Obama defends Internet snooping programme

US: President Barack Obama sought Monday to allay fears about secret US intelligence programmes, rejecting comparisons with the policies of his predecessors George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

The Obama administration has been on the defensive since last week's dramatic leak of details of two huge operations by the National Security Agency to track US citizens' phone calls and intercept global Internet traffic.

One poll had the president's approval rating falling by eight points, and some of his progressive allies have joined attacks against him by his usual conservative and libertarian opponents.

Responding on the "Charlie Rose" show on PBS television to the charge that he had merely continued with the surveillance policies that ex-president George W. Bush and former vice president Dick Cheney had brought in after the 9/11 attacks, Obama pushed back.

He defended the NSA data-gathering programs, insisting that they were carried out with "systems of checks and balances" adding: "Congress is overseeing it, federal courts are overseeing it." "The whole point of my concern, before I was president -- because some people say, 'Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he's, you know, Dick Cheney,'" Obama said.

"Dick Cheney sometimes says 'Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock and barrel.' My concern has always been not that we shouldn't do intelligence gathering to prevent terrorism, but rather are we setting up a system of checks and balances?" But the president also said he recognized the "legitimate concern" raised by news reports, and that he had ordered intelligence officials to declassify as much as possible "without further compromising the program." And he promised that an independent advisory board would review the programs.

"I've stood up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board, made up of independent citizens, including some fierce civil libertarians," he said.

AFP