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.
I don’t care what party Snowden belongs to. Individual liberty is what I care about, yours and mine. Do think the WaTimes would have posted his info?
So far he’s doing just fine, IMO. He won’t have to spread too many details out before I could change my opinion.
If what he’s doing brings forth Term Limits and Flat Tax, all the better.
Manning copied CLASSIFIED embassy cables. He didn’t know if he was burning spies or what he was doing.
The Good Senator probably ought to have looked at his bill a bit more closely
Freepers in the Dallas - Ft Worth area know this guy well. He used to be the morning drive guy on WBAP AM. He's an utter RINO.
Sorry, but the NSA admits that it gathers phone records and internet activity.
Bush-Era NSA Chief Defends PRISM, Phone Metadata Collection
Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency, tells NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday that the government's acquisition of phone records and surveillance of Internet activity is lawful and justified by the changing nature of the war on terrorism.
Hayden, who served as NSA chief from 1999-2005 and is also a former CIA director, says NSA's activities are "perfectly legal" and "an accurate reflection of balancing our security and our privacy."
I want to see what Snowden said he had ~ where are the releases he was supposed to have made.
Again, I stand by my position. This guy ain't got the goods; NSA doesn't do what you imagine them to do; Sensenbrenner has no idea what the law he thinks he remembers writing really says; The Chicoms are involved in this one somewhere
Really. After Clapper lied about the NSA not capturing the data they have now admitted to capturing, you believe that?
You are deliberately naive.
This gets back to the fundamental problem with the Obama regime (besides him being a lying s of s) he can't attract talented people. They just aren't there.
Usually there are talented people lined up for these jobs ~ but not with this regime.
Snowden = ad hoc Goldstein
Except the proles aren’t buying it.
Yet.
Clapper knew darn well. Look up his comment about making the least untruthful answer.
This is EXACTLY why the NSA should not have this data. All it takes is a thug administration and we are all at risk.
He's the boss. In a highly compartmentalized organization like NSA even he doesn't get to know everything, or even half of everything ~ the compartmentalization is physical. If you've ever been to Mitre Corp, you figure out what's going on in seconds. They even have moveable walls ~ like a Sci Fi story, you may not go to the people you are supposed to meet with, but they can instantly put together a room around you to which they will go to meet you! Have had that happen there.
CIA in Langley is supposedly worse.
NSA has to use the same system.
The point is, the NSA should NOT have call history and internet usage history without a warrant. That is a far bigger concern than your bleatings about Snowden. As Sensenbrenner said, he would not know about these NSA excesses without Snowden coming forward.
That's not a minor quibble BTW.
Your argument is you always need a warrant to see something but you don't which is why the 4th speaks of unreasonable ~ and that's where the debate should center ~ you just can't ignore that term. I know you want to but we didn't get our Independence from England by getting warrants to watch them.
Meh. Dick Armitage is living proof you can burn a CIA front company and everyone involved with it and never see the inside of a jail cell.
They are not just gathering data on just foreign people, and you know it.
I know you want to but we didn't get our Independence from England by getting warrants to watch them.
Once again, the author of the Patriot Act, Representative Sensenbrenner, says what the NSA is doing violates that legislation.
You are spinning like a top. Why is it so hard to just admit the NSA is overstepping its bounds by capturing call data on millions of Americans?
i made a comment on Sensenbrenner ~ guess you agree with that one.
Can I say we know where you're coming from
>> Swowden is a media squirrel. Look Squirrel!!!
Exactly.
Exactly the position I would expect a flake like Mark Davis to take.
AT&T can’t arrest. me, you moron.
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