NSA “Nothing To See Here, People” Types Thoroughly Embarrassed Again - WashingtonMonthly [View all]

[WillyT]

NSA “Nothing to see here, people” types thoroughly embarrassed again
By Samuel Knight - WashingtonMonthly
August 17, 2013 3:18 PM

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Remember when Jeffrey Toobin ho-hummed over Edward Snowden’s disclosures, and called him a “grandiose narcissist”?

What, one wonders, did Snowden think the N.S.A. did? Any marginally attentive citizen, much less N.S.A. employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications. Perhaps he thought that the N.S.A. operated only outside the United States; in that case, he hadn’t been paying very close attention.

What utter nonsense — transparent discourse policing. As if a cable news pundit calling anyone a narcissist wasn’t absurd enough, Toobin seems to think that the state of democracy is fine devoid of some pretty significant information. That the mere knowledge of secret surveillance programs, secret courts, secret legal interpretations, and secret legal opinions (even ones that reportedly find the NSA to be engaged in unconstitutional behavior) should be enough for Americans — one needn’t know the details. “Nothing to see here, people.” The problem with this painfully incurious and profoundly anti-journalistic outlook is that one cannot actually attempt to hold the government - or any self-interested defensive institution - accountable without information. As either a constituent, a journalist, or any other stakeholder, try grilling an official about suspected government practices without any actual knowledge or evidence. See how that goes.

Fortunately, common sense is winning. There definitely isn’t “nothing to see here.” Just as public opinion on the war in Afghanistan soured not long after WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Logs and the late great Michael Hastings’ profile of Gen. McChrystal were published in the summer of 2010, public opinion is turning against this dragnet surveillance, which our leaders see as an indispensable component of an eternal war. The results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll published yesterday found that almost 6 in 10 respondents — Democrats and Republicans alike — believe the government can’t justify its privacy intrusions. A few weeks after Snowden’s first disclosure, a separate inquiry by the news organizations found that concerns for privacy were at “the highest point in any Post-ABC News poll dating back to summer 2002.” It’s little wonder this is the case, given the Obama administration’s crackdown on whistleblowers, Holder v. Humanitarian Law, the case against WikiLeaks, and the feds’ reaction to the Occupy Movement (to say nothing of all the imagined persecutions of the Tea Party).

And earlier today, Virginia Republican and NSA critic Morgan Griffith said a recent House vote to starve funding for the agency’s fishing expedition surveillance would have passed instead of being narrowly defeated, had the Washington Post’s most recent revelation come to light ex ante facto...

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More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_08/nsa_nothing_to_see_here_people046440.php#