Though President Obama has done several positive things in the final weeks of his presidency, some of his moves have seemed so bold and dangerous that we are left wondering if he really wants Trump to have the most dangerous control of the U.S. in American history.
Not only did President Obama carefully orchestrate U.S. law so that government-sanctioned propaganda is once again legal to be used against our own citizens, and not only has Obama just permitted the creation of a new ministry of truth, but just this week, President Obama has opened the doors to the intelligence community, allowing them unprecedented access to intercepted data captured by the NSA.
Until now, the NSA was allowed access to just about any and every form of communication between U.S. citizens, but there were strict limits on how the information could be shared and who had access to it.
Under the new rules set by Obama in the final days of his administration, members of the intelligence community will now be able to pore through untold amounts of raw data at their discretion, looking at anything and everything they see fit. Without the additional barrier that the NSA previously provided, members of the intelligence community will have uncensored access to information, even if it does not belong to a specific issue pertinent to an investigation.
According to the New York Times:
“Previously, the N.S.A. filtered information before sharing intercepted communications with another agency, like the C.I.A. or the intelligence branches of the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The N.S.A.’s analysts passed on only information they deemed pertinent, screening out the identities of innocent people and irrelevant personal information.
Now, other intelligence agencies will be able to search directly through raw repositories of communications intercepted by the N.S.A. and then apply such rules for “minimizing” privacy intrusions.”
The benefit to the intelligence community is that they are able to access any information which might pertain to them, but the much larger negative of this rule change is that millions of innocent citizens will now be subject to continued and expanded invasion of privacy.
Since the days of Snowden’s whistleblowing, we have know that our government has a dangerous and insidious role in invading our privacy, but now President Obama has made what was once a covert rarity an in-the-open and bureaucratic systematic invasion.
In the moments when our government is taking unprecedented measures toward limiting the freedom of American citizens in a multitude of ways, President Obama should have been trying to protect us, rather than expose us. Once again he has proven just how not for the people he truly is.
