Let me put this briefly and simply. The government should not be snooping on us. But they started anyway. That was wrong and unconstitutional. When they did, they made their snooping program secret. That was wrong twice over, a cover-up of a wrong. Then they actually lied about the existence of the program to Congress, and the bureaucrat who perjured himself doing so is getting off scot free. Trebly wrong. And now when a low-level contractor, at tremendous risk to himself, courageously blows the whistle on this operation, he is threatened with extradition and very severe prosecution, rather than being pardoned. Quadruply wrong!
1. The Fourth Amendment is clear: the government may not indiscriminately snoop our private things. In the language of the Amendment, American citizens have the right to be “secure” in their “effects” against “unreasonable searches” except “upon probable cause” and a specification of the things to be searched.
2. But indiscriminate snooping is just what PRISM does. A surveillance program that regularly searches private telephone call metadata, as well as private Internet data, of virtually all American citizens seems on its face to vi0late the Fourth Amendment.
3. So PRISM is illegal and wrong. It sure looks unconstitutional.
4. And we had a right to know about it. Why wasn’t the decision to start PRISM put before an open, public Congress? It was a decision with enormous potential consequences; it seems obvious that the American people had a right to decide whether it would be surveilled to this extent.
5. So it is doubly wrong that the PRISM program was hidden from us. We should have been able to voice our concerns to our representatives and the President when this program was started. But because it was implemented in secret, we couldn’t. When it comes to how the entire population of the U.S. is treated–not just terrorism suspects–we have a constitutional republican democracy, not a secret government.
6. James Clapper’s perjury is outrageous. When National Director of Intelligence James Clapper was asked by Sen. Ron Wyden on March 12, 2013, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” and he answered, “No, sir … not wittingly,” he was not merely committing perjury. He was lying about a program that Americans had a right to know about, that it was important that they know about, because it affects all Americans’ constitutional rights, and they have a right to assess and object to just such a program.
7. Edward Snowden is a hero for revealing the facts about PRISM. If it hadn’t have been for the courageous whistleblowing of Mr. Snowden, we would still be ignorant of this massive violation of our constitutional rights. Considering the huge risks to himself, his whistleblowing was simply heroic.
8. It is shockingly and trebly wrong that Edward Snowden is being persecuted for whistleblowing. It is true that, in leaking classified documents, Edward Snowden broke the law. But he did so in order to reveal a much more dangerous sort of official lawbreaking. He arguably had a moral obligation–and, fortunately, the courage–to do so, since he observed that no one else in the government was making the program public. It is outrageous that a person who reveals a wrong perpetrated by a supposedly open and democratic government is persecuted for it by that same government.
9. Instead, those responsible for PRISM–and for making it secret–should be made to answer for their actions. Even if they are not punished, they should be made to answer publicly for their clear abuse of their public trust. They should not have made this unconstitutional program, and just as importantly, it should not have been kept secret from the American people.
10. It will be quadruply wrong if Edward Snowden is not pardoned. “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism … should be encouraged rather than stifled.” Who said this, and where? A libertarian defending Edward Snowden in Reason, perhaps? Not exactly. It was on the Obama transition team’s website in 2009, back when Obama was being lauded as a “friend” to whistleblowers.
President Obama should pardon Snowden and, probably, Clapper too–and, on the assumption that they had laudible intentions, everyone involved in the creation of the program.
And then President Obama should actually encourage a public debate, and Congressional vote, on whether PRISM should continue to exist.
Wouldn’t that be something.
Leave a Reply