WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama defended top secret National Security Agency spying programs as legal in a lengthy interview and called them transparent — even though they are authorized in secret.
"It is transparent," Obama told PBS's Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast late Monday. "That's why we set up the FISA court," he added, referring to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes two recently leaked programs: one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.
The location of FISA courts is secret. The sessions are closed. The orders that result from hearings in which only government lawyers are present are classified.
"We're going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there are checks and balances in place ... that their phone calls aren't being listened into; their text messages aren't being monitored, their emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere," Obama said.
Obama was in Northern Ireland for a meeting of leaders of allied countries. As he arrived, the latest series of Guardian articles drawing on the leaks claimed that British eavesdropping agency GCHQ repeatedly hacked into foreign diplomats' phones and emails with U.S. help, in an effort to get an edge in such high-stakes negotiations.
Obama's announcement followed an online chat Monday by Edward Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst contractor who leaked documents revealing the scope of the two programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers. He accused members of Congress and administration officials of exaggerating their claims about the success of the data gathering programs, including pointing to the arrest of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi in 2009.