Anthonyn Cordesman on Edward Snowden

Today are reasonable expectations of privacy are reduced from the days when
our Justices first enunciated the doctrine in the context of Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence in 1967--- sad to say. Companies use our cookies to see our
purchasing (and who knows what else) preferences, our cellphones are
utilizes quite freely by the courts to determine not only the fact of a call but
one's location when it was made. This info is of course available to our
telephone companies and indeed stored by them for a period of time in the
regular course. We hope and trust that they do not abuse it. We go through
EZpass, but do not want it utilized for the ulterior purpose of issuing
speeding tickets--, your cable company has your viewing preferences down.
Your credit card co knows how where and when you purchase things and what
your purchasing preferences are. Many businesses have hidden cameras that
monitor their streets and parking lots. They are recording our movements.
In this context, the disclosure that the US is able to and does collect metadata
(and not the content) of many millions of calls made me feel safer than
before. The stated purpose for this program was to preserve our ability to
retroactively, under the appropriate circumstances, connect the dots on those
who are in constant communication with terrorists or terrorist cells and
perhaps obtain subpoenas to monitor the calls in the future. This previously
undisclosed ability, now compromised, has resulted in a loss of a critical tool
in our national defense.
We can applaud a number of instances where an unauthorized release of
classified information led us to be a freer country with better restraints
against bad governmental conduct, e.g--the Pentagon Papers, Watergate. I
am not one who believes that whatever the government classifies should
remain so just because our government says so. Indeed, I believe there is far
too much classified information and much less transparency in government
than there should be.
Nevertheless, I cannot for the life of me see how, in the context of what we
know is known about us by any number of actors today, we can applaud
Snowden for undermining a key tool for our national defense under the guise
of being a champion of our privacy. He simply had no legal right and, more
importantly, no moral right to make these disclosures.

Let me bring a different perspective to this discussion. First off, I am Canadian and thus may see things differently Hey! I was not alive during WWii and my parents were only young children living in separate areas of the world. I have no idea who Anthony Cordesman is as an audio reviewer or political commentator.

As for Edward Snowden, who cares its too late the damage, if any, is done. If the secrets he revealed were so important, then the people who should be shot or punished are those that failed to provide the safeguards to prevent a single person from accessing, downloading and leaking the information.

What I don't get is all the outrage and surprise about what Snowden leaked. The fact the NSA was spying on people's email and phone calls was public knowledge, there was a report by Frontline in May 2007 "Spying on the home front" exposing this whole operation. Was it the extent of it, the implication of Google, Microsoft or others, maybe.

What really get's me is that the Boston bombers were previously flagged by the NSA, the Russians even warned the US about the danger but still they were able to carry out the horrific acts. Billions of you tax dollars are being spent each year, and the rights of US citizens and others are being compromised and in the end you still don't prevent the terror.

Now my outrage, a little over a week ago here in a small town in Quebec, a train carrying over fifty tanker of crude oil was left unattended during the night and rolled back 12 km/ 8 miles down a hill into a curve and exploded levelling the town of Lac Megantic, the accident killed 50 people. Nearly everyone in the town lost someone in their family. The exact cause of the event has not yet been determined but it was not terrorism.

Similar accidents have occurred and will likely continue to occur throughout out the US, Canada and the world. BP comes to mind as a prime example, with the Deepwater Horizon disaster they killed 11 people and leaked millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf. That was preceded, 5 years earlier, by the Texas City Refinery explosion that killed 15 and injuring 170 people.

My point is that on a daily and continuous basis various industries are undertaking high risk operations that put the lives of hundreds or thousands of people at risk. Far less government money and resources are spent minimizing or eliminating these risks. Risks which when compared to the risk of terrorism are far greater.

Fighting terror touches an emotional string with voters whereas regulating industry slows the flow of campaign funding. Not to mention that most people can't understand or tangibly assess these risks. That is why after 9/11 it is reported that in the US air travel decreased in favour of automobiles despite that the fact the odds of dying in a car reck are 1:98 vs a plane crash 1:7178 (source USA Today).

Let me end with a Popper quote "We are democrats, not because the majority is always right, but because the democratic traditions are the least evil ones of which we know..."

Dear Nick_sr,
Thanks for a well thought out post.

I know our EU friends were none to happy with being the target of US espionage.

Politicians have been beating the terrorism drum for money and votes back to Bush Sr. Both parties are guilty.

The marathon bombing kids are a prime example, to shut down a entire metropolitan area and turn it into a police state for what? More people are killed and injured on the Boston highways every weekend. That was a mob mentality response that pandered to the police state crowd.

Are you kidding? What if there were more players and bombs?

Csontos,
You, and the politicos can play the "what if" game.

Those of us that evaluate risk for a living deal with historical facts as a paradigm for future events.
Just the facts please.