Pres. Obama on privacy rights and national security

According to the usually left-leaning New York Times:

“President Obama suggested ominously on Friday that allowing domestic surveillance programs to expire at a Sunday deadline could lead to a terrorist attack on the United States. . . .

Pushing the Senate to break a logjam on legislation, Mr. Obama warned in the Oval Office that, “I don’t want us to be in a situation in which, for a certain period of time, those authorities go away and suddenly we’re dark.”The measure, passed overwhelmingly by the House this month, would extend the government’s authority to obtain business and other records pertaining to a specific investigative subject, to secure so-called roving wiretaps to track potential terrorists or spies who switch telephones to avoid detection, and to wiretap a terrorism suspect who is not part of a particular group.

But the controversy has centered on the National Security Agency program that collects bulk telephone records, which the bill would eliminate. Instead, under a bipartisan compromise backed by the Obama administration, telephone companies would retain the data, and the N.S.A. could gain access to it by obtaining an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

The Senate has not yet decided what to do.  The law has since expired on its own.  We are now temporarily free to Big Brother on this front.vvStay tuned!