Obama's cloak of invisibility

[Quantum Windbag]

It is terribly frustrating that the media, for whatever reason, has stopped pressuring the government about transparency since Obama was elected in 2008. I sincerely hope that we elect somebody they despise in 2016 so that we can get this country going in the right direction again.

Back in 2007, when he was running for president, Barack Obama criticized George W. Bush's expansive vision of executive power, saying, "I reject the view that the president may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security." The day after taking office in 2009, Obama declared that "my Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."Those two positions went together, because secrecy requires power and power thrives in secrecy, as Obama himself has been demonstrating for the last four years. Three recent cases illustrate how breaking his promise of "the most transparent administration in history" has helped Obama break his promise not to use national security as an excuse to violate civil liberties.
After 9/11, Congress loosened restrictions on national security letters (NSLs), a kind of administrative subpoena, first authorized in 1986, that the FBI uses to demand information from phone companies, Internet service providers, and financial institutions. According to the Justice Department's inspector general, NSL "requests" skyrocketed from a total of 8,500 between 1986 and 2000 to more than 56,000 in 2004 alone.

Obama's Cloak of Invisibility - Reason.com