When you cut through the fog, the NSA controversy is about whether we should trust people with institutional power. Edward Snowden\u2019s courageous exposure of massive secret surveillance separates those who say yes from those who say, \u201cHell no!\u201d<\/p>\n
The trusting attitude can be found among progressives and conservatives alike (with notable exceptions), and even\u00a0some who have identified themselves as libertarians<\/a>. Matt Miller, an occasional guest host on the progressive network MSNBC, left no doubt where he stands when he flippantly wrote in the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em><\/a>,<\/p>\n Do you empathize more with those who govern \u2013 and who in this case are charged with protecting us? Or has the history of abuse of power, and the special danger from such abuses in an age when privacy seems to be vanishing, leave you hailing any exposure of secret government methods as grounds for sainthood?\u2026<\/p>\n Is there potential for abuse? Of course. An Internet-era J. Edgar Hoover is frightening to conjure. But what Snowden exposed was not some rogue government-inside-the-government conspiracy. It\u2019s a program that\u2019s legal, reviewed by Congress and subject to court oversight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n So it\u2019s okay if the government monitors masses of innocent people as long as it\u2019s reviewed by a clique of gagged members of Congress and a secret rubber-stamp \u201ccourt.\u201d That\u2019s what I call trust in power. Frankly, it\u2019s more alarming that the spying is legal rather than rogue.\u00a0Michael Kinsley<\/a>\u00a0once said, \u201cThe scandal isn\u2019t what\u2019s illegal, the scandal is what\u2019s legal.\u201d<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s progressive colleague\u00a0Richard Cohen<\/a>\u00a0said much the same thing in much the same tone:<\/p>\n The National Security Agency has been monitoring telephone calls and e-mails \u2013 and even social media stuff of the sort you shouldn\u2019t have been doing anyway. [!] To this, a whole lot of people have expressed shock. Oaths to the Fourth Amendment have filled the air. Unreasonable searches are simply unconstitutional, they assert \u2013 without asserting that anything has in fact been searched or seized. It has merely been noted and, if suspicious, referred to a court for the appropriate warrant.<\/p>\n The programs certainly can be abused. (So can local police powers.) But oddly enough, proof that this has not happened comes from the self-proclaimed martyr for our civil liberties, Edward Snowden.\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A defining trait of those who trust power is that abuse is of no concern until it occurs \u2013 if we learn about it, that is. It never occurs to them that power is inherently abusive.\u00a0Donald Boudreaux<\/a>\u00a0informs us that Edmund Burke, the conservative Whig, had a keener insight to abuse.\u00a0Burke wrote<\/a>\u00a0of America in 1775:<\/p>\n \u00a0In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n (Cohen is true to form. After President Jimmy Carter\u2019s\u00a0energy-crisis speech<\/a>\u00a0in 1977, Cohen urged Carter to\u00a0throw his arms around the sweaty beast of power\u00a0\u2013 that\u2019s nearly verbatim \u2013 concluding, \u201cWe are waiting for our orders, Mr. President.\u201d)<\/p>\n Both Miller and Cohen, along with others others, try to diminish the disclosures by asserting that the government is only doing what Google does every day. The difference between, on the one hand, surveillance by a coercive monopoly with the legal authority to use aggressive force and, on the other, commercial offerings from one of several competing service providers seems to elude them.<\/p>\n The\u00a0editorial board<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/em>agrees with its columnists:<\/p>\n Just as it is important not to exaggerate the national security risks of transparency, it is also important not to give into the anti-government paranoia [!] of grandstanding politicians such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who on Sunday invoked the tyranny of King George III to criticize programs that are the result of a checked, deliberative process across three branches of government. Part of what makes this different is that if enough Americans expect more privacy after the debate Mr. Snowden incited, their representatives in Washington can act on their behalf.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s another mark of trust in power: a belief that those \u201crepresentatives\u201d actually represent us in any meaningful sense. The great unasked question is: How can someone literally represent anywhere from several hundred thousand to tens of millions of people?<\/p>\n For every ridiculous thing said by someone on the so-called Left, you can find an equivalent on the Right. Mark Thiessen, once a speech writer for President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, devoted his\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0<\/em>column<\/a>\u00a0to assuring those of us who distrust power that \u201cBig Brother is not watching you.