Faced with mounting public criticism, US President Barack Obama has made a renewed defence of his administration’s controversial surveillance programmes, terming them “transparent” and ones that have helped disrupt multiple terror plots.
In an interview to PBS that aired on Monday night, Obama took the stand that the surveillance programmes were subject to adequate checks and balances with a court set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act overseeing their operation.
He said he has set up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board to deliberate on how far Government data gathering should be allowed to go.
“We’re going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and balances in place….that their phone calls aren’t being listened into; their text messages aren’t being monitored, their emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere,” Obama said.
NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, who appeared before a Congressional panel later on Tuesday, revealed, without going into details, that about 50 terror plots have been disrupted since 9/11 with the help of the surveillance programmes. As for Edward Snowden, the ex-CIA staffer who blew the whistle on the controversial programmes and is now holed up in Hong Kong, Obama declined to comment on his potential prosecution. He, however, said the matter has been referred to the Department of Justice for examining the issues of criminal prosecution and possible extradition.
Snowden himself, in a separate online chat hosted by The Guardian hours earlier, said he cannot expect to get a fair trial in the US, thereby ruling out his voluntary return home. Defending his actions, Snowden said he did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets, but only about NSA’s hacking of civilian infrastructure like universities and private businesses. He rejected the charge that he was spying for China.