Democratic freedoms? A case of Obama saying one thing and doing another?

U.S. President Barack Obama has been in office long enough now for disconnects to emerge between his grand speeches and what he does in fact.
Never more so than in the case of the former Bush Administration warrantless wiretapping of its own citizens.

CNet reported in January 2008 that Barack Obama was against warrantless wiretapping:

For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and "wiretaps without warrants," he said. (He was referring to the lingering legal fallout over reports that the National Security Agency scooped up Americans' phone and Internet activities without court orders, ostensibly to monitor terrorist plots, in the years after the September 11 attacks.)

It's hardly a new stance for Obama, who has made similar statements in previous campaign speeches, but mention of the issue in a stump speech, alongside more frequently discussed topics like Iraq and education, may give some clue to his priorities.

In 2008 an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was put to the U.S. Senate.

This is what Obama as a presidential candidate is reported as saying of this amendment on 14 July 2008:

"I am proud to stand with Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty," Obama said in a prepared statement. "There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people — we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law.

"We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties.

"This administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don't sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the administration to join us in that effort."

Obama then went on to vote for the legislative amendment which allowed immunity from prosecution.

However this immunity was not believed at the time to extend to government according to its Senate sponsor:

Second, lawsuits against the government can go forward. There is little doubt that the government was operating in, at best, a legal gray area. If administration officials abused their power or improperly violated the privacy of innocent people, they must be held accountable. That is exactly why we rejected the White House's year-long push for blanket immunity covering government officials.

Since then a number of court cases have come to light including Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc v Barack H. Obama, President of the United States of America.

Now in response to this and other current litigation President Obama (through the Department of Justice) appears to be asserting a surveillance power which is even wider than that previously asserted concerning warrantless searches.

President Obama may be smoother and better packaged than George W. Bush, but deep down he is nothing more than an expedient politician like those presidents before him and, just as unwilling to relinquish any power (no matter how dubious) over the citizenry.

Here is what the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFA) says about its current court proceedings:

In Jewel v. NSA, EFF is suing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.

Jewel v. NSA is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it. Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T telecommunications technician Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

That same evidence is central to Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action lawsuit filed by EFF in 2006 to stop the telecom giant's participation in the illegal surveillance program. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law attempting to derail that case by unconstitutionally granting immunity to AT&T and other companies that took part in the dragnet. Hepting v. AT&T is now stalled in federal court while EFF argues with the government over whether the immunity is constitutional and applies in that case — litigation that is likely to continue well into 2009.

In addition to suing the government agencies involved in the domestic dragnet, the lawsuit also targets the individuals responsible for creating, authorizing, and implementing the illegal program, including President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.

For the full complaint in Jewel v. NSA

In March 2009 the Obama Administration replied to the EFA litigation with the GOVERNMENT DEFENDANTS' NOTICE OF MOTION AND MOTION TO DISMISS AND FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT virtually asserting that everything (including publicly known facts about this wiretapping and data mining) is a 'state secret' or other form of privileged information.

Graphic found at BoingBoing