\u201d About the mass collection of telephone logs, Thiessen says we have no grounds for concern:<\/p>\n In\u00a0Smith v. Maryland<\/em>, the Supreme Court held that there\u2019s no reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus no Fourth Amendment protection, for the phone numbers people dial (as distinct from the content of the call), because the number dialed is information you voluntarily share with the phone company to complete the call and for billing purposes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n A third sign of trust in power is being impressed when one branch of government decides that you and I have no \u201creasonable expectation\u201d that another branch of government will respect our privacy. After all, if you are willing to disclose a phone number to the telephone company (by calling that phone), why would you mind if the NSA stored the number (and other information) for future reference? Verizon, NSA \u2013 to quote a recent secretary of state,\u00a0what difference does it make?!<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe leaks do not describe the many \u2018inward-facing\u2019 restrictions directed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to the government that describe the conditions and limitations on when and how the data can be accessed and how they can [be] used,\u201d Thiessen writes.<\/p>\n In other words, trust them. The components of government will limit each other. What\u2019s that you say? The director of national intelligence, James Clapper,\u00a0lied<\/a>\u00a0before the Senate Intelligence Committee and the American people when asked if the government was collecting information on millions of Americans? He had to lie. It was for our own good. (The head of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander,\u00a0lied<\/a>\u00a0too<\/a>.)<\/p>\n As is said in the law,\u00a0falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n David Brooks, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0resident conservative<\/a>, portrays Snowden as an alienated character, like Holden Caulfield, who \u201chas not been a regular presence around his mother\u2019s house for years,\u201d who was an inadequate neighbor, and who has his priorities screwed up:<\/p>\n But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This seems rather overwrought. Let\u2019s remember that all Snowden did was tell us how extensive the government\u2019s data collection is; it goes beyond what even\u00a0an author<\/a>\u00a0of the relevant law intended. (So much for its trumpeted legality. Note well: legal and constitutional language is inherently\u00a0underdeterminate<\/a>\u00a0and subject to biased interpretation by those with an interest in expanding power.) From what Brooks has to say, you\u2019d think a blank check for the government is what holds society together. Did Snowden indulge an excessive individualism, or did he in fact \u201clook after the common good\u201d? If you trust power, you\u2019ll choose the former.<\/p>\n For society to function well [Brooks continued], there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Well, yes, trust and cooperation are necessary for society to function well. But that does not mean one should trust inherently\u00a0untrustworthy<\/em>\u00a0institutions \u2013 quite the contrary. Snowden has struck a blow for trust and cooperation by exposing the spies in our midst.<\/p>\n What these pundits won\u2019t understand is that distrust of power, which lies at the very heart of the centuries-old liberal tradition, is responsible for so much of what is good about civilization. It is when people not only distrusted power but also grasped that they were\u00a0justified<\/em>\u00a0in doing so that liberation began its slow progress, and zones of personal freedom began to be carved out.<\/p>\n Lord Acton\u2019s dictum \u2013 \u201cPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely\u201d \u2013 is only liberalism\u2019s the most famous statement of distrust. Before Acton, David Hume, one of the giants of the Scottish Enlightenment,\u00a0noted<\/a>,<\/p>\n Political writers have established it as a maxim, that, in contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controuls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a\u00a0knave,<\/em>\u00a0and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and, by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, co-operate to public good. Without this, say they, we shall in vain boast of the advantages of any constitution, and shall find, in the end, that we have no security for our liberties or possessions, except the good-will of our rulers; that is, we shall have no security at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n One could quote the early liberals all day on this subject, but you get the point. Those who today apologize for the NSA, the Obama administration, and their enablers in Congress betray the deepest ideals of Western civilization. They, not Edward Snowden, are the traitors.<\/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\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n