From the Guardian
"If Bush had done the same things as Obama, then more people would have been upset about it. He is a Democrat though, and to an extent can get away with it," said Daniel Ellsberg, who as a government official leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and helped to expose the truth about the Vietnam war. Ellsberg is now one of the plaintiffs in the case against the NDAA and insists that the administration has used the law to give itself widespread and unconstitutional new powers: "We have been losing our guaranteed freedoms one by one."
[...]
Obama has used an arcane piece of first world war legislation, the 1917 Espionage Act, six times to pursue cases, more than all his predecessors combined. One case involved former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted for leaks after he went public with allegations of torture of suspects. He has now been jailed, which critics point out means that, while no one has been prosecuted for torture, a man who sought to end the practice is behind bars.