People need to stop trying to turn this into a cartoon. This isn't some good vs. evil, heroes vs. villains BS, and continuing to present it in that manner ends up making your opponents look way smarter than they have any right to be. This is absolutely something people should be up in arms about; I've been deeply disturbed by the weakening of the concept of civil liberties going back to Patriot Act. This isn't anything new, this stuff has been going on for a long, long time. This is the consequence of people buying into the War on Terror, among other things.
All of this stuff happened for a reason, and that reason was not that the NSA chief or Obama or Bush or anyone else was an evil person drunk on power who just couldn't help themselves because they're just that bad (or stupid, or whatever). This stuff happened because the electorate and the media and politicians went apeshit after 9/11 trying to point fingers and figure out why none of the intelligence services were able to "connect the dots" and prevent 9/11 from happening. Absolutely everyone was convinced that it was such an eminently preventable catastrophe, and everyone was blaming everyone else to deflect blame from themselves or make it look like they're on the ball.
The electorate demanded it, ate it up, and demanded more. This is why we have Gitmo. This is why we have torture. This is why we have the Patriot Act and why we have to take our shoes off at the airport and why we've had so much more domestic wiretapping in the past 12 years. None of this stuff is news, and if it is news to anyone they haven't been paying attention. Like, at all, on any level. If any of the Snowden stuff is revelatory to you, you have been woefully oblivious to current events for like the past 12 years and are part of the problem.
The thing is, none of this stuff is the product of individuals so much as it's the product of the system and the electorate. If people were half as vocal about civil liberties as they've been about perceived security then we wouldn't be in this situation. Demonizing the people in charge is a natural response, but for the most part they're just people trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. The real problem is the system itself (meaning, pressures within the government and between the government, the media, and the electorate) and the general lack of focus on, or understanding of, the importance of civil liberties among the population.
If the outcome of this is nothing more than a bunch of people get pilloried or lose their jobs, but the core legal framework that allowed this to happen remains in place, then all of this will have been a huge waste of time. It doesn't bother me that the NSA exercised powers that they were given and were instructed to use, it bothers me that all of the lawyers who went over this stuff with a fine-toothed comb concluded that this was all perfectly OK given current interpretation of constitutional law.
All of this stuff happened for a reason, and that reason was not that the NSA chief or Obama or Bush or anyone else was an evil person drunk on power who just couldn't help themselves because they're just that bad (or stupid, or whatever). This stuff happened because the electorate and the media and politicians went apeshit after 9/11 trying to point fingers and figure out why none of the intelligence services were able to "connect the dots" and prevent 9/11 from happening. Absolutely everyone was convinced that it was such an eminently preventable catastrophe, and everyone was blaming everyone else to deflect blame from themselves or make it look like they're on the ball.
The electorate demanded it, ate it up, and demanded more. This is why we have Gitmo. This is why we have torture. This is why we have the Patriot Act and why we have to take our shoes off at the airport and why we've had so much more domestic wiretapping in the past 12 years. None of this stuff is news, and if it is news to anyone they haven't been paying attention. Like, at all, on any level. If any of the Snowden stuff is revelatory to you, you have been woefully oblivious to current events for like the past 12 years and are part of the problem.
The thing is, none of this stuff is the product of individuals so much as it's the product of the system and the electorate. If people were half as vocal about civil liberties as they've been about perceived security then we wouldn't be in this situation. Demonizing the people in charge is a natural response, but for the most part they're just people trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. The real problem is the system itself (meaning, pressures within the government and between the government, the media, and the electorate) and the general lack of focus on, or understanding of, the importance of civil liberties among the population.
If the outcome of this is nothing more than a bunch of people get pilloried or lose their jobs, but the core legal framework that allowed this to happen remains in place, then all of this will have been a huge waste of time. It doesn't bother me that the NSA exercised powers that they were given and were instructed to use, it bothers me that all of the lawyers who went over this stuff with a fine-toothed comb concluded that this was all perfectly OK given current interpretation of constitutional law.