Everyone is under surveillance now, says whistleblower Edward Snowden

[Vattel]

150. In everything you quoted, there is no mention of a national discussion on NSA surveillance.

The poster I was debating claimed, incorrectly, that in that speech Obama talked about the necessity for a national discussion on NSA surveillance.

You are correct, though, that he did mention surveillance independently of law enforcement. (My bad)

Obama has been talking about balancing security with liberty and privacy since his primary campaign in 2008. This speech was another instance of that. But he hadn't proposed any reforms of the NSA or called for a national discussion of NSA surveillance programs until Snowden's leaks sparked an intense national debate about those programs. So again, I think it is reasonable to suspect that Snowden's leaks led to Obama's reform proposals. I am open to seeing evidence to the contrary here, of course. There may well be loads of evidence that I am not aware of, but the other poster's attempt to point to that speech as evidence is what I was attacking.