Obama takes snooping panel advice ‘seriously’

DPA/WashingtonUS President Barack Obama has said he was taking “seriously” the recommendations by a review panel that examined ways to reform US spy programmes with a view to privacy protection.In his final press conference of the year, Obama said that he would make a “pretty definitive statement” about the issue in January, where he would say which advice makes sense and which need to be refined.On Wednesday, the White House released 46 recommendations by the panel that said the US should take “significant steps” to protect the privacy of foreign citizens and re-evaluate its surveillance of foreign leaders.Obama defended the bulk collection of phone numbers and exchanges that has been of most concern domestically, saying that the information was important to preventing future terrorist attacks.His main concern, he said, was how worried the public was that such information could possibly be abused, even though there was evidence that the National Security Agency (NSA) “is not engaging in domestic surveillance or snooping around”.“The question we’re going to have to ask is, can we accomplish the same goals that this programme is intended to accomplish in ways that give the public more confidence that in fact the NSA is doing what it’s supposed to be doing?” Obama said.The task is particularly challenging given all the information that Americans are “downloading on a daily basis into our telephones and our computers”.“We may have to refine this further to give people more confidence,” Obama said. “Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we necessarily should.”He said that the world must recognise that in the virtual world, some boundaries don’t matter anymore.At the same news conference, Obama also criticised other countries for hypocrisy.He said countries that jumped to criticise the US for spying on its leaders and citizens are often committing the very same surveillance of their own citizens.These countries “somehow are able to sit on the sidelines and act as if it’s the US that has problems when it comes to surveillance and intelligence operations”.Obama also refused to weigh in on suggestions by an NSA official that consideration should be given to a reprieve for leaker Edward Snowden from espionage charges so he can return to the US.While Obama said Snowden’s revelations had unleashed an “important conversation that we needed to have”, he said that the disclosures damaged the United States and its intelligence capabilities.Earlier on Friday in Brussels the European Commission said that it welcomed the internal review process that the Obama administration was conducting on its intelligence activities.“We trust that this will lead to intelligence collection which is respectful of our democracies and the fundamental rights of our citizens,” said Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, spokeswoman of the European Commission.Ahrenkilde Hansen commented after allegations were published on Friday saying that American and British intelligence services conducted surveillance of European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.The commission will raise these new allegations with US and UK authorities, Ahrenkilde Hansen said.