Obama: NSA revelations show 'oversight worked'

Recent revelations that the National Security Agency violated its own surveillance rules on thousands of occasions is evidence that "all these safeguards, checks, audits, oversight worked," President Barack Obama said.

The President cited technical problems in an interview with CNN, which were duly presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court for review, where, according to President Obama, “what was learned was that NSA had inadvertently, accidentally pulled the e-mails of some Americans in violation of their own rules…” President Obama insisted that there was nobody "out there trying to abuse this program or listen in on people's email," but admitted that the government had not done enough to explain how the program's function. President Obama also acknowledged that "the capabilities of the NSA are scary to people." Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, including top Democrats like Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), expressed outrage last week at the revelations. “I remain concerned that we are still not getting straightforward answers from the NSA," Sen Leahy continued.