A spook story: The NSA and us
Maybe it’s appropriate we are writing about NSA spying on Halloween. The theme for this editorial is definitely “trick or treat.”
No one can possibly spin the news that the National Security Agency has been spying on our allies into anything but a treat for enemies of this country. Our reputation could not be worse, could it?
After all, it seems incontrovertible that some sort of technological free-for-all has resulted in the National Security Agency breaking the chains of common sense and common decency and eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other foreign leaders.
But maybe not. More and more, it seems as though the American people are being played by forces way beyond our control or understanding. It’s hard to know just where the disinformation is coming from.
On Tuesday, National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander denied reports that the NSA had collected telephone and e-mail records directly from European citizens, but rather got the data from our NATO partners.
Alexander called reports based on leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden “completely false,” and apparently this is where we get into the tricky part of the story. Virtually no one defends Snowden’s criminal mischief, and his apparent theft of thousands of pages of top-secret documents, yet President Obama and the rest of the national security structure have to deal with the fallout from Snowden’s leaks, no matter how misleading they may be.
Let’s face it — spying between nations (even allies) is nothing new. In the old days, it might have meant paying off a janitor in the prime minister’s office. But these days, with all those satellites, wi-fi connections, and who knows what kind of electronic communications floating about, it is no wonder that our spies have opted for high-tech solutions to old-time problems.
Now what do we do about it?
Well, probably the place to start is to develop some kind of true oversight of our intelligence agencies. How can the president of the United States not know what is being done in his name? Is that just a convenient falsehood or a necessary shield? And what about Congress? Are the intelligence committees in the House and Senate shut out because their members can’t be trusted with top-secret data? Or because our legislators would rather not be tasked with making the hard choices about how to keep us safe?
Unfortunately, what is going to happen now is that there will be some kind of snap decision made to shut down data collection and intelligence gathering. That’s the easiest thing to do politically, and Congress is full of opportunists looking for a grandstand to climb on to, but this won’t be the end of the story.
Just as earlier disclosures about intelligence excesses have led to similar “reforms” and “protections,” we can expect that the current round of chest-thumping will result in the NSA and CIA being temporarily neutered and the nation’s security being weakened.
That may be what Edward Snowden desired, but if the United States and its allies can be played so easily by a 30-year-old computer geek, that would be truly spooky.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the Daily Inter Lake’s editorial board.