Episode #58: A Roundtable Discussion of President Obama's NSA Speech
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2014
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Obama delivered a major address this morning---and released an accompanying policy directive---in response to the recommendations of his surveillance review group. He announced limited reforms to the NSA's surveillance activities, defended the larger role and activities of the intelligence community, and suggested that limited privacy protections extend to non-Americans. Lawfare convened a roundtable discussion by phone to discuss the president's highly-anticipated speech; the discussion featured Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, and Carrie Cordero of Georgetown University Law School. Lawfare's managing editor, Wells Bennett, moderated the conversation.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the law |
| 0:07.0 | fair podcast become a material supporter of law fair at patreon.com slash law |
| 0:14.0 | fair. That's patreon.com slash law fair. Also check out law fair's other podcast |
| 0:21.0 | offerings, rational security, chatter, law fair, no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | This speech is a huge win for the intelligence community. The president started |
| 0:42.0 | by comparing the modern NSA to the sons of liberty and Paul Revere and talked a |
| 0:50.0 | lot about the history and the contribution of intelligence to national |
| 0:55.0 | interests and national security and war fighting and really never put distance |
| 1:01.0 | between himself and the intelligence community. |
| 1:04.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittis and this is the law fair podcast January 17, 2014. |
| 1:11.0 | This morning, President Obama gave his long-awaited speech on the NSA on |
| 1:16.0 | signals intelligence, on reform of bulk metadata collection, on the review group |
| 1:20.0 | recommendations and on other fallout from the Edward Snowden disclosures. |
| 1:25.0 | The White House also released a presidential policy statement outlining some reforms |
| 1:30.0 | and the president called on Congress to enact some more. It was a strong defense |
| 1:34.0 | of the embattled agency but also a strong defense of the importance of protecting |
| 1:39.0 | privacy, including the privacy of non-US persons. We got together a conference call |
| 1:45.0 | of law fair folks to discuss the speech and the presidential directive. |
| 1:49.0 | Wells Bennett, our esteemed managing editor, moderated the discussion in which |
| 1:54.0 | Bobby Chesney, Carrie Cordero and I all participated. It's a recorded phone call |
| 2:00.0 | so it's not the best audio quality you've ever heard. If you don't like it, |
| 2:04.0 | just think what those poor NSA analysts must go through all day. |
... |
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