We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly “trusting” our public officials.
Source:
The NSA Report: Liberty and Security in a Changing World
by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies: Richard A. Clarke, Michael J. Morell, Geoffrey R. Stone, Cass R. Sunstein, and Peter Swire
Cited by
Sue Halpern in NYRB, who goes on to conclude:
In that regard, the president’s men could not agree more with Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden.
Halpern also makes the following points, that should be obvious, but are too often forgotten by Dkos diarists and commenters:
mainstream journalists ... don’t like Greenwald’s attitude ... because ... he doesn’t like theirs. ... No Place to Hide is ... one man’s rage against the corporate journalism machine, in which most reporters and editors and newspaper companies are cast as spineless government collaborators. Greenwald is indignant, self-righteous, and self-aggrandizing—but so what? It’s a red herring, just as focusing on Snowden—who is he, where is he—is a distraction. The matter at hand is not their story; as long as this is a democracy, it has to be ours.
9:10 AM PT: Title of diary changed to reflect what is new: the linked new NYRB review of Greenwald's recent book, along with Presidential Review Group's report on the NSA, and other publications.