Wikileaks Julian Assange Responds To Obama's Press Conference On America's Global Surveillance Program
Today (August 9, 2013) the President of the United States validated Edward Snowden’s role as a whistleblower by announcing plans to reform America’s global surveillance program. But rather than thank Edward Snowden, the President laughably attempted to criticize him while claiming that there was a plan all along, “before Edward Snowden.”
Ironically, the Department of Justice is betraying two key principles that President Obama championed when he ran for office transparency and protection for whistleblowers. During his 2008 campaign, the President supported Whistleblowers, claiming their “acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.” Yet his administration has prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers than all other administrations combined
Moreover, the US government’s hypocrisy over Snowden’s right to seek asylum has been stunning. America offers asylum to dissidents, whistleblowers and political refugees without regard to other governments opposition all the time. For example, the US has accepted 3,103 of their own asylees, 1,222 from Russia and 1,762 from Venezuela –http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2011/ois_yb_2011.pdf.
Today was a victory of sorts for Edward Snowden and his many supporters. As Snowden has stated, his biggest concern was if he blew the whistle and change did not occur. Well reforms are taking shape, and for that, the President and people of the United States and around the world owe Edward Snowden a debt of gratitude.
President Obama took questions from the White House Press Corps August 9th in the East Room of the White House, addressing a range of topics including the National Security Agency’s role and reforms to intelligence gathering programs.
The President highlighted his commitment to the balance between “protecting our security and preserving our freedoms” and announced his plans for increased transparency and reforms in our intelligence programs, in order to give the public confidence that these programs have strong oversight and clear protections against abuse:
The American people need to have confidence in them as well. And that’s why, over the last few weeks, I’ve consulted members of Congress who come at this issue from many different perspectives. I’ve asked the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to review where our counterterrorism efforts and our values come into tension, and I directed my national security team to be more transparent and to pursue reforms of our laws and practices.
President Obama directed his Administration to work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to our nation’s surveillance programs and the court that oversees them – including working with Congress to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act, improving the public’s confidence in oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), making the intelligence community more transparent, and forming a high level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.
The President also remarked on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Immigration Reform, and his upcoming trip to Russia for the G20 Summit.
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