NSA Now Revealing A Lot More About What It Does Than Snowden Leaks Did; So Is That Harming America?
from the just-wondering dept
One
of the key refrains that has come out from those who are unhappy about
the revelation of details around the NSA's surveillance efforts is that
Edward Snowden's leaks are somehow harmful to America.
During hearings about all of this, NSA boss Keith Alexander claimed
that "Americans will die" because of these sorts of leaks. But...
between those same hearings and other revelations from the
administration and Congress, we're actually learning much more about the various programs
directly from the government, as information is now being
"declassified." And, apparently, President Obama is asking the NSA and
the Justice Department to look into declassifying even more.
So while the initial shove to declassify information may have come via
Snowden, the stuff that we're really learning about is coming through
revelations following Snowden's leaks -- revelations that never would
have happened without his leaks.
So that raises a fairly basic question: if Snowden is somehow a traitor and putting lives at risk... why isn't the other information we're actually learning about the programs equally as problematic? The real answer seems to be that the information Snowden leaked does not harm us at all, but has simply revealed that the government has kept classified information from the American public that never should have been classified at all. The fact that only now are they looking to declassify it (and then doing so) shows pretty clearly that the information was improperly classified in the first place.
So that raises a fairly basic question: if Snowden is somehow a traitor and putting lives at risk... why isn't the other information we're actually learning about the programs equally as problematic? The real answer seems to be that the information Snowden leaked does not harm us at all, but has simply revealed that the government has kept classified information from the American public that never should have been classified at all. The fact that only now are they looking to declassify it (and then doing so) shows pretty clearly that the information was improperly classified in the first place.
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