Posted on 06/14/2013 4:19:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
After a week of enduring the crossfire over the relative benefits and dangers of the deeds of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, I am left wondering whether this has been good or bad for our nation.
The answer depends on the lens we use for viewing America and the world.
I belong to two groups that are not large enough. The first is the portion of America that is very, very serious about fighting terror. I have not forgotten 9/11 or the fact that its hatchers would love to do it again.
Stopping them has been an all-consuming pursuit for our intelligence gatherers and analysts, and their success rate has been positively stunning.
I also belong to the segment of America that has had it up to the eyeballs with the Obama administration, from the bad policies to the dishonesty to the weak foreign policy to the targeting of political enemies. 2016 cannot get here fast enough for me.
Added up, my result is a general willingness to allow wide latitude in surveillance, tempered by concerns over its possible abuse.
I had the very same position as the Patriot Act was being hammered out while smoke still rose from Ground Zero. The deciding factor in my decision to support it was the faith I placed in George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to use that information to catch terrorists without spying on my phone calls and e-mails.
In the wake of the IRS disaster, the Benghazi deceptions and the basketful of other scandals-in-waiting, it is very hard to similarly trust this administration as it holds that intelligence apparatus in its hands.
But I will. For now.
I am able to do so because unlike the IRS, which was easily corruptible with its ranks of employees eager to please a boss who demonized Tea Party groups at every turn, our intelligence services operate in another landscape. They are not so easily tainted.
Unlike Snowden, who decided to recoil at tactics that have kept us safe, the average NSA analyst is proud to be part of the effort that has prevented further 9/11s. They are not a lock-step gung-ho robot army, but few are the ones who awaken to suddenly shudder at procedures laid out and practiced for a dozen years.
But Snowden did, and rather than step with courage into an American courtroom to make his case and dare our system to punish him for his perceived heroism, he hunkers in Hong Kong, happy to let its people and its justice system handle his fate.
He is missing out on a certain love-fest he would receive here from Americans more worried about potential Orwellian nightmares than the real threat of Jihad.
There is no doubt that a government that can dig into our phone calls and e-mails can surely ruin our lives if it has a mind to. But the police department that arms its officers can also wantonly kill us. The military that fights our wars could also order us into concentration camps.
Here’s an idea: How about if we wait for abuse to occur before we lament it?
The IRS story is a blatant example of government overreach brought to bear to the detriment of a president’s political enemies. It happened. All we have to do is get to the bottom of how.
The NSA panic is all based on what people with all of those security clearances could do, might do, if their motives turned dark.
Show me a litany of people whose lives have been needlessly assaulted by NSA snoopers, and I’ll jump onto the indignation wagon with Snowden, Rand Paul and his Dad, and anybody else up there weaving stories of “turnkey tyranny.”
Until then, the only thing I want to say to Ed Snowden’s besmirched colleagues is: thank you.
Thank you for the painstaking work you do every day on the off chance that a call that looks innocent today looks very different when a number shows up on the phone of the terrorist we catch tomorrow.
The voices raised in alarm over this practice either don’t know or don’t care that dots cannot be connected unless you have all the dots.
This is not to say that their concern is without merit. Privacy is a basic demand of citizens overseen by a powerful government, and it is useful to debate how to balance it against security interests.
But that debate should not be started by an activist narcissist who has soured on his NSA job.
Know who could have started the debate? Our Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. On that fateful day in March when Oregon Democrat Senator Ron Wyden asked if government were collecting “any type of data” on millions of Americans, the answer should have been: “Senator, as you know, I can in no way comment on the degree or specifics of the methods we use to gather information in our effort to stop terror attacks.”
At that point, Wyden, or Snowden, or anyone in between could have tried to raise a chorus of dissatisfaction with the fact that secret things need to remain secret.
So as I restrain myself from faulting surveillance tactics under Obama that I favored under Bush, I join the call for similar consistency from the left. Any liberal defending these practices today owes Bush an apology. Joe Biden can start.
Meanwhile, we should all retain our vigilant alertness to misuse of power.
My mistrust of this White House runs deep. But I retain my belief in the countless men and women of the NSA, CIA and other intelligence agencies. Their pursuits are within both reason and the law.
If anyone were to subvert their tasks -- if anyone in authority were to try to use anti-terror investigative tactics to unduly spy on the innocent, we would then have genuine violations of law, and they would be called out by a genuine whistleblower, which Edward Snowden decidedly is not.
Is this the idiot who subs for Rush?
Is this supposed to be what passes for critical thinking at townhall? I put that up there with the 18th century British condemning the colonists for taking cover behind trees and large rocks instead of lining up in a row to be cut down massive vollies from the red coats.
Thank you... The President’s staff and administration was being appropriately pummeled with the scandals - Benghazi, Fast & Furious, IRS targeting, etc. All of a sudden, these are pushed off the front page & broadcast lead by an unknown former contractor for NSA and CIA. This is the “shiny object” for the journalists/media to follow and get the administration’s scandals out of sight!
My question is in response to those in Washinton who claim he committed a crime. If he did then why did he have access in the first place? Who did he work for?
But to your point, from the (lack of) level of detail that Snowden has come out with anyone could have made up the same thing without knowing anything.
Absolutely ~ although Manning used San Disk technology to tote out tens of thousands of text messages, he got nowhere near 100% of all US government text messages ~ barely a fraction! So where are all the recorded phone conversations and terrabytes of emails? Lots of huffing but so far nothing to justify it.
Along this line, Snowden has yet to come up with one or two specific examples of what he claims he has, but then again maybe he has nothing in his possession, or/and maybe he is being purposefully vague to protect himself from procecution.
But did you mean 'prosecution' or 'procreation'?
In my day, as a contractor, you couldn’t sneeze without a government handler looking at the tissue. Nowadays, it seems like they hand out clearances like candy at Halloween. Who’s doing the investigations?
Bingo. 5:30AM (my time) and we already have a Post of the Day.
By then it will probably too late, if history is any indication.
our intelligence services operate in another landscape. They are not so easily tainted.
They don't have to be. All it takes is planting some political hacks in the NSA. And then, according to DiFi:
“To search the database, you have to have reasonable, articulable cause to believe that that individual is connected to a terrorist group,” Feinstein told reporters. “Then you can query the numbers..."
So there are utterly no checks and balances such as warrants or court orders to accessing the metadata. Such a system is designed to be abused.
Snowden is the new Emmanuel Goldstein.
After listening to Sensenbrenner on Hannity (drafter of the bill that allowed spying that has "evolved" into spying on us), I'd say that Snowden is a real whistleblower and knew that he would be squashed fast if he didn't remove himself from the scene first. The law prohibits the mass data mining being undertaken and can only be "upgraded" by going through the Congress - the agencies the author trusts have proven themselves untrustworthy.
>>Why did Snowden think he had access to ALL the information ~ .... ~ little evidence that he did. Lots of claims but where’s the data?<<
So far, Snowden has awakened America to the fact of the systems used to collect the data. Manning posted out the details of the operations.
That is the difference IMO as to who is labeled as a patriot or a traitor. If Snowden gives the details to Congress and not the media, then he’ll stay a patriot. I will have to look closely at him if he chooses to spread the details out for the general public, which will include all our enemies, to examine.
I know and the fact is, I’m less fearful of the Chinese Nationals working for these companies. Than I am of the heads of the agencies contracting these companies and the administration directing their efforts.
Manning copied embassy cables ~ that’s hardly the product of the NSA monitoring system!
I think we know all we need to know about him right there.
I think that tells the rest of FR all we need to know about you right there.
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