The “revelations” of National Security Agency data-mining of phone records and Internet use were no news to those who’d been paying attention. It’s only the rest of the Obama “scandalanche” that makes it a hackle-raiser.
The data-mining program first started at least seven years ago, under the authorization of the Patriot Act — after a similar Pentagon-based data-collection program was killed in 2003.
Fact is, the NSA — once so secret that its very existence went officially unacknowledged — has been quietly monitoring Americans for years. Indeed, domestic monitoring without a warrant was explicity OK’d in the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, so long as the ostensible purpose was to track plots originating outside the country. (The same bill also gave retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who’d provided the government with information.)
Based in Fort Meade, Md., the NSA and its dark twin, the Central Security Service (which liaises directly with the armed services), effectively function as the nation’s signal-intelligence-gathering and cryptological eyes and ears, crunching data via the giant Black Widow computer and storing the results in a massive new complex in Bluffdale, Utah, among other places.
In a sense, they function as a Department of Pre-Crime, tasked since 9/11 with “connecting the dots” to prevent another catastrophe — not to investigate it after the fact. So those making absurd comparisons with the old East German Stasi shouldn’t blame the NSA and others in the intelligence community for using the tools that Congress has given them, and doing the job they’ve been asked to do.
As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has pointed out, the courts have held that, while the contents of phone conversation are private, the records — who called whom, when, from where and for how long — of such calls are not.
What makes the news scary are the revelations of what else Team Obama’s been up to. Follow the bouncing scandal ball:
* On Benghazi, the administration has simply clammed up, keeping suspicions alive that there’s much more to this story. A handful of intrepid reporters have bucked the tide, but others have stopped asking why no help was sent and where President Obama was that night. Because . . .
* In clear violation of the First Amendment, the administration — allegedly angered about national-security leaks — seized phone records from the AP and Fox News in a what looks like a transparent attempt to put the fear of God into them and keep others incuriously toeing the party line, which mostly amount to: Trust us. But can we? Consider . . .
* The strange goings-on at the Environmental Protection Agency, where recently-departed chief Lisa Jackson was using a fictitious e-mail account in order to communicate privately without all those pesky “transparency” requirements. How widespread is this practice? What to make of word that Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was also using “secondary” e-mail accounts?
* Then came the IRS bombshell — something every taxpaying American can relate to. That a supposedly neutral collection agency with powers far beyond what we entrust to law enforcement would cheerfully target Tea Party and other righty groups for special scrutiny is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares. And although the IRS has tried to blame “rogue elements” in its Cincinnati office, whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork to point the finger directly at the White House.
All this adds up to a perfect storm of mistrust, now exacerbated by the fears of the surveillance state that has mushroomed since the panicky post-9/11 “reforms.” Thus Americans now fear a culture of suspicion among top law-enforcement officials, who treat more than 300 million overwhelmingly law-abiding Americans as potential criminals, subject to snoops and pat-downs.
And when that leviathan falls down on the job — as it did in failing to spot the Tsarnaev brothers — then the trade-off between liberty and security becomes a very bad bargain indeed.
No wonder sales of George Orwell’s dystopian classic “1984” are suddenly soaring.
Michael Walsh is the author of the “Devlin” novels about NSA/CSS, including “Hostile Intent,” “Early Warning” and “Shock Warning.”