Barack Obama - Discusses NSA on "Hardball" lyrics

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, you saw the front page of "The Washington Post" today with that story about the National Security Agency basically patrolling all of the cell phones in the world, basically. A lot of young people point to their privacy requirements. They don't like being part of anything that's collecting information. Health care -- is this going to be one of the detriments to people wanting to sign up, they want to keep their privacy? PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, no, first of all, health care is entirely different. It's more similar to, you know, seniors who sign up for Medicare or people who file their taxes. You know, there are a whole bunch of things where you're providing information to the government. It's protected. It's governed by a whole series of laws. The NSA issue is a broader issue. And you're right, young people rightly are sensitive to the needs to preserve their privacy and to maintain Internet freedom. And by the way, so I am. That's part of not just our First Amendment rights and expectations in this country, but it's particularly something that young people care about because they spend so much time texting, and you know, Instagramming and... (LAUGHTER) OBAMA: ... you know... MATTHEWS: Whatever. OBAMA: ... Vining and -- you know, right? I mean, they're just -- something's coming up every single day. And so all of us spend more and more of our lives in cyberspace. Now, the challenge is, first of all, we do have people who are trying to hurt us and they communicate through these same systems. And if we're going to do a good job preventing a terrorist attack in this country, a weapon of ma** destruction getting onto the New York subway system, *et cetera*, we do want to keep eyes on some bad actors. The second thing is that the same cyberspace that gives us all this incredible information and allows us to reach out around the world also makes our bank accounts vulnerable. Cybercrime is a huge problem and a growing problem. And so we've got to be in there in some way to help protect the American people, even as we're also making sure that government doesn't abuse it. Now, I think -- I can't confirm or get into the details of every aspect of what the NSA does. And the way this has been reported, the Snowden disclosures have identified some areas of legitimate concern. Some of it has also been highly sensationalized, and you know, has been painted in a way that's not accurate. I've said before and I will say again, the NSA actually does a very good job about not engaging in domestic surveillance, not reading people's e-mails, not listening to the content of their phone calls. Outside of our borders, the NSA is more aggressive. It's not constrained by laws. And part of what we're trying to do over the next month or so is, having done on independent review and brought a whole bunch folks, civil libertarians and lawyers and others, to examine what's being done, I'll be proposing some self-restraint on the NSA, and you know, to initiate some reforms that can give people more confidence. But I want everybody to be clear. The people of the NSA generally are looking out for the safety of the American people. They are not interested in reading your e-mails. They're not interested in reading your text messages. And that's not something that's done. And we've got a big system of checks and balances, including the courts and Congress, who have the capacity to prevent that from happening.