Gail Collins
Question for the day: Do you feel more secure or less
secure, now that you know the government is keeping a gargantuan pile of
information about everybody’s telephone calls in the name of national security?
You have heard, I’m sure, that the National Security Agency
has been mining Verizon’s records for information, such as numbers called and
the location where the call was made. This is known as “telephony metadata,”
and the very fact that we now have a term like “telephony metadata” is perhaps
reason enough to be against the entire concept.
“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President
Obama assured the American people on Friday. Well, probably nobody. And, if
they are, it’s under an entirely different part of the program.
We’ve had a passel of these stories this week. (It also
appears that the N.S.A. is sucking personal e-mails and other data from the
servers of the giant Internet companies.) Security issues are very tough to
figure out. One side is always saying, as Obama did on Friday, that whatever is
going on will “help us prevent terrorist attacks.”
The phrase “help us prevent terrorist attacks” is sort of a
conversation-stopper.
The other side is worried about privacy, but the public is
resigned to the idea that some Big Brother is monitoring their communications.
After all, we live in a world where you can e-mail your husband about buying
new kitchen curtains and then magically receive an online ad from a drapery
company.
Let’s start with the real basics. Does the N.S.A. really
need all the stuff it’s collecting? Ever since the attack on the World Trade
Center, the agency has been exploding. It has an enormous operation outside of
Washington, and it is building another million-square-foot complex in the Utah
desert. It collects an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of communication a day.
“When you have the ability to get more and more data, the
natural inclination is to get as much as possible,” said Representative Henry
Waxman, the former chairman of the House oversight committee.
Those of us who have seen the show “Hoarders” know that more
is not always better, and “as much as possible” is sometimes covering up a pile
of dead cats. After all, the government didn’t fail to stop the attack on the
World Trade Center because of a lack of data. It had lots of information about
Al Qaeda and its plan to stage an attack on America. The problem was with
follow-up.
And the N.S.A. has been known to go overboard. During the
administration of George W. Bush, it decided to drop a modest in-house plan for
data analysis in favor of a gargantuan program called Trailblazer, which
funneled more than $1 billion to private consultants and turned out to have the
additional liability of not working. The official who fought most vigorously
against it was rewarded in 2010 by being charged with violating the Espionage Act
when he released information to a reporter.
That was only one incident, but we do seem to have an
ominous combination: an agency with a bad record on thriftiness, and
practically everything it spends money on is secret. “It’s a tough balancing
act,” an Obama administration official told me. “It’s incumbent on us and
Congress to do the job of scrutinizing the budget, both in terms of cost and
efficacy.”
Yeah, what about Congress? The president keeps saying that
“Congress is continually briefed” about security issues. In reality, the
briefing is pretty much confined to the members of the House and Senate
intelligence committees, who are sworn to secrecy. Many of them also have a
longstanding record of being in the pocket of the intelligence community. A few
of the others had been desperately trying to warn their colleagues about the
telephone-call program without breaking their vow of silence. Senator Ron Wyden
of Oregon did everything but tap dance the information in Morse code.
“Does the N.S.A. collect any type of data at all on millions
or hundreds of millions of Americans?” he asked James Clapper, the director of
national intelligence, at a public hearing.
“No sir,” said Clapper.
I wouldn’t rely on Congress to keep things under control.
It’s really up to the president. As a candidate, Obama looked as if he would be
great at riding herd on the N.S.A.’s excesses. But if he has ever seriously
pushed back on the spy set, it’s been kept a secret. Meanwhile, the
administration scarfs up reporters’ e-mails and phone records in its obsessive
war against leaks.
And without the leaks to reporters, we would never be having
discussions about whether it’s a good idea for the government to collect piles
of records about our telephone calls every day.
“I welcome this debate,” Obama said Friday. “I think it’s
healthy for our democracy.” Under further questioning, he said that he
definitely didn’t welcome the leaks. Without which, of course, there would be
no debate.
Do you remember how enthusiastic people were about having a
president who once taught constitutional law? I guess we’ve learned a lesson.
Source - Gail Collins New York Times
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