please forgive the formatting. Something is caddywompus with WordPress this am
(Community Matters) I’d probably come down accepting of the privacy costs in favor of protection against future terrorists attacks if I believed government reports about how we’re using the data and the inviolable safeguards. I don’t know what it says about me that at this point I believe Snowden and tech sources more than I believe government spokespersons . . . but it’s where I find myself. And, I don’t doubt Snowden exaggerates and is suffering paranoia (understandably).
<<James Clapper, America’s director of national intelligence, told Congress in March that the NSA does not gather data on “millions of Americans”. He now says he answered in “the least untruthful manner” possible.>>
I also believe more Americans could move to the against side of the column as we understand the specifics and implications of the spying programs – the tech community (all ages) is my canary on this.
Some are citing Thomas Freidman’s column, Blowing a Whistle, and while I’m a decades long fan . . .
I worry about that even more, not because I don’t care about civil liberties, but because what I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: “Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.” That is what I fear most.
. . . I’m disappointed in the circular logic – not unlike “we have to cut social security benefits now otherwise in 2035 we might have to cut them.”
Fear it’s gonna get uglier before it gets better or before we have a real, impactful push for appropriate checks and controls. I have an unsubstantiated intuition that Greewald is giving our guys plenty of rope. I might just like him because he’s such a big queer.
I find this Economist editorial thoughtful and lacking the hyperbole & pack talk of most columnists.
Community Matters 