It\u2019s bad enough the federal government spies on us. Must it insult our intelligence too?<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s response to Edward Snowden\u2019s leaks about the National Security Agency\u2019s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It\u2019s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three.<\/p>\n
Can\u2019t they at least get their story straight? If they can\u2019t do better than that, why should we have confidence in anything else that they do?<\/p>\n
Snowden exposed the government\u2019s indiscriminate snooping because, among other things, it violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and he had no other recourse.<\/p>\n
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Snowden should have used established channels to raise his concerns, but there are no effective channels. Members of the congressional intelligence committees are prohibited from telling the public what they learn from their briefings. Two members of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, for years have warned \u2013 without disclosing secrets \u2013 that the Obama administration is interpreting the Patriot Act and related laws far more broadly than was ever intended by those who voted for those pieces of legislation. Their warnings have made no difference.<\/p>\n
A court challenge wasn\u2019t open to Snowden either. Glenn Greenwald, who published Snowden\u2019s leaks in the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>, notes that for years the ACLU has tried to challenge the surveillance programs in court on Fourth Amendment grounds, but the Obama administration has blocked the effort by arguing that the ACLU has no standing to bring the suit. It\u2019s a classic Catch-22. Since the surveillance is secret, no one can know if he has been spied on. But if no one knows, no one can go into court claiming to be a victim, and the government will argue that therefore the plaintiff has no standing to challenge the surveillance. Well played, Obama administration.<\/p>\n The administration should not be allowed to get away with the specious claim that telling its secrets to a few privileged members of Congress is equivalent to informing the people. It is not. It\u2019s merely one branch of government telling some people in another branch. Calling those politicians \u201cour representatives\u201d is highly misleading. In what sense do they actually represent us?<\/p>\n Equally specious is the assertion that the NSA can\u2019t monitor particular people without court authorization. The secret FISA court is a rubber stamp.<\/p>\n When Obama ran for president in 2008, he said Americans shouldn\u2019t have to choose between privacy and security. Now he says that \u201cone of the things that we\u2019re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy? Because there are some tradeoffs involved.\u201d<\/p>\n What do you take us for, Mr. President? Do you say whatever serves your momentary interest?<\/p>\n It\u2019s outrageous for Obama to say he welcomes this debate \u2013 when his regime is plotting to capture and prosecute the heroic whistleblower who made it possible.<\/p>\n The debate would be bogus anyway. No one has a right to make a security\/privacy tradeoff for you. Our rights should not be subject to vote, particularly when a ruling elite ultimately will make the decision \u2013 out of public view!<\/p>\n Americans have learned nothing from the last 40 years if they have not learned that the executive branch \u2013 regardless of party \u2013 will interpret any power as broadly as it wishes. Congressional oversight is worse than useless; it\u2019s a myth, especially when one chamber is controlled by the president\u2019s party and the other chamber\u2019s majority embraces big government as long as it carries a \u201cnational security\u201d label.<\/p>\n Obama\u00a0says<\/a>, \u201cIf people can\u2019t trust not only the executive branch but also don\u2019t trust Congress and don\u2019t trust federal judges to make sure that we\u2019re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we\u2019re going to have some problems here.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s wrong. If the politicians\u2019 only response to revelations that they\u2019re violating our privacy is to ask for trust, then we already have problems.<\/p>\n Sheldon Richman<\/strong>\u00a0is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org<\/a>) in Fairfax, Va. He can be reached through his blog,\u00a0Free Association.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n