Times have changed for whistle blowers
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, writes in The Washington Post that the U.S. government is much freer to isolate and silence whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden today than in...
View ArticleTime to fix this secret court
Our opinion: Congress must revisit the structure and mission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It almost seems quaint that the full name of the FISA court is the Foreign Intelligence...
View ArticleThe elusive middle road
Our opinion: An outbreak of consensus among liberals and conservatives in the Senate is an encouraging sign. They should keep at it. Sexual abuse in the military and government spying on American...
View ArticleIs spying OK? Depends how you ask the question
Where people stand on domestic spying depends on how poll questions are phrased, according to Frank Newport of Gallup. Responses, for example, changed depending on whether the National Security...
View ArticlePrivacy, security clash
Our opinion: Edward Snowden’s motives and character aren’t the issues; our security and liberty are. The president and Congress are coming belatedly to that discussion. Whether you see Edward Snowden...
View ArticleThe Orwellian present
Our opinion: Revelations about the NSA suggest we’ve crept closer than ever to George Orwell’s dystopia. In the mid-1990s, the National Security Agency wanted to deploy something called the “clipper...
View ArticleClassified info should be news
By obeying government dictates not to publish classified information, mainstream journalists sacrifice “all of their independent judgment and autonomy to the superior, secret decrees of those who wield...
View ArticleNSA listening ‘a hostile act’
Eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel constitutes “a hostile act” and “strikes at very personal, existential German sensitivities,” says Volker Wagener in Deutsche Welle. The U.S. needs to...
View ArticleNSA could fix healthcare.gov
“Is it possible that the U.S. government can contain both the terrifying technological competence implied by the NSA stories and the unnerving technological incompetence displayed in the Obamacare...
View ArticleSnowden not acting for U.S.
Former government contractor Edward Snowden says Americans deserved to know its government was engaged in warrantless domestic wiretapping, says William Saletan in Slate. But by exposing U.S. espionage...
View ArticleNSA exposes its own hypocrisy
Denying that it would “violate someone’s privacy to paint an American citizen as a disgusting sideshow,” the NSA contradicted itself on “60 Minutes” by referencing unflattering material it had gathered...
View ArticleRuling on NSA affirms government misconduct
Judge Richard Leon’s ruling against the National Security Agency exposes “the delusion that bulk metadata collection is a practice that will only traipse on bad people,” and underscores the need for...
View ArticleHow far should spying go?
Our opinion: As courts weigh the legality of the NSA’s domestic spying, the real issue needs to be not what the government can do but what it should do. One judge says the National Security Agency’s...
View ArticleData is meaningless if it isn’t shared
It wasn’t a lack of data that resulted in 9/11 and the bombing of the USS Cole, but the CIA’s withholding of “crucial intelligence from the FBI” on al-Qaida operatives plotting attacks against...
View ArticleObama’s narrow restriction of NSA spying
President Obama’s “narrow definition of spying” doesn’t include the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of “telephone calls, emails, locations and relationships of people for whom there is no...
View ArticleEven security has limits
Our opinion: The president left much still to be discussed in America’s debate on the limits of government gathering of citizens’ data. President Barack Obama’s acknowledgement that the government’s...
View ArticleