How much are you willing to compromise with the NSA on national security?

[mike_c]

55. the way I see this debate....

First, we have constitutional privacy protection from unwarranted personal and property search. Second, we have a long history of respecting the privacy of personal communications, making it seriously unlawful to intercept and read someone else's physical mail-- the U.S. postal system has strong privacy protections requiring probable cause for any interception of personal communication. Together, these define an approach to personal privacy that has been part of the definition of American civil rights for generations. In effect, we restrained government from unreasonable searches and violation of private communications. This has long been part of the bedrock of American constitutional liberties.

As communication media have become more sophisticated, government agencies like the NSA and the CIA have easily circumvented those controls-- the nature of electronic communication media permits eavesdropping without having to steam open any envelopes. Despite the principles established by generations of respect for private communications, they have used that capability to "gather intelligence,"-- spy-- on other people whose secrets they want, initially foreign nationals because American courts jealously guarded the privacy of ordinary citizens absent probable cause, and more recently American citizens.

Now we find ourselves in a world where our principles have already been well and truly trashed by the time we find out about it. Fifty years ago, I think this sort of revelation would end careers and bring whole government agencies into strict oversight, as indeed the excesses of the CIA have done in the past. Instead today we find ourselves trying to figure out how to deal with a fait accompli, a done deal. The cat's already out of the bag and doesn't want to go back inside.

So we're talking about whether or not to let the cat stay out of the bag, or about "reasonable limits" on the cat's time out of the bag, rather than telling the cat to get the hell back into the bag it was relegated to when this nation was founded. I think that whole conversation is misplaced. At the very least, we should have a vigorous and public debate about changing the limits of privacy before government agencies simply do their worst. There is a reason they do this in secret, and forthrightness about what they're doing isn't it.

Think about it this way. If your kid gets caught shoplifting, do you read him the riot act and make it absolutely clear that you won't tolerate that sort of behavior, or do you negotiate with him about how much shoplifting you can live with? Does his recent history of successful stealing change the discussion?