Is Prism Really a Scandal? - by Alan M. Dershowitz [View all]

[DonViejo]

by Alan M. Dershowitz Jun 9, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

Pundits are ranting about it, but what we really need is a discussion about privacy vs. security.

Half a century ago, the great American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote about “the paranoid style in American politics.” He discussed the influence of conspiracy theories and extremism in our collective mindset.

Since that time, two phenomena have become apparent. The first is that we may indeed have much to be paranoid about. Or put another way, “Even paranoids have real enemies.” Watergate, and the Nixon Administration in general, demonstrated even to the least paranoid among us that government officials are fully capable of misusing the IRS against political enemies, breaking into psychiatric records of perceived traitors, burglarizing the political opposition, and all other manner of dirty tricks that cross the line from politics as usual to felonies.

The second phenomenon is that the first phenomenon has caused many Americans to become even more paranoid, to seek conspiracies where none exist, to confuse overzealousness with evil intentions, and to assume malevolence rather than incompetence or laziness. The reality is that over the past 50 years, while we have somewhat less to be paranoid about, the paranoid streak in American politics has broadened considerably.

The most recent revelations regarding the mining of phone and internet data provide a case in point. The initial revelation was made by a man named Glenn Greenwald, who wrote about them in the Guardian and who has been all over the media taking a victory lap. Greenwald is the personification of the paranoid streak in American politics. He is more of an ideologue than a reporter. He has long been an apologist for terrorism—a word he believes serves only as an excuse for violence and oppression by America and its allies. He has pushed false stories that his paper was forced to backpedal on, such as an AP report blaming the incendiary video “The Innocence of Islam” on an Israeli Jew living in California. He is Chomsky-like in his willingness to blame most of the world’s ills on the United States, Israel, the Obama Administration and liberals who do not buy into his radical worldview. He viciously opposed Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Greenwald would not understand the word “nuance” if he tripped over it, which he often does.

full article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/09/is-prism-really-a-scandal.html