Barack Obama is claiming that he was unaware of the extent of the NSA’s international spying activities until an internal White House review was conducted this summer. The review revealed that the NSA monitored communications of 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who may have been the target of NSA data snoops as far back as 2002, three years before she became chancellor. However, Obama was actually briefed three years ago and signed off on the effort.

America’s allies are making a lot of noise about these revelations, with the French and German governments suggesting that a new international framework be laid out with regards to spying and intelligence collection. Prohibitions on spying among allies and new protocols about the sharing of information are popular solutions, but they are merely political reactions to an age-old practice. In fact, European intelligence helped the NSA collect data. Obama now says he will put an end to spying on allied leaders, but many of the data collection efforts conducted by the NSA are intricately intertwined, so it’s difficult to determine how long such a policy reversal will take.

Finally, back to Obama’s blind-eye defense, being completely unaware of what his government is doing has become a tiresome refrain. He didn’t know about the NSA. He didn’t know about the looming train-wreck rollout of Healthcare.gov. He didn’t know about the IRS targeting Tea Party conservatives. He didn’t know about security protocols at Benghazi or other embassies. He didn’t know about the ATF running guns to Mexico. And so on. We don’t buy any of it for a second, but what makes him think being oblivious is a good defense?