Since responding to the NSA revelations, Obama as rejected the idea that more safeguards were needed. Photograph: Bobby Yip/Reuters  Barack Obama insisted on Friday that the NSA reforms he has proposed would have happened all along and that his views on surveillance programs had "not evolved". But since the president first responded to Edward Snowden's revelations in June he has rejected any suggestion that more safeguards were required.  In his first remarks since the Guardian and the Washington Post's revelations, Obama gave a frank rebuttal to privacy concerns. "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," the president said when asked about the NSA.  He said surveillance programs were "fully overseen not just by Congress but by the Fisa court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them".  He said the NSA programs made "modest encroachments on privacy" and were under "very strict supervision by all three branches of government".  "We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," he said. "And if people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress and don't trust federal judges to make sure that we're abiding by the constitution, due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here."  Obama added: "In the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential, you know – you know, program run amok. But when you actually look at the details, then I think we've struck the right balance."  Obama defended the NSA program in an interview with Charlie Rose. The president insisted the NSA was "transparent".  "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not," Obama said.  Asked by Rose if the method of telephone and data collections "should be transparent in some way", the president responded: "It is transparent. That's why we set up the Fisa court."  The president said he was confident the necessary system of checks and balances was in place, but conceded the public might not fully be aware of this. "What I've asked the intelligence community to do is see how much of this we can declassify without further compromising the program."  Speaking to Rose he revealed he had set up an "oversight board" to examine issues of privacy, compiled of independent citizens and "including some fierce civil libertarians". Obama said he would be meeting with the oversight board, but did not give any further details.  Two months after the initial NSA revelations, Obama accepted the NSA had "raised a lot of questions for people" in an interview on NBC's Tonight Show, but insisted surveillance programs did not target US civilians.  "We don't have a domestic spying program," Obama said. "What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack. … That information is useful."  He said the NSA was "a critical component to counter-terrorism".  "It's not enough for me, as president, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well," Obama said in a speech at the White House, hours after the Guardian revealed that an NSA loophole did allow for warrantless searches of databases for US citizens' emails and phone calls.  The president said he had consulted with Congress, the privacy and civil liberties oversight coard and had directed his national security team to "be more transparent and to pursue reforms of our laws and practices".  "And so today I'd like to discuss four specific steps, not all-inclusive, but some specific steps that we're going to be taking very shortly to move the debate forward."  Obama pledged to re-examine section 215 of the Patriot Act, potentially reigning in bulk surveillance, and suggested appointing a privacy advocate to monitor to the doings of the Fisa court. He also announced a new website to "inform" Americans about bulk surveillance and pledged greater transparency.
A brief history of the president's position on NSA reforms since first commenting on the surveillance revelations in June