Obama: ‘Lives have been saved’ by NSA programs


June 19, 2013 at 9:21a.m.

Obama: ‘Lives have been saved’ by NSA programs

BERLIN (AP) — Trying to tamp down concerns about government over-reach, President Barack Obama today defended U.S. Internet and phone surveillance programs as narrowly targeted efforts that have saved lives and thwarted at least 50 terror threats. “This is not a situation in which we are rifling through ordinary emails” of huge numbers of citizens in the United States or elsewhere, the president declared during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He called it as a “circumscribed, narrow” surveillance program.