In an interview that aired Monday evening, President Barack Obama defended the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs while once again insisting that Americans shouldn’t worry that their government is snooping on them.
Obama told Charlie Rose that the NSA programs — brought to the fore by a series of bombshell reports published recently by The Guardian and The Washington Post — are part of the balancing act as president.
“The way I view it, my job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life which includes our privacy,” Obama said. “And so every program that we engage in, what I’ve said is ‘Let’s examine and make sure that we’re making the right tradeoffs.'”
Obama said the NSA “has been in the intelligence gathering business for a very long time” and the agency is “bigger and better than everybody else.”
“And we should take pride in that because they’re extraordinary professionals; they are dedicated to keeping the American people safe,” he continued. “What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails.”
“And have not,” Rose wondered.
“And have not,” Obama confirmed. “They cannot and have not, by law and by rule, and unless they — and usually it wouldn’t be ‘they,’ it’d be the FBI — go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it’s always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause…”
The President argued that the NSA surveillance helped foil a 2009 plot by Denver resident Najibullah Zazi to blow the New York City subway system, although many have questioned that claim.
