3. PRISM
"Obama Says We Can't Have 100% Security and 100% Privacy, and He's Right." -PolicyMic Earlier on, I quoted Senator Rand Paul during his 13-hour filibuster regarding President Obama's drone policy: "I think it's also safe to say that Barack Obama of 2007 would be right down here with me arguing against this drone-strike program if he were in the Senate." Back in March on the Senate floor, he probably (and, let's face it, hopefully) had no idea about how right he was, and not just about drones. The very same man who, in 2008, challenged the provisions of the Patriot Act that allowed President George W. Bush and the NSA warrantless wiretaps of international phone calls to combat terrorist threats was revealed to have kept and expanded upon a secret key provision of the Bush era policies: the collection of metadata, which includes numbers called, date and time of calls and length of calls from Verizon customers (so far, only Verizon has been implicated, but don't be surprised if this goes to other carriers as well). Obama's toughest critics argue that despite his campaign mantra of "change" in 2008, this scandal is the icing on the cake to show that he is just another politician making promises to win office by keeping various policies of the Bush administration. Even Bush himself has praised Obama's policies in the media, saying they are a good balance between liberty and security. Uh-oh.