On review, I’ve got that wrong- that was going on during his administration, but he was against it (IE publicly stated he would veto, which is pretty solid). I stand by the statement that FBI digital surveillance, which began under Bush, continued to grow at an ever-accelerating rate under Obama at the very least. We also all know how he treated Snowden and Assange, though I’m not sure of any other notable whistleblowers to make a wider track record out of.

I was doing some more searching trying to remember some of the things which soured my opinion on him, and I remembered this: He also was pretty big on drone strikes. One time he killed US Citizens in Yemem and he also stated he would be willing to kill citizens on US soil with drone strikes if he felt it necessary.

From my perspective, Obama was possibly the most recent president to direct federal policy on this. The FBI was actively refusing to cooperate with Trump for most of his presidency, and I don’t think Joe Biden is really leading the feder government more than other federal agency leaders are leading him. We also know drones are being used to spy on protests recently. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there were already armed drones in the air over these protests at some point, but we probably won’t get to know for sure.