President Barack Obama has staunchly defended US government programmes conducting surveillance of Americans' phone and Internet activity, insisting that they were conducted with broad safeguards to protect against abuse.
"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this programme is about," Obama told reporters on a visit to California's Silicon Valley on Friday.
He insisted that the surveillance programmes struck the right balance between keeping Americans safe from terrorist attack and protecting their privacy.
His comments follow news that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading US internet companies to spy on foreigners.
According to the Washington Post newspaper, even though US citizens were not the intended targets of surveillance, this has allowed investigators to examine emails, photos and other documents of tens of millions of Americans that can be used to track people and their contacts over time.
In a statement on Thursday, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said the Post article contains "numerous inaccuracies".
Clapper said while the programme, code-named PRISM, collects information concerning "non-US" persons located outside the country, it cannot be used for any citizens or anyone within the US.
"Information collected under this programme is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats," he said.
The president was extra-sure to highlight the states he said had implemented the law “correctly.” That was an oblique reference to the many Republican-dominated states that had refused to begin setting up the subsidized health insurance exchanges and expanded Medicare programs set forth by the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
And, mindful of the political implications of the law, Obama highlighted some of the benefits that have already taken hold under the law, such as allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health insurance for a longer period of time.
“By the way, all of this is what the Republican Party has now voted 37 times to repeal, at least in the House of Representatives,” he said. “And my suggestion to them has been, let's stop re-fighting the old battles and start working with people like the leaders who are on stage here today to make this law work the way it's supposed to.”
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