President Obama says NSA secret data gathering is ‘transparent’

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 authorised in secret.

“It is transparent,” Obama told PBS’s Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast late on 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 authorises two recently leaked programs: one that gathers US phone records and another that is designed to track the use of US-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 US help, in an effort to get an edge in such high-stakes negotiations.