Winner of the Pulitzer
By Caroline Houck
Published on Thursday, June 13th, 2013 at 11:22 a.m.
With revelations that the federal government has been collecting data
on phone calls and Internet usage, some have questioned whether
President Barack Obama has broken promises he made in the 2008 campaign.
YouTube
videos
have popped up, juxtaposing speeches Obama made as a candidate in 2008
with his more recent argument that trade-offs must be made to protect
the American people.
Some see this as a reversal in his positions. So we went back and looked at promises tracked in our
Obameter and other coverage of the 2008 election to see where Obama stood on the spectrum of security and privacy.
In the years leading up to the 2008 campaign and in the early stages of
the campaign itself, Obama regularly emphasized the importance of civil
liberties and the sanctity of the Constitution.
"We need to find a way forward to make sure that we can stop terrorists
while protecting the privacy, and liberty, of innocent Americans,"
then-Sen. Obama said when he
voted against
Michael Hayden’s confirmation as CIA director in 2006. "As a nation we
have to find the right balance between privacy and security, between
executive authority to face threats and uncontrolled power. What
protects us, and what distinguishes us, are the procedures we put in
place to protect that balance, namely judicial warrants and
congressional review. ... These are concrete safeguards to make sure
surveillance hasn’t gone too far."
During his presidential campaign he reinforced these earlier stances by
promising
to "strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and … harness
the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for
violations of personal privacy." Though our
Obameter
tracking of this promise notes that his specific pledges pertained more
to safeguards against commercial privacy infringements than
governmental intrusions, he did promise to protect citizens’ privacy. As
of Jan. 14, this promise was "in the works," as both Obama and Congress
considered various measures to protect and define individuals’ Internet
privacy.
But many of Obama’s criticisms of government surveillance specifically
targeted President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretaps and particular
applications of FISA and the USA Patriot Act that Obama called excessive
or illegal.
"I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the
tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining
our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal
wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to
spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking
citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more
ignoring the law when it is inconvenient," Obama said in
2007, adding that "the FISA court works."
Again critiquing "the Bush administration's initial policy on
warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our
national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens,"
Obama
promised
to "update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater
oversight and accountability to the congressional intelligence
committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law."
He also
vowed
to "revisit the Patriot Act to ensure that there is real and robust
oversight of tools like national security letters, sneak-and-peek
searches, and the use of the material witness provision."
Midway through Obama’s first term, we rated
both of those
promises
as compromises. Although no substantive changes have been made to
enhance oversight of surveillance under the FISA statute or Patriot Act,
the Obama administration has voluntarily enacted several measures in
the executive branch. Most notably, the Justice Department implemented
oversight reforms from a 2009 bill that failed to pass Congress.
Obama also targeted the Bush administration’s use of
executive orders
to conduct surveillance programs, saying "most of the problems that we
have had in civil liberties were not done through the Patriot Act, they
were done through executive order by George W. Bush. And that’s why the
first thing I will do when I am president is to call in my attorney
general and have he or she review every executive order to determine
which of those have undermined civil liberties, which are
unconstitutional, and I will reverse them with the stroke of a pen."
"I take the Constitution very seriously," he said. "The biggest
problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying
to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go
through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m
president of the United States of America."
The one clear instance of Obama
reversing course
on a civil liberties promise occurred not with the recent publication
of the NSA scandal, but nearly five years ago. In its original
incarnation, the FISA statute was designed to protect citizens’ civil
liberties — leveling fines, for instance, at any telecommunications
company that helped government agencies conduct surveillance on its
customers without warrants. In the early stages of the Democratic
Primary, then-Sen. Obama
promised to filibuster
any bill that would give companies immunity from those fines —
essentially removing their major deterrent from complying with wiretap
requests.
But in July 2008, Obama voted for a bipartisan compromise bill updating
the FISA statute that granted telecommunications companies legal
immunity in these cases. Though this prompted a
backlash among his more liberal supporters, Obama
defended
his decision at the time, calling the bill a "marked improvement over
last year’s Protect America Act" and saying it provided "effective
intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards."
Meanwhile, on a topic related to the recent leak about surveillance,
Obama promised in 2008 to increase protections for whistleblowers. Obama
has improved conditions for some whistleblowers, such as government
workers who report fraud, waste and abuse within federal agencies. But
he has not succeeded in enacting any structural reforms, so we rated
this promise as a
Compromise
last year. The notable exceptions to these improved conditions,
however, are whistleblowers from the national security apparatus —
whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. As noted in the Obameter ruling,
individuals who have leaked information from the intelligence or
national security communities have generally been prosecuted under the
Espionage Act and enjoy none of the protections other whistleblowers do.
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