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| Barack Obama defends US surveillance tactics | Barack Obama defends US surveillance tactics |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| President Barack Obama has defended newly revealed US government phone and internet surveillance programmes, saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts. | President Barack Obama has defended newly revealed US government phone and internet surveillance programmes, saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts. |
| Mr Obama said his administration had struck "the right balance" between security and privacy. | Mr Obama said his administration had struck "the right balance" between security and privacy. |
| He also stressed that the surveillance of internet and email information did not target US citizens or residents. | He also stressed that the surveillance of internet and email information did not target US citizens or residents. |
| And he said government agencies were not listening to telephone calls. | And he said government agencies were not listening to telephone calls. |
| The US has seen two major news media revelations on the scope of its security agencies' collection of information in the past two days. | The US has seen two major news media revelations on the scope of its security agencies' collection of information in the past two days. |
| The UK's Guardian newspaper reported a secret court had ordered phone company Verizon to hand over records on telephone call "metadata" - including telephone numbers and call durations - to the National Security Agency (NSA). | |
| That report was followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that US agencies tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms to track online communication in a programme known as Prism. | |
| In California on Friday, Mr Obama noted both NSA programmes had been authorised repeatedly by Congress and were subject to continual oversight by congressional intelligence committees and by secret intelligence courts. | |
| The president said he had come into office with a "healthy scepticism" of both programmes but after evaluating them and setting up further safeguards, had decided "it was worth it". | |
| "You can't have 100% security, and also 100% privacy and zero inconvenience," Mr Obama said. | |
| Acknowledging "some trade-offs involved", he said, "We're going to have to make some choices." | |
| Prism was reportedly developed in 2007 out of a programme of domestic surveillance without warrants that was set up by President George W Bush after the 9/11 attacks. | |
| Prism reportedly does not collect user data, but is able to pull out material that matches a set of search terms. | |
| James Clapper, director of US national intelligence, said in a statement on Thursday the communications-collection programme was "designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-US persons located outside the United States". | |
| "It cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States," he added. | |
| Mr Clapper said the programme, under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was recently reauthorised by Congress after hearings and debate. |