back to article Obama's DoJ defends Bush-era wiretaps

The US Justice Department under President Obama is invoking Bush Administration tactics to dismiss a lawsuit alleging federal agents engaged in illegal phone and email surveillance of ordinary US citizens. A motion submitted to US District Judge Walker on Friday claims disclosing information on the National Security Agency's …

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  1. jake Silver badge

    In theory ...

    In theory, Obama's a student of Constitutional Law ... Hopefully he'll be able to fix the mess that he's been handed (thanks, George!).

    "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" & all that ... But it's only been a few days. Big changes take time.

    We'll see.

  2. EnricoSuarve
    Black Helicopters

    No one saw this one coming? Serious?

    It was bad when you did it and the laws you enacted to help you were all bad. However, now that it is us and they help us they are all good

    We will not prosecute you for laws you broke whilst in power cos we intend to break a few and that sort of thing could get messy later on

    Obama - change you can believe in. They changed president, I believe that, I can see it, they even changed his colour

    As for the rest - that wasn't the bit being changed

    This isn't an American thing - it's a western democracy thing. My prediction is in a little under 2 years time (June 2010 plus honeymoon period) people will look at Cameron and state "How did that happen? He seemed like such a nice young man..."

    Obama = Blair with a tan

    Black helicopter cos I just like it - this isn't a conspiracy, it's western politics working exactly as designed - it's an undocumented feature

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All Governments are the Same

    Like a relative of mine apparently said, "Doesn't matter if the Tories or Labour are in power, taxes always go up". I think this is even more true to so today. Despite some differences parties that used to occupy left or right-wing positions have moved to the centre. Obama may indulge in the usual Democratic statist spending, but he's not going to change Bush's security or defence policies much. Perhaps real politik or his security advisors have persuaded him to change his stance. I also believe that whatever noises the Conservatives make about civil liberties, their natural instinct is to go for more national security, not less. In the end I don't trust politicians. I think they find the idea of the internet as something outside their control which undermines the power of traditional elites disturbing (e.g. faciliatating illegal downloads, terrorism, etc.) Unless their is a massive revolt legislatures will continue to move more towards the Chinese model of surveillance and repression. It is in our hands as internet users to fight or evade snooping. There are tools to obsfuscate their electronic traces like encryption which will make it more difficult for the eavesdroppers. Which should all be using them.

  4. Eddy Ito
    Paris Hilton

    I hate to do it, but

    I did say it didn't matter who won before the election. Do the words, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" sound familiar or mean anything to anyone? Oh yeah, "won't get fooled again" my arse. Did you know that gullible isn't in the dictionary?

    Paris because even she knows.

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