Listening to everyone all of the time is NOT the same as RECORDING EVERYONE ALL THE TIME! The latter is what will make us ALL subject to abuse, even if it isn't used on us in real time and go after us when we're saying things. I would argue that is what is being hidden, and that this is more about having power over people to make them do what you want to do rather than stopping terrorism (which is the excuse that too many SAPS swallow when their president is in the White House -- Many Rethugs under Bush, and some but TOO MANY Dems under Obama).
If it was so efficient in catching terrorism before it happened, why didn't it stop the Boston bombing, or all of these shooting rampages we've been seeing lately?
Just because it follows some CORRUPT LAW THAT IGNORES THE CONSTITUTION (like the Patriot Act), and upheld by corrupt courts (who here wants to say that the Supreme Court follows the constitution after Citizen's United decision?), and someone spoonfeeds you that it has helped produced valuable leads doesn't mean it's true. These are the same people that were telling Senator Wyden in his act of perjury then that NO data was being taken on all Americans when testifying before Congress.
A lot of what is in place would have been ILLEGAL many years back before the Patriot Act, and a different set of judges would have been saying what was being done wasn't constitution or following FISA court guidelines (that was revised to the point of being useless after the Patriot Act and other subsequent legislation).
The bottom line is that we need to "refresh" the 4th amendment so that it can be made more explicitly to apply to today's environment and not allow for and weasel wiggle room that is being used too much to try and work around it today, much like corporate personhood jerks weaseled around the more generic "persons" term of the 14th amendment to justify their judicial activism that could have been avoided if that one phrase in the 14th amendment was written as "natural persons" instead.
I know a lot of what is in place is not of Obama's doing. But instead of working with the principles of what we thought we'd elected him to use in his governance, he's taking the power that was given to him and amplifying it in arguably unconstitutional ways instead of fixing this problem. The last thing we need to do is "bless" him doing this because he's one of our party and not a Republican. And many opportunist right wingers are using this against him, and he has only himself to blame for that!
That's not to say that we party members don't go after the other ludicrous crap that the partisan Republicans are going after him with (Benghazi, birtherism, and IRS "scandals"
. But in situations like this, Obama needs to own up to his MISTAKES in making these problems worse instead of fixing them. The clock is ticking. We don't want to work against him, but if he continues being defensive, he's going to give many of us that believe in the constitution and the principles of civil liberties and being an American over "party" much choice.
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