Getting All Up In Our Business

What You Don't Know

     In the weeks to come people will be thinking about 2013 in retrospect, and about jump starting 2014. For me, aside from the loss of Nelson Mandela, the saga of Edward Snowden cast the longest shadow of any news story of 2013. The fallout will continue for years to come. If nothing else, Edward Snowden has become an instrument of  change, one whose actions pale in comparison to the implications of NSA data collection.
     Here is a link to The Guardian's timeline of events, beginning with Edward Snowden's initial revelations regarding National Security Agency data collection:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-nsa-files-timeline
Attempting to reiterate it here or, to recap the fallout we saw in 2013, would be impossible. Suffice it to say the whistleblower vs. traitor characterizations recall an old Fats Domino hit, I hear you knockin', but you can't come in. President Obama has not done himself or the nation any favors by pressuring foreign governments to turn Edward Snowden over for prosecution for stealing state secrets, and, subsequently, calling him a 29 year old hacker. Which is it? 
     Please do not mistake me. Snowden is no whistleblower; there is no such animal in the intelligence business. Considering his C.I.A. background and the nature of his contract with the N.S.A., Edward Snowden could not conceivably have been a naive idealogue from the get go. To some, he is an antihero, who stands charged with "theft, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.” (The latter two charges are, defined under The Espionage Act of 1917.)
     He may not be Daniel Ellsberg, but Snowden's revelations continue, and they are staggering. Before judging the man a coward, his growing knowledge and its implications must have been overwhelming. Who among us would have calmly gone through proper channels, expecting constructive reactions and outcomes? Come to that how much would you wager, Keith Alexander and James Clapper will suffer far less severe notoriety and consequences for their violations of constitutional law? Enter the American Civil Liberties Union.

This kind of dragnet surveillance is precisely what the fourth amendment was meant to prohibit. The constitution does not permit the NSA to place hundreds of millions of innocent people under permanent surveillance because of the possibility that information about some tiny subset of them will become useful to an investigation in the future.” -ACLU Deputy Legal Director, Jameel Jaffer.

     Beleaguered by a damaged image abroad and still fighting to regain economic security for the vast majority of Americans, we're hard-pressed to imagine the cost of the NSA's massive data collection in 2013. The Agency's budget is black; i.e., it is classified information. We know the NSA is one of more than a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies. The combined intelligence budget was $75 billion in 2012, at least $10 billion of which went to the NSA (estimated by Steve Aftergood, Director of the Government Secrecy Program of The Federation of American Scientists and reported in CNN Money, June 2013.)
      So what was the return on investment on billions of taxpayer dollars? It is not a question which lends itself to an objective answer. The Orwellian question is how we deal with the enemies of freedom we legitimize, not the ones we demonize.