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Obama’s NSA Pivot | Unfilter 91

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Obama is now promising reforms to how the NSA collects phone records, but are the changes as comprehensive as we are being led to believe? We’ll cover some of the big gaps still being left open for the NSA to exploit.

Without missing a beat western powers work together to encircle Russia, and its clear the focus of world security has changed, we’ll bring you up to date on the latest in Ukraine.

Plus our thoughts on the media’s heyday with Flight 370, your feedback, and much much more.

On this week’s episode of, Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is Crazy

Obama’s New NSA Proposal and Democratic Partisan Hackery

As for the substantive reform, the fact that the President is now compelled to pose as an advocate for abolishing this program – the one he and his supporters have spent 10 months hailing – is a potent vindication of Edward Snowden’s acts and the reporting he enabled.

And now the President himself depicts himself as trying to end it. Whatever test exists for determining whether “unauthorized” disclosures of classified information are justified, Snowden’s revelations pass the test with ease.

That President Obama now proclaims the need to end a domestic spying program that would still be a secret in the absence of Snowden’s whistleblowing proves that quite compellingly.

The House’s NSA Bill Could Allow More Spying Than Ever. You Call This Reform?

While the full draft of the bill isn’t yet public, the Guardian has seen a copy, and its description does not inspire confidence. Under the Rogers and Ruppersberger proposal, slyly named the “End Bulk Collection Act”, the telephone companies would hold on to phone data. But the government could search data from those companies based on “reasonable articulable suspicion” that someone is an agent of a foreign power, associated with an agent of a foreign power, or “in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power”. The NSA’s current phone records program is restricted to a reasonable articulable suspicion of terrorism.

A judge would reportedly not have to approve the collection beforehand, and the language suggests the government could obtain the phone records on citizens at least two “hops” away from the suspect, meaning if you talked to someone who talked to a suspect, your records could be searched by the NSA. Coupled with the expanded “foreign power” language, this kind of law coming out of Congress could, arguably, allow the NSA to analyze more data of innocent Americans than it could before.

President Obama’s reported proposal sounds more promising, though we have even fewer details than the Intelligence Committee proposal. The administration’s plan would supposedly end the collection of phone records by the NSA, without requiring a dangerous new data retention mandate for the phone companies, while restricting analysis to the current rules around terrorism and, importantly, still requiring a judge to sign off on each phone-record search made to the phone companies – under what the New York Times described as “a new kind of court order”.

If, for some reason, your phone number happens to be within three hops of an NSA target, all of your calling records may be in the corporate store, and thus available for any NSA analyst to search at will.

Obama’s NSA reform leaves out email, text and social media

But, what seems to be lost amidst today’s victory is that the NSA, right at this very moment, is collecting data via email, text, social media, and mobile apps. This should be a big concern.

US Moral High Ground Completely Gone As China Demands US Stop Spying On Its

Some people forget this, but the day before the very first of the Ed Snowden revelations, there were plenty of headlines about how President Obama was about to meet with China’s President Xi Jinping, with a major focus of the talk being about how Obama wanted to the Chinese to stop their “cyberattacks” on US companies. An anonymous “senior White House official” was quoted at the time saying:

_“We expect this to become a standing issue in the US/China relationship. We believe that all nations need to abide by international norms and follow the rules of the road and that means dealing with actions emanating from your territory.”
_

The NSA Has a Media Kit

The media kit came with a short letter from an NSA spokesperson, which explained that the kit is about the NSA’s “mission and contributions to national defense.”

The kit “may inform your national security beat reporter or team” and “enhance awareness of NSA’s role in defending the nation,” the letter reads. The kit “may inform your national security beat reporter or team” and “enhance awareness of NSA’s role in defending the nation,” the letter reads.

The kit actually consists of two pamphlets. The large one defines the agency as “a unique national asset,” but warns that “most of the details about how NSA contributes to national security can’t be publicly discussed without tipping off America’s adversaries.”

Did Flight 370 Coverage Create new breed cable news beast?

Too much coverage of plane mystery?

So, a new formula: When you find a story you think will sell, pound it, over and over again, to the exception of pretty much everything else. And that’s what CNN did with the missing plane.

Media judgment vanished in Flight MH370 coverage

So we remain glued to the saga of Flight MH370, filling the gaps in our understanding the same way the television networks fill their airtime, by spreading crazy theories, speculating about tiny blobs on satellite images and just generally pretending we know what we’re talking about when we obviously have no clue. We can’t get enough. Precisely because there isn’t enough.

CNN’s Don Lemon: ‘Is It Preposterous’ to Think a Black Hole Caused Flight 370 to Go Missing?

CNN’s Don Lemon has been entertaining all sorts of theories about the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, including the chance something “supernatural” happened, but on Wednesday night, he actually asked panelists about the possibility a black hole was involved.

Lemon brought this up along with other “conspiracy theories” people have been floating on Twitter, including people noting the eerie parallels to Lost and The Twilight Zone, and wondered, “is it preposterous” to consider a black hole as a possibility?

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The West Works Together to stop Russia

Barack Obama: Russia is a regional power showing weakness over Ukraine

President Barack Obama has described Russia as no more than a “regional power” whose actions in Ukraine are an expression of weakness rather than strength, as he restated the threat from the G7 western allies and Japan that they would inflict much broader sanctions if Vladimir Putin went beyond annexation of Crimea and moved troops into eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine crisis: Gunfire and explosions as Crimean base is stormed by Russian troops

Machine guns and stun grenades were used in the assault by Russian soldiers as they ended the siege of Belbek military airport in a brutal show of power. The commander of the base, Colonel Yuli Manchur, who had led his men in defying repeated demands for surrender, was arrested and taken away.

Russia Ominously Building Up Troops on Border with Ukraine

Martin reports Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called the Russian Defense Minister to ask about the troop movements and was told they are only “exercises.” But no timetable was given for when the “exercises” will end.

BRICS rejects sanctions against Russia over Ukraine

The White House said earlier on Monday that US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan decided to end Russia’s role in the G8 over the crisis in Ukraine and the status of Crimea.

Meanwhile, the G7 group of top economic powers has snubbed a planned meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to host in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in June.

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