The president’s interview with Re/code over the weekend touched on privacy issues, with Obama insisting with “almost complete confidence” that there have been no abuses of the government’s vast surveillance program.
In response to a question about his administration’s tension with Silicon Valley over NSA intrusions, Obama touted his reforms, saying, “When you look back at what we’ve done, I have constantly tried to update the laws and rules governing how we operate in cyberspace with these new technologies.”
“In the case of the NSA, we’re probably a little slow,” he admitted. “The truth is that what we did with respect to U.S. persons, what we did in this country, was strictly circumscribed. And, generally speaking, I can say with almost complete confidence that there haven’t been abuses on U.S. soil.”
He acknowledged that Snowden’s revelations “were really harmful in terms of the trust between the government and many of these companies, in part because it had an impact on their bottom lines.” But, he maintained, “I think it’s also fair to say that my relationship with Silicon Valley and the tech community has historically been really good. Many of these folks are my friends, and have been supporters, and we interact all the time.”
Consumer concerns about privacy and their data have greatly harmed tech companies in recent years. Meanwhile, the FBI has been pressuring the same companies to provide them “back-door” access to data, and steer clear of encryption.
“One of the interesting things about being in this job is [that] it does give you a bird’s-eye view,” Obama said. “You are smack-dab in the middle of these tensions that exist. But I guess what I would say is, there are times where folks who see this through a civil-liberties or privacy lens reject that there’s any trade-offs involved, and in fact there are. And you’ve got to own the fact that it may be [that] we want to value privacy and civil liberty far more than we do …The safety issues. But we can’t pretend that there are no trade-offs whatsoever.”
Read and watch the full interview here.
