Thanks, but...
I've seen my share of the dark side of humanity, too. I may be too trusting, but I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. :-) (No slight intended.)
I have no illusions about how the technology and the collected information could be misused. And I have no illusions that there are people at Ft. Meade and elsewhere who have broken the rules and spied on people (or tried to) in illegal ways at some time or other.
I just don't see that it could happen the way Greenwald and Snowden describe given the limitations of current technology and the vast mountains of data out there.
If you have a few minutes, look at some of the comments at Balloon-Juice. I find these compelling - YMMV, of course :-)
http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525827
http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525855
http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525896
That strikes me as the reality of the situation.
If enough people get riled up about this NSA system, it will be changed. It would be nice if the changes were a reasonable reaction to concerns based on facts and actual abuses or short-comings. But if too many people get riled up about things that aren't facts or aren't abuses and it causes changes that make things worse but satisfy the screaming, then Snowden's and Greenwald's actions will have hurt their cause, and the cause of everyone who cares about sensible policies.
As Martin said in the first link, to control the ability of governments to collect private information, the only solution is policy. There is no technological fix. And policy depends on trust: citizens have to believe that the policy is being followed and that the policy is fair. If the policy is sensible but people don't believe it, then it won't work. So we need to know what the policy is and have a sensible debate about whether it needs to be changed or scrapped.
But even with good policies, there are times when the bad people on the inside will only be stopped after the fact. I'm not naive about that.
Taking at face value the comments of a young guy who has had wild swings of opinion ("people who disclose classified information should be shot in the nuts"/"I don't believe I have done anything wrong"), who vastly inflate their own importance ("I made close to $200k a year"/"I could wiretap the President of the United States"), and so forth, is a step I'm unwilling to take. He may simply be a flawed messenger, but his story about the nearly all-powerful NSA spying on everyone for $20M a year (the PRISM slide) doesn't pass the smell test for me.
But I'm repeating myself. :-)
You've worked in a high-tech publicly-funded organization. You know how slowly things move; you know that most people there don't see the big picture and that nobody knows how all the pieces work together (let alone some young guy who's been there a few months). You know how easy it is for PowerPoint presentations to obfuscate and to be misinterpreted even when no deception is intended (Tufte's examples). There's lots of reasons why Snowden's story could be different from reality.
Maybe I'm wrong and Snowden and Greenwald have done a great service to us and the NSA has been spying on all of us individually and S&G will have managed to stop us all from being rounded up and sent to Guantanamo were we to step out of line. Maybe. We'll see.
Thanks again. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
