The important thing right now isn’t whether Edward Snowden should be labeled a hero or villain. First, let’s have the debate he sparked over surveillance and privacy. Then we can decide how history should remember him.
That's how Robinson begins a column titled
Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks show we need a debate.
He acknowledges that Snowden is an imperfect messenger,
But his message should not be ignored.
In case anyone lacks the background of the case, he goes through its background.
He notes the President has said that he welcomes the debate that is now occurring, then asks
Why, then, didn’t he launch the discussion rather than wait for Snowden’s leaks?
And of course he asks how what he calls 'a mid-level computer guy working for a private contractor" have access to so much key information, including such secrets.
But the heart of the column comes at the end.
Let me start with the penultimate paragraph;
But here’s the big issue: The NSA, it now seems clear, is assembling an unimaginably vast trove of communications data, and the bigger it gets, the more useful it is in enabling analysts to make predictions. It’s one thing if the NSA looks for patterns in the data that suggest a nascent overseas terrorist group or an imminent attack. It’s another thing altogether if the agency observes, say, patterns that suggest the birth of the next tea party or Occupy Wall Street movement.
For sake of discussion, let me assume that "officially" the NSA is NOT deliberately doing a dragnet of all communication (although the FISA Court order for all meta-date from Verizon, for example, might imply something else). By retaining data on Americans obtained while targeting foreigners one is building the kind of informational resources that enable the kinds of domestic analysis Robinson posits in what I have just quoted.
in its original operations, the NSA was barred from operating domestically - at least one end of a communication was supposed to be outside the jurisdiction of the US. Technology has made that distinctions effectively meaningless, since the architecture of the internet and of telecommunications may mean a call that both starts and ends overseas passes throught the US, which may be the best place to intercept it.
We have also made a distinction between those who are not US citizens, whose communications required a warrant (although Robinson reminds us how rarely the FISA Court has denied warrants, and we should remember that even under FISA a warrant can be sought after the fact) and those who not being citizens are considered to be able to be targets without such warrants. It is perhaps worth noting that making such a distinction already represents a restriction of the plain language of the 4th Amendment, which talks about the right of the people to be secure, not the right of the citizens.
And as a cautionary, this administration has already targeted and killed an American citizen by a drone strike, so even the distinction between citizens and non-citizens seems in some circumstances not to matter if an administration wants to target them, and if for death, why not for data gathering?
Robinson ended that penultimate paragraph wondering if the agency might be observing "patterns that suggest the birth of the next tea party or Occupy Wall Street movement." Now read his final paragraph:
Is that paranoia? Then reassure me. Let’s talk about the big picture and decide, as citizens, whether we are comfortable with the direction our intelligence agencies are heading. And let’s remember that it was Snowden, not our elected officials, who opened this vital conversation.
Elected official by and large do not want to have this conversation. There are exceptions: Senators Wyden, Merkley and Mark Udall, all of whom have access to details as members of the Senate committee that oversees intelligence.
Lets consider one detail about which I have heard little discussion. Snowden says the requests for specific information are initiated by the NSA (including apparently contractors such as himself). But the data goes directly to Quantico, to the FBI.
Granted, the FBI has responsibilities for espionage and counter terrorism within the US. But it also has law enforcement responsibilities independent of those task.
i remember that during the 9-11 inquiry a former high ranking Justice Department official under Clinton, Jamie Gorelick, was criticized by some on the right who seemed to want shift responsibility away from the Bush administration onto its predecessor, for her insisting on maintaining a strict wall between intelligence work and law enforcement, the latter requiring evidence to be gathered under the restrictions of the 4th Amendment.
If information gathered by a National Security Letter can be used for prosecution, and the decision to issue such a letter is based on information obtained by methods not in compliance with the Fourth Amendment, how is the 4th Amendment still meaningfully operational.
If there is no debate on how this is supposed to happen, how can the American people inform their representatives of their wishes in the matter/
If the operations remain secret, along with the legal interpretations upon which they are based, how do the real sovereigns of this nation, We the People, have the information necessary to exercise that sovereignty?
How is this not then already at least nascently a police state?
Paranoia?
We were shocked during Watergate to find out all the data being gathered by the military and stored at Fort Holabird. That had not been authorized by the Congress. Even after it was ordered to be destroyed, that did not happen for quite some time.
Why should we expect the intelligence apparatus to be operating any differently?
What other information is being gathered about Americans, including perhaps politicians and corporate leaders in order to control them?
IF this seems like paranoia, then ask yourself why it was chief executives of telecommunications firms that refused to go along with the Bush administration's originally unauthorized and not overseen by Congress gathering of telecommunications data that somehow got prosecuted for other offenses? Was that merely coincidence?
Early in the piece Robinson writes
I would have thought that anyone who accused the U.S. government of “omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance,” as Snowden did in an exchange with Post contributor Barton Gellman, was being paranoid. Now I’m not so sure.
We have a government with a history of abuses through administrations of both parties.
To express serious concern is not being paranoid.
It is being sensible.
I agree with Robinson. We need far more information, far more transparency, to be reassured about what is happening.