Jacob Sullum on Why Obama Changed His Mind About the NSA’s Phone Record Dragnet

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee
last July, Deputy Attorney General James Cole explained why the
National Security Agency (NSA) needed to collect everyone’s
telephone records. “If you’re looking for the needle in the
haystack,” he said, “you have to have the entire haystack to
look through.”

Judging from the changes that President Obama
recommended last week, he has decided that looking for a needle in
a haystack might not be the smartest way to prevent terrorist
attacks. Jacob Sullum says Obama’s decision to eliminate the NSA
database he once defended as essential to national security shows
how important transparency is in protecting civil liberties, since
he thought everything was fine as long as it was secret.

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