Obama Vs. Snowden: Parsing the Presser

Obama impugns Snowden's motives without providing any evidence why we should accept such a cynical view of what, by all appearances, is an exemplary demonstration of citizenship. Obama speaks of "Mr. Snowden's leaks," repeatedly evoking the political conniving associated with the "L" word while altogether avoiding the correct, principled, legal term for informing the public about unlawful government conduct: "whistle-blowing."

The more authentic question of motive is the one posed not by Obama but by Snowden, when he describes the aim of Obama's spy system as one "which is done against the [public]." Obama's Panopticon stopped neither the Boston bombers' act of terror nor what might have been a massive espionage operation, had it been accomplished by one with different motives than Snowden's. Obama has yet to prove through actual criminal prosecutions that his constitutional violations have stopped any such conduct whatsoever, though he has been sharing surveillance data with the DEA and IRS , which have been lying and committing contempt of court in using it against Americans for illegal domestic law enforcement purposes.

These failures and the absence of any known successes suggests that the system might be motivated by an entirely different design and purpose than catching spies and terrorists. These failures tend to support the allegation that Obama's surveillance state is actually designed to suppress democracy and oppress citizens by gathering evidence the government can use against them at its discretion, like the Orwellian thought police of any Stasi state would aspire to. Subjecting elected officials to blackmail on the basis of such illegal evidence could undermine representative democracy as effectively as legalized influence peddling has already done .

There is considerable evidence that the design of the system actually prevents detecting Obama's "needle in the haystack" or taking the drink from the massive surveillance fire-hose needed to stop such occasional real threats. Obama's system is too obsessed with the altogether different objective of possessing the limitless power of intimidation by comprehensive surveillance of the people themselves, while hiding from the people what their government is doing with that power.

If Obama's May 23d speech had in fact advocated the immediate "thorough review" of this dysfunctional and illegal system that he claims he did, there might be ground for suspicion about the coincidental timing of such an announcement, as suggested above. A legitimate question could have been premised on whether, after five years of apparent neglect of the issue by Obama, including a refusal to investigate violations committed by his predecessor, the system was nevertheless working: Snowden had been detected and Obama had therefore intentionally anticipated his revelations by getting out in front with a proposal for serious reform. But the vast gulf that normally resides between Obama's word and deed, in the style of the friendly-fascist , velvet-draped tyranny he represents, always requires fact checking for the big lie. As Der Spiegel cautioned about Obama: "Soft totalitarianism is still totalitarianism."

So when Obama claimed on August 9, "I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks," it comes as no surprise to find that there is in fact no such phrasing in his May 23, 2013 speech at the National Defense University, where Obama claims he made such a proposal. That would have been news. It was not. Instead what we do find is the same tired equivocating platitudes that we now know have no relationship to Obama's conduct, unless as a possible indication of what he will most likely not do.

One writer describes Obama's trademark dance "the 'Obama Shuffle'--giving a shout to the 'left' and jumping to the 'right.'" None but the most naà ¯ve of those who have watched this dance for five years retain any hope that Obama's verbal acknowledgments of constitutional values and limits bear any relationship to his actual behavior, which includes record-setting Espionage Act prosecutions, assassination by drone of Americans without due process, seizing NDAA authority for their indefinite detention, dragnet wiretapping of the AP , threatening to send New York Times journalist James Risen to jail, attempted indirect intimidation of Glen Greenwald , and so forth.

The false dichotomy, or false dilemma fallacy is another Obama trademark form of evasion about everything from drone policy and climate change to his first response to Snowden: "You can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy." So his mention of civil liberties on the one hand as a false dilemma has no bearing on his typical use of the iron fist to crush civil liberties with the other. The rare exception to Obama's anti-civil liberties record is reserved for rights related to identity issues, which do not implicate the profits and power of his corporate sponsors . Snowden would have been uncharacteristically naà ¯ve to think that any verbal "call" by Obama for protection of rights would actually lead to any significant implementing action to protect the Fourth Amendment.

What Obama actually said in his May 23d NDU speech shared elements of both these tactics, plus a third propaganda technique discussed in detail below. But it contains no reference to a new "thorough review" mechanism. He said: "In the years to come, we will have to keep working hard to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are. That means reviewing the authorities of law enforcement so we can intercept new types of communication, but also build in privacy protections to prevent abuse." And that means"having a strong privacy and civil liberties board to review those issues where our counter-terrorism efforts and our values may come into tension" [emphasis added].

This statement speaks of no new directions, no heightened concern about the 4 th Amendment, but rather continuity: "We will have to keep working hard," not do anything different. One purpose of "review" is "so we can intercept" more information, not less by stricter observance of "our values." And then there is the matter of "having," not creating, a "privacy and civil liberties board."

[To Be Continued.]

CounterPunch published an earlier version of this article.    

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