NYT Editorial Board Slams Obama On Tracking: ‘Administration Has Now Lost All Credibility’

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The New York Times editorial board pilloried the Obama administration on Thursday, after it was reported that the National Security Agency actively collects phone log records of millions of Americans under a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) order.

“The administration has now lost all credibility,” the Times’ editors write. “Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the 9/11 attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.”

They added: “We are not questioning the legality under the Patriot Act of the court order disclosed by The Guardian. But we strongly object to using that power in this manner. It is the very sort of thing against which Mr. Obama once railed, when he said in 2007 that the Bush administration’s surveillance policy “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”

Update: The article was edited several hours after originally being published to now read: “The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.”

 

 

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