TMI

The first two bullets fired in what could become one of the biggest legal battles in American history have struck a target. A federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s massive collection of phone data on millions of us appears to violate the Constitution, and ordered it to stop doing so on two plaintiffs.

A big section of pavement has been laid on Edward Snowden’s likely road to sainthood. If it weren’t for him, of course, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. But if it weren’t for the government taking on private contractors to operate this system, there probably wouldn’t be an Edward Snowden, either. How many other private contractors are there, with access to information on us, who just might not be as interested in the greater good?

When a sitting federal judge throws around terms like “Orwellian,” it tends to get your attention. Personally, I have no problem with the use of modern information systems to prevent terrorism. But does this massive NSA program actually work? As critics have pointed out making the haystack bigger only makes it harder to find the needle.  

I have this creeping suspicion that while our lives are becoming more transparent to government (and Google, Microsoft et al, BTW), government operations are becoming more and more opaque. Is it really all about safety and security? Do you think sometimes, when government power is exercised, it’s just because it’s there and justifies someone’s job?

Of course, these issues are not as black-and-white as the Snowden fans would have us believe. But 9/11 happened in large measure not because the dots weren’t already there, but because nobody connected them, which seems to be a factor in many high-profile man-made tragedies, such as school shootings. Can we have a reasonable discussion about what information the authorities need about us and what they don’t – and what government operations need to be secret and what don’t? The deep end isn’t all that far away, and I’d really hate to see us go off it.