Obama's NSA "reform" defends illegal spying

The Obama White House is preparing a National Security Agency "reform" package that is aimed at legitimizing and institutionalizing the NSA's illegal domestic spying operations, while putting in place stringent security measures to prevent disclosures of its crimes such as those made by former contractor Edward Snowden.

President Barack Obama is set to present the so-called "reforms" in a speech he will deliver Friday at the US Justice Department. The measures he has embraced are selected from among those recommended to his administration last month by a hand-picked advisory panel dominated by former intelligence officials.

Even before Obama could make the speech, new revelations provided by Snowden have uncovered yet another sinister operation by the NSA. The latest exposure involves the agency's secret planting of software in almost 100,000 computers, enabling it to spy on their users even when the computers are not connected to the Internet....

The entire process, billed by Obama as a "national conversation" on data collection and privacy, has only underscored that no branch of the US government—executive, legislative or judicial—and no section of the US ruling establishment has any serious commitment to democratic and constitutional rights. All have integrated themselves into the defense of a totalitarian intelligence apparatus dedicated to relentless spying on the people of the United States and the world.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/16/fisc-j16.html