WASHINGTON — For four years, President Barack Obama’s approach to counterterrorism has been defined by his embrace of paramilitary power — the drones and commando teams whose ruthless pursuit of al-Qaeda helped cripple the terrorist network through a global targeted killing campaign.
Months into his second term, however, Obama faces a rash of disclosures that have revealed the extent to which his administration also has relied on a less conspicuous capability — a massive electronic surveillance net cast within the United States that appears to have gathered data on almost anyone with a computer or phone.
The dimensions of the programs are only beginning to emerge. But leaks of a secret surveillance court order and highly classified government slides indicate that the FBI and National Security Agency have assembled detailed call records on millions of Americans and tapped into the servers of technology companies that handle the bulk of the nation’s e-mail and online video traffic.
Until now, the effort has been shielded from the sort of public scrutiny that gradually accumulated around the drone campaign, mainly because the surveillance programs leave virtually no trace and are so highly classified that even critics in Congress have been unable to fully articulate their concerns.
Last week’s disclosures punctured that veil, adding new pressure on Obama to defend his administration’s counterterrorism policies and the secrecy surrounding them. It is a position that in some ways resembles the second-term posture of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
In his first public comments on the controversy, Obama on Friday emphasized the congressional and judicial oversight of the surveillance programs. He also stressed their effectiveness.
“I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs,” Obama said.
But he said the value in disrupting terrorism outweighed any “modest encroachments on privacy. … You know, net, it was worth us doing.”
Beyond the familiar ring of that rationale, U.S. officials, civil liberties groups and security experts said the revelations show that, as much as Obama has sought to distance himself from the counterterrorism policies of his predecessor, he has embraced and in some cases expanded controversial programs that originated under Bush.
“If you think about the president’s speeches, there has been an attempt to articulate a discontinuity from Bush on a range of issues, including prisoner interrogations and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp,” said Steven Aftergood, an expert on secrecy and surveillance at the Federation of American Scientists. “But when it comes to surveillance, there’s no clear repudiation. On the contrary, there appeared to be an embrace and an endorsement all the way through.”
Bush loyalists made similar points.
“Drone strikes. Wiretaps. Gitmo. O is carrying out Bush’s 4th term,” former Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Twitter, referring to Obama.
The comments were triggered by disclosures about operations of the NSA, the highly secretive agency responsible for eavesdropping on electronic communications around the globe.
The NSA is barred from spying on Americans. But a classified court order published by The Guardian newspaper showed that the NSA had been given authority by a special court to collect calling data on millions of Americans from a subsidiary of the Verizon telecommunications company.
U.S. officials said similar orders are in force against other carriers, meaning that the NSA probably has a database containing details including location and duration of cellphone calls dating back years.
The Washington Post then disclosed classified documents describing a separate program, code-named PRISM, that indicated the NSA has established access to the servers of companies including Microsoft, Google and Apple. The access would enable the U.S. government to extract audio, video, e-mails and other content, although Obama said no e-mails of U.S. citizens or residents are examined.
Microsoft on Saturday denied participating in the program.
U.S. officials have said that the data do not include names of individuals and that the agency is not allowed to see the contents of communications involving Americans without evidence of a connection to terrorism and a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees requests for surveillance of suspected foreign agents inside the United States.
Still, the scope of the programs stunned experts and appeared to contradict recent statements by administration officials.
In a March hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has in recent years raised concerns about the NSA’s domestic activities, asked National Intelligence director James Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
“No, sir,” Clapper said, adding, “Not wittingly.”
A spokesman for Clapper did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
But Clapper on Saturday blasted what he called “reckless disclosures” of the highly classified spy agency project.
While acknowledging PRISM’s existence by name for the first time, Clapper said it had been mischaracterized by the media. The project is legal, not aimed at U.S. citizens and has thwarted threats against the country, he said.
“Significant misimpressions” have resulted from recent articles, he said.
The NSA disclosures added to the list of surveillance and counterterrorism controversies that have erupted in the early months of Obama’s second term. Obama recently sought to tamp down criticism of the tactics and secrecy associated with the drone campaign by releasing information on Americans who had been killed and imposing tighter limits on strikes.
The White House also renewed its support for legal protections for journalists after it was revealed that the FBI had surreptitiously gathered calling records and other sensitive data on reporters for The Associated Press and Fox News Channel.
The Associated Press, Reuters and The Seattle Times contributed to this report.
