Story highlights
U.S. programs represent troubling, "massive surveillance," author says
"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," the president says
The formerly secret surveillance programs help prevent terror, he says
But critics say U.S. programs go too far and should be rolled back
Details on millions of American phone calls. Records of e-mails, texts, video chats and more from overseas. And pulsing beneath it all, a worrying concern there’s more to the government’s surveillance programs than what’s been acknowledged.
All the revelations about U.S. surveillance programs in recent days have put the government on the defensive, set privacy advocates howling for reform and left millions of Americans somewhere in the middle, wondering what the news means to them and what, if anything, they should do about it.
The man at the top says they should just relax.
“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Barack Obama said Friday as he tried to reassure Americans who have had to digest a dizzying array of revelations in the past few days. Among them:
