I really wish we had 2008 campaign Obama back. You know, the one whose platform included this (see page 7):
Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
@LuckyGuy I don’t buy that justification. Yes, what Snowden did was an act of civil disobedience; and yes, those who engage in civil disobedience must accept the fact that they face the possibility of punishment for their actions. But if what the government did was wrong, and what Snowden did is right, then the fact that Snowden had to be prepared for prosecution in no way shows that the prosecution is just. You might as well say that civil rights activists deserved to be attacked by dogs and have firehoses turned on them just because they knew that was a possible consequence of protesting. The defense you give is nothing more than “just following orders” adapted for a domestic setting.
@filmfann The program predates the September 11 attacks, so I don’t buy any of the War on Terror justifications. And even if the program has prevented “many terrorist attacks,” that in no way shows that they could not have been prevented through other means. You say that you want to reserve your outrage until you see that the program is being misused, but we know that the program is being misused because it’s very existence is an abuse of the Fourth Amendment.
If this were a targeted effort aimed at specific individuals for whom individual warrants had been issued, I could accept it. But warrants cannot be issued for the entire American population, nor for the unlimited collection and decryption of data. The whole point of a warrant is to be an exception: they allow specific instances of behavior that would be illegal if practiced on everyone or without limits. That the FISA courts have failed to observe such a basic principle of the law itself shows that the program is already being misused.