Quote of the Day 2

“In a democracy, people are entitled to know what techniques are being used by the government to spy on them, how the records are being held, and for how long, who will have access to them, and the safeguards in place to prevent abuse.  Only then can they evaluate official claims that the correct balance between fighting terrorism and preserving individual liberty has been struck, and decide if they are willing to accept diminished privacy and liberty.  If Americans have been slow to recognize the dangerous overreach of the N.S.A.’s phone surveillance, it is largely because they have scant information to judge the government’s conduct.”

“The Alarming Age of Surveillance,” NYT Editorial Board

I would add that we also have to know how successful the surveillance is, if it’s really stopping terrorist acts.  If it’s not accomplishing anything, obviously we haven’t struck the right balance because we’re giving up something without getting anything in return.

Quote of the Day

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) on Edward Snowden:

“First of all, Snowden probably shouldn’t have done what he did.  But the fact of the matter is I don’t see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever.  And quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn’t aware of before because I don’t sit on that Intelligence Committee.”

That’s pretty much where I am on all this.

More To Come

Glenn Greenwald says that he has thousands of documents from Edward Snowden, and that dozens of them are newsworthy.

Horse Is Gone, Let’s Lock the Barn Door

Booz Allen announced that they’ve fired Edward Snowden.

I Doubt We’re Up to This Moment

This feels like a big moment to me, these Edward Snowden leaks, a moment when we have to make decisions that aren’t based, for either Dems or Republicans, on how we feel about President Obama.  I don’t feel that we are up to it.  After 9/11, I believe that members of both parties in Congress acted in good faith, really just wanting to do the right thing so that we wouldn’t get attacked again.  You can say they went too far with the Patriot Act, but if they did, I believe their motives were honest, maybe based too much on raw emotion, but not based on partisan politics.

I believe our current Congress has a lot more crazy people in it than the Congress sitting in the fall of 2001.  I have much less confidence in them to even try to act out of principle, much less reach the right result.

I worry that we can’t have a real debate because some Dems will rally uncritically around the President simply because he is so hated by the other side and so under siege on the IRS, Benghazi, Obamacare, AP/James Rosen, immigration, etc.     I worry that the libertarian wing of the GOP, the Rand Paul types, will use this as an excuse to make some of their more outlandish theories and beliefs part of the mainstream.

This is a moment ripe for a shift in thinking and policy one way or the other, either to accept and ratify all this post-9/11 stuff for the foreseeable future or to say, “Whoa, this tradeoff doesn’t make sense” and roll some of it back.  I just hope that the wrong people don’t control the outcome of that shift.

Leaker Reveals Himself

The person who leaked the NSA surveillance info to the Guardian and the Washington Post is 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a former CIA employer who has also done contract work for the NSA and currently works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Snowden is currently in Hong Kong, from which he could be extradited to the U. S.  He said he is seeking asylum in a country that believes in free speech.