Listening in

Friday 7 June In his first remarks since the Guardian and the Washington Post's revelations, Obama gave a frank rebuttal to privacy concerns. "Nobody is listening to your telephone calls," the president said when asked about the NSA. Monday 17 June Obama defended the NSA program in an interview with Charlie Rose. The president insisted the NSA was "transparent". "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a US person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not," Obama said. Tuesday 6 August Two months after the initial NSA revelations, Obama accepted the NSA had "raised a lot of questions for people" in an interview on NBC's Tonight Show, but insisted surveillance programs did not target US civilians. Friday 9 August "It's not enough for me, as president, to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them as well," Obama said in a speech at the White House, hours after the Guardian revealed that an NSA loophole did allow for warrantless searches of databases for US citizens' emails and phone calls Saturday 10 August The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant in the briefing said. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that." Do you think anyone is listening to phone conversations? Stay tuned!