If you believe in small(er) government then you have to believe that that government can, and usually does, grow too large—and that predilection to expand can be just as true of the military or our intelligence services. So it is with the National Security Agency (NSA).
The most urgent question isn’t whether the NSA has become too costly in financial terms (although that may be relevant, too), but rather is it too costly in terms of our freedom?
Throughout the multiple and continuing revelations of NSA violations of our liberties, the agency and its apologists have reminded us that supposedly the NSA has kept us safe. But all they consider is our physical safety.
Even if that assertion is true—and we can’t really know given the NSA’s track record of providing its “least untrue” sworn testimony to Congress as well as its “misrepresentation” about the legality of its programs to U.S. courts—are we truly safe when government is robbing us of our liberties?
Whether it’s the freedom of speech and the press, the right of the people to organize peaceably (as highlighted in other recent scandals), or the prohibition against unreasonable search or seizure, the federal government has been undermining the Bill of Rights in the name of keeping us safe.
Terrorists could only hope to be so successful.
The NSA is so tone deaf to privacy issues and concerns about big-government snooping in our communications, that its director has suggested that the agency could just order the phone companies to keep all of our records for search by government as desired, as if where the records are stored is the problem.
Even if the NSA were trustworthy—and there is nothing in its recent untruths and half-truths before Congress, the courts, and the media that convinces us it is—the breadth of its snooping should raise eyebrows, as should the obvious lack of effective oversight.
Elected officials charged with providing oversight are few, and details they learn cannot be shared with colleagues. So how are they to lead a charge to reform the institution? They aren’t even allowed tell their elected colleagues what’s wrong. And citizens get virtually no information. So where is the governance, the control?
The fact is that government has grown so large that no one controls it, which is to say it is out of control. Ignoring the grave damage to our liberties and focusing only on physical “safety” will continue to lead us down a path where one day we will wake up to find we have neither safety nor liberty.
August 29, 2013