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Cleveland
Plain Dealer
Revelations
about NSA demand a
close look by Congress: editorial
The Plain Dealer Editorial Board
June 12, 2013
Revelations
that the National
Security Agency has for seven years quietly monitored U.S. telephone
and
Internet traffic with the permission of a secret federal court should
be of
concern to every American.
For
more than 200 years -- with few
governmental incursions except in times of war -- every American's
freedom from
unreasonable searches has been guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to
the
Constitution.
But
in an age of international
terrorism, government faces the challenge of balancing every citizen's
constitutional rights against its own absolute responsibility to
protect
Americans.
The
Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act Court is said to have approved the NSA's "mining" of
the metadata that is automatically collected by the phone companies
every time
a call is made. Phone numbers are logged, ready for an analysis by
incredibly
sophisticated computer software. The NSA also collects emails,
documents,
photos and other material.
An
American intelligence
contractor, however, says intelligence gatherers are doing more than
merely
logging connections between phone numbers. Citing a visceral revulsion
against
such intrusions into the lives of U.S. citizens, Edward Snowden went
public,
went to Hong Kong and then went missing.
Although
the purity of his
motivations may be debatable, the legality of his actions is not. By
lifting
the lid on a secret program, he has aided America's enemies. If and
when he is
apprehended, he should face consequences.
But
his personal case is a
secondary issue. He has tossed a much bigger matter into the laps of
Congress
and the public: Are the people and its representatives satisfied with
the way
this presidential administration and the previous one have managed the
balancing act between individual rights and national security?
Reaction
from congressional
leadership has so far been muted, portraying the revelations -- first
printed
in the British newspaper The Guardian -- as hardly newsworthy…
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the rest of the article at the Cleveland
Plain Dealer
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