What is striking is Feinstein’s outrage that there is a dire need for oversight after the government was given carte blanche to grab millions of emails and phone calls of U.S. citizens. Feinstein of course first moved (as have all Democratic leaders) to protect the President. There has been a full court press to maintain that Obama was entirely unaware of the surveillance — a curious position that I have previously discussed. Feinstein’s outrage appears calculated to support that new spin. She has said Obama’s lack of knowledge is a “big problem.” She added “The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support.”
Continuing to refer to the widely ridiculed secret court as legitimating the massive surveillance of all citizens, Feinstein says that this is a problem because it was not carried out under such claims of oversight: “Unlike NSA’s collection of phone records under a court order, it is clear to me that certain surveillance activities have been in effect for more than a decade and that the Senate Intelligence Committee was not satisfactorily informed.”
By the way, you will note that, as usual, Feinstein is not particularly concerned about average people or their rights. It is the leaders (like herself) that concerns her: “Unless the United States is engaged in hostilities against a country or there is an emergency need for this type of surveillance, I do not believe the United States should be collecting phone calls or emails of friendly presidents and prime ministers.”
Feinstein’s outrage therefore seem a bit forced . . . much like her concern over the regulation of drones. Clearly, the prior effort to shrug off the surveillance or even to embrace it has not gone over well. The alarm raised by Feinstein comes right on cue as the White House struggles to assure allies that Obama is not personally responsible for what his government does. It is the only avenue around the growing international crisis: the ole plausible deniability. The abuses would be officially attributed to faceless functionaries acting on their own. While that may not make a lot of sense since this intelligence had to have been shared at the highest levels, it allows people like Feinstein to implement meaningless investigations while the intelligence community burrows deeper out of the public eye. It would simply have been more plausible with someone who has shown a modicum of concern for civil liberties in the past. The current security state was created with the enthusiastic support of Feinstein and other members who have shown little inclination or interest in serious oversight.
And so the narrative is set. The surveillance of Merkel was an over-zealous group of spies and has left American leaders perfectly horrified and disgusted . . . and all will be made well by Dianne Feinstein.
Source: The Hill