NY Times Backtracks Obama’s Credibility … ‘On this Issue’

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h/t Dutch evening newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

NY Times Editorial Board On NSA Scandal: Obama ‘Administration Has Now Lost All Credibility’

(Huff. Post) UPDATE – The Times appears to have updated its editorial, adding to its statement, “The administration has now lost all credibility.” Journalist Adam Henry of WAFF-TV noticed that the line now reads, “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.”

Comparing: President Obama’s Dragnet

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html
*Pink: Archived June 06, 2013 at 4:35pm EDT
*Green: Archived June 06, 2013 at 7:09pm EDT

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June 6, 2013
President Obama’s Dragnet
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make …

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.

The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system …

Articles in The Washington Post and The Guardian described a process by which the N.S.A. is also able to capture Internet communications directly from the servers of nine leading American companies. The articles raised questions about whether the N.S.A. separated foreign communications from domestic ones.

A senior administration official quoted in The Times about the Verizon order offered the lame observation that the information does not include the name of any caller, as though there would be the slightest difficulty in matching numbers to names. He said the information “has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” because it allows the government “to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”