number of Republican's who think it was a smart choice has plummeted.

The Pew poll found that in January 2006, 75 percent of Republicans found NSA surveillance programs "acceptable," while 61 percent of Democrats found them "unacceptable." In this June 2013 poll, Republican support dropped to 52 percent while Democrat support surged, to 64 percent now finding the surveillance programs acceptable.

While it's natural that Republicans would trust a Republican president more (and vice versa), expanded powers for the federal government don't expire at the end of each president's term. Still, even when it comes to fundamental questions about the trade-offs between privacy and security, a large portion of the electorate, like the politicians that lead them, don't look beyond the election cycle.

iPhone, iPad or iPod: New App Turns Device into Video Surveillance.

Have a spare or old iPhone, iPad or iPod touch laying around being unused? 

Well now you can turn it into wireless video surveillance with the new app,
Presence By People Power.  

You install the app on a IOS device with Wi-Fi connectivity and place the rear-facing
camera anywhere in your home. You could use it as a nanny cam, a baby monitor or
to watch your pets while at work. 

So you can now see what is going on in real-time at your house from wherever you are at. 

You can also set up Presence to send video alerts whenever it senses movement in an
area, which will then activate the camera and alert you. 

There is also the capability to have face-to-face 2-way video or audio conversations with
whoever is at your house. 

You could you it for any host of reasons like for a parent at work to be notified when their
kids come home from school. Maybe your roommate is eating your food or your neighbor's
dog keeps "leaving marks" in your yard. 

For long periods of time, it is obviously best to plug in your device so that it will keep running.
The app is free to download and there are no monthly fees. 

It sounds like a cool app, however if it is very effective, you can already see people setting
these devices up in places that they shouldn't, which would open up a whole new can of
worms. 

However, focusing on the positives of the device, this could be a affordable way to keep an
eye on your home.