There have been a lot of news reports on the revelations about National Security Agency surveillance since I last posted on the subject. I won’t go into them here. Suffice it to say that the reporting, though extensive, is both incomplete and, at times, contradictory. The public has not even gotten close to discovering what we need to know in order to make informed decisions about the appropriate policies for dealing with a real problem — terrorism — while protecting important liberties. A recent poll shows that even Democrats — who strongly support the Obama administration on this issue — want a congressional hearing on the subject. The next few weeks and months will be interesting. I suspect this debate — the one, you will recall, that President Obama spent four years avoiding but now welcomes — is just beginning.
I would, however, like to focus on one element of the story: the ongoing avalanche of commentary arguing whether NSA renegade Edward Snowden is a hero or not. The New Yorker went so far as to run articles on both sides of the question. They may be found here and here. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a much-discussed piece about Snowden in which he draws out the sociological implications of the leaker’s actions. (Apparently they have something to do with the social rootlessness of many contemporary young people.) Unsurprisingly, Brooks’ column received some harsh criticism from Snowden’s supporters on the libertarian and progressive wings of the blogosphere. My own view: Brooks’ piece says very little beyond the fact that it’s extremely difficult to write 800 coherent words week after week, year after year, for a newspaper column.
I suppose that it is interesting, at some abstract level, to parse Snowden’s motives and pass judgment upon them. His legal fate — an almost certain life sentence in a federal prison if the U.S. government has its way — is surely newsworthy. But the fixation on Snowden — understandable as it is — risks sidetracking us from the real heart of the matter: what — if anything — are we going to do about what we are learning about the NSA? At this important level, whether Snowden is a hero or a villain or even a traitor matters very little.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.