Another take from TPM Reader DC …
First let me say that I greatly appreciate your thoughtful exploration of the whole NSA leak saga. Given a past history on my part of leftist kneejerkism, I am trying in this case to look more like a scientist and observer as what it all means, and what are the real facts versus the first news stories.
Apart from many of the concerns expressed by others (the need to look for terrorist threats that are indeed real, the need to prevent a high tech version of the domestic monitoring that took place in the red scare era and in the Vietnam war era) there are two things that stand out to me as big issues.
First, the fact that Snowden got his access via his brief employment with an intelligence contractor. I am deeply troubled by the rise in usage of defense and intelligence contractors by our government for two main reasons: 1) it outsources accountability and transparency, so that the actual government employees have built in insurance and plausible deniability. 2) Especially given the secrecy of the transactions, it builds in the possibility of massive cost overruns for services that can be performed much more cheaply by public employees. We have seen this time and time again for contracting to organizations from the military side when secrecy is not an issue. I am sure there is a belief at Booz Allen that they are patriots doing work for the people, but it is equally clear that the top officials at that company feel they deserve far more compensation than they received in the public sector.
The other thing that bothers me is the comparison to Daniel Ellsberg. I do view Daniel Ellsberg unquestionably as a hero for exposing serious lies and deceit at the core of the Pentagon’s prosecution of the war in Vietnam, a war that cost and irreversibly altered the lives of thousands of young americans. Snowden has leaked about national security practices that for better or worse are well within the existing laws and we are told have actually saved US lives. Ellsberg made every attempt to alter the course of the war in releasing some of his information to US Senators including Ted Kennedy and Mike Gravel, and made no attempt to run from his arrest. He surrendered himself and stood trial. To me the only clear parallel with Snowden is that Ellsberg worked for a non-government entity, the Rand corporation.
Of course, the classifications being what they are, we don’t know that these NSA actions have saved lives. That does play to what I think I am finally settling on as my view – that we need a national discussion on the FISA courts and NSA data gathering that offers greater transparency and accountability to the process including visability to the US population. I am not quite sure what form that will take, because tipping off terrorists about methodology is a real potential problem here. The more accountability and visibility the better, though, because I am not at all happy that I have to trust administrations here. I do see a difference between these laws in the hands of Bush and Cheney (no trust whatsoever) and Obama (high level of trust).
To the extent Snowden’s disclosures have helped to stimulate that conversation I believe they are a good thing.
TPM Reader BR responds …
DC is correct to look at Daniel Ellsberg as a basis for comparison.
But he goes wrong when he asks whether the surveillance saved lives. The relevant question is — did keeping the existence of the surveillance secret save lives? Not at all the same question. We know that the more sophisticated terrorists (and no doubt the majority of less sophisticated terrorists) assume their internet communications are under surveillance. So far, at least, I haven’t seen anything released that would help anyone avoid surveillance, beyond a warning that they ought to take care.
