The current administration is playing damage control, hard. As more NSA security leaks come out, people in the tech community continue to be outraged. The problem is the standard citizens not nearly as motivated to do anything, and as such, Obama is clearly focusing efforts on placating the correct people.
The first thing that is generally sweeping to help put water on the flame is his new 'task force' idea. While he gives no credit to Snowden for this attempt at transparency in the NSA, he plans to create an independent group of expert citizens who would review NSA policies in the future. I have to say, this crap is admirable at best: who says they won't create this force and just tell them to shut up and take their pay check all the same? This won't really change anything.
Other than that, the other proposed methods of transparency can be just as easily filtered. They plan to put in place a new website, outlining NSA actions and plans, and a new position simply to keep watch over privacy and constitutional concerns. They're both laughable, as they are internally controlled. If it took this long for someone directly involved to speak up, who says these things will actually get a hold of any information that would be needed to help the problem. They also plan to reform a couple pieces of the Patriot Act and FISA, which are what currently allow NSA's actions to be considered 'legal'. If they really wanted to change things, they would need to remove the whole damn thing. The Patriot Act is full of these holes and broad-sweeping statements that I GUARANTEE will come back up as a problem in only a few years, tops.
The second thing I took notice of this week is a little less obvious, but has to be influenced by the current mess the administration is dealing with. Obama has been urging the FCC to require mobile devices be permanently unlocked. This means that a phone would not be carrier-specific and can be taken and switched between carriers freely. This would be a wonderful thing for the tech community, and the standard consumer. Being able to take any phone to any carrier would drive competition back into the stagnant and terribly overpriced mobile platforms. We currently pay so much for mobile service that companies are boning us for huge markups that are hardly reasonable.
The idea of unlocking phones as a standard has been under debate for a while, but in recent years has quieted down for more pressing issues. They had made the practice illegal early this year after the exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act it had expired. The fact that a major tech-heavy issue has come back up and announced to be supported by the administration in favor of the general public? There's no way it's coincidental, and they're simply trying to redirect focus from the NSA screw ups. Good job guys. At least you didn't attempt to wave 9/11, abortion, and gay rights in our faces - you needed some new tricks for those tech guys who didn't care about those.
It's terrible, but the fact that cell phones are how they're trying to distract people show the majority of the people with issues are tech-oriented. Non-tech-savvy people just don't grasp everything happening, and most probably don't know what unlocking a phone means.
See, in truth, I can't complain about the cell phone thing. I know there's not actually going to be a lot of change with the NSA's bullshit regardless of how much I or the public want it to - they'll find other ways to weasel these programs through. So, if something good comes out of them trying to win back public favor, screw it, right? It seems like that's the only way progress actually happens in this country anymore: someone needs public support, so they give us something to contrast pissing us off to lighten the blow. Politics are a mess here, and they drive me to consider leaving the country more every day. Here's hoping something happens to reform our outdated systems before I get there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/obama-surveillance-reform_n_3733090.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/obama-administration-urges-fcc-to-require-carriers-to-unlock-mobile-devices/2013/09/17/17b4917e-1fd4-11e3-b7d1-7153ad47b549_story.html
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