Obama's NSA blind spot

[Commentary] President Obama's recent speech on government surveillance is dominating the conversation, but he won't be making the key decisions on the future of the National Security Agency's collection of domestic phone data.

The statutory provision authorizing these massive sweeps expires June 1, 2015. If Congress simply does nothing, the NSA's domestic spying program will soon come to a screeching halt. The question is whether Americans will seize this opportunity to gain critical perspective on the crisis responses of the George W. Bush years. Voters elected and reelected President Obama precisely because he promised to engage in this decisive reappraisal. But his speech failed to redeem this promise. In contrast, President Obama never mentions the 4th Amendment's demand that "no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause ... describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The President has no right to sit on the sidelines until the high court tells him what the Constitution means. The president is under an independent obligation to determine that his actions are legitimate.

[Ackerman is a professor of law and political science at Yale]