Eugene Robinson analyzes the report calling for an end to the NSA's data collection practices:
Blue-ribbon panels are often toothless and useless. But the eminences appointed by President Obama to review the out-of-control National Security Agency (NSA) have produced a surprisingly tough report filled with good recommendations — steps that a president who speaks so eloquently of civil liberties should have taken long ago.[...]
The headline recommendation from the five-member review group is that the NSA should stop compiling a comprehensive record of our phone calls. This program of blanket domestic surveillance, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, is the most egregious and controversial of the spy agency’s programs that have come to light.
In plain language, the panel lays out just what the NSA has been doing: obtaining secret court orders compelling phone service providers to “turn over to the government on an ongoing basis call records for every telephone call made in, to, or from the United States through their respective systems.”
The Boston Globe adds its take:
Other recommendations address NSA policies that aren’t necessarily related to the Fourth Amendment challenge, but still require clearer guidelines. They include more protections for the privacy of noncitizens abroad, including curbs on eavesdropping on world leaders. Some recommendations, like the suggestion that only the president be empowered to order spying on foreign leaders, seem like no-brainers. Others, such as splitting up control of the NSA and the military cyber-command, are more debatable. Americans saw the dangers of agencies not talking to each other in the months leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, and might not want to risk adding more layers to the national security bureaucracy. Obama has already said he wants both functions to be overseen by the same official.
Nonetheless, the panel, which included former deputy CIA Director Michael Morell and former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, deserves great credit simply for presenting options that move the national discussion from fears of unfettered government intrusion on the one hand and uninterrupted terrorist plotting on the other. It should be possible to protect the country while satisfying the Constitution and the entirely understandable desire of law-abiding citizens to be free of surveillance.
More analysis below the fold.
The Tampa Bay Times:
Civil liberties were shunted aside after the 9/11 attacks. The nation's spy agencies were given license to use the latest technology and data storage capabilities to find and track suspicious activities. The result — now known due to Snowden's leaks — is that with little oversight or accountability, they built a vast data dump of personal information on people who have no relationship to terrorism. Neither the president nor Congress was willing to act to protect Americans' constitutional rights.
But continuing along this path is no longer viable. This is not only because it endangers the privacy of Americans and erodes the public trust, but because the techniques have not been borne out as essential to keeping the nation safe.
The Christian Science Monitor:
The right to privacy, as enshrined in the Constitution, is based on a presumption of innocence – that a person cannot be assumed to be guilty and then subjected to an “unreasonable” search or seizure. That presumption is also why people enjoy the privilege against self-incrimination.
Innocence is so highly valued that most modern societies put the burden on government to prove someone guilty – even if “everyone knows” a suspect is guilty. The criminal justice system is built on the idea that it is better to let the guilty go free than to convict an innocent. [...]
The real danger in giving the NSA too much unchecked authority is that the invasion of privacy may erode the social acceptance of innocence. In much of Europe, especially Germany, the loss of that presumption in the 20th century under fascism and communism helps account for Europe’s current outrage over NSA snooping in those countries.
Switching topics,
Andrew Cockburn at
The Los Angeles Times looks at the winners and losers in the budget battle:
In reality, there was one clear winner: the bipartisan defense lobby, a category that does not apparently include wounded veterans, who must give up some of their pensions for the sake of restoring that public faith, not to mention funding the extra $22 billion for defense that will flow inexorably into the pockets of Lockheed (stock already up 55% this year), Raytheon (up 54%), Northrop (up 64%) and their peers. With the hearty endorsement of both parties, they have emerged triumphant from the budget wars at the expense of old-fashioned special interests such as veterans, the poor, the unemployed, children (57,000 kicked off Head Start) and the aged.
Thus, while some sequestered nondefense cuts have theoretically been restored, federal employees get soaked for higher pension contributions, military veterans (including the wounded) lose part of their projected raises, airline passengers have to fork out higher taxes — a total of $26 billion. Including the "savings" from not extending unemployment benefits ($25 billion), the nondefense sector suffers a net loss of $20 billion.
The New York Times editorial board calls for the release of torture reports:
A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it is appalling that official reports about the extent and nature of the rendition, detention and torture that came in their aftermath are still being kept from the American public and even members of Congress charged with overseeing intelligence activities.
The program was abandoned years ago. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s exhaustive 6,000-page report was completed last December. But it has yet to be declassified. Likely the closest to a full accounting the nation is going to get, the report is said to contain unsparing criticism of the program. News reports have said it chronicles the Central Intelligence Agency’s repeated misleading of the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal and lawless methods that yielded little valuable intelligence despite the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other defenders of torture.
The C.I.A. wrote a 122-page rebuttal to the Senate’s report, which was delivered by the agency’s current director, John Brennan, in June, four months after the committee’s deadline. It, too, remains under wraps.
On the whole Duck Dynasty controversy,
LZ Granderson at CNN sets the record straight:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal got involved in the "Duck Dynasty" controversy Thursday by tweeting his response to A&E's decision to suspend Phil Robertson for his inflammatory remarks in a recent GQ interview.
"I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment," he wrote, adding, "it is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended."
The truth is it is a messed up situation when a governor rumored to have his sights on the presidency doesn't understand the breadth of the First Amendment.