Politics & Government

Would You Hand Over Your Phone Records for Greater Security?

The Obama Administration has admitted to tracking Americans' phone records for the past seven years to bolster national security, it says.

Bay City News contributed to this report

President Barack Obama spoke in San Jose Friday to address concerns over recent revelations about national security programs, which included the FBI’s and NSA’s collection of millions of phone records and an internet surveillance program.

Obama, who was in the Bay Area for fundraisers on Thursday benefiting the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, came to the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose Friday and responded to media reports earlier this week about two programs being carried out by his administration.

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The reports revealed that federal officials were collecting large amounts of phone records and also collecting data from Internet companies like Google and Facebook as part of their anti-terrorism efforts.

“The top priority of the president of the United States is the national security of the United States and protecting the homeland, and we have to make sure we have the tools we need to confront the threat posed by terrorists,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday in defending the collection of phone records, reported the Washington Post

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That program is a “critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats,” Earnest added.

Obama said the programs have been "authorized by broad bipartisan majorities" in Congress, which has "been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing."

He emphasized that the intelligence community is only looking at phone numbers and durations of calls, not who was talking nor the contents of the calls.

"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls, that's not what this program is about," Obama said.

As for the program involving the Internet companies code named “PRISM,” according to NPR, the president said it does not apply to U.S. citizens or people living in the U.S. and said that the actions of intelligence officials are overseen by federal judges.

He acknowledged that there are critics of the programs and their encroachments on privacy, which includes emails, instant messages and photos.

"I welcome this debate, I think it's healthy for our democracy," Obama said.

"We can't have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," he said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society."

"Again, in this instance, not only is Congress fully apprised of it, what is also true is the FISA court has to authorize it," he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., released a statement today criticizing Obama and calling on Americans "who value constitutional protections of privacy and the prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure to contact their elected representatives to ask that they end the all-encompassing monitoring of telephone communications and the Internet."

The San Francisco Republican Party also released a statement, claiming the intelligence controversy was a new "scandal" for Obama and that he is "more and more beginning to appear as Nero who fiddled as Rome burned."

Obama acknowledged that there are critics of the programs and their encroachments on privacy.

The debate comes down to "how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy, because there are some tradeoffs involved," he said.

"In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, then I think we strike the right balance," he said.

In a statement, James R. Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, said the revealing of the government’s program exposes the country to threats from the nation’s enemies “and make it more difficult for us to understand their intentions,” according to Time Magazine.

“Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats,” he said. “The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”

 

Scroll down and tell us in the comments below:

  • Do you think this program is justified if national security is on the line?
  • Would you additionally hand over your phone conversation records for increased national security?
  • Or do you think this is a huge violation of our privacy?  


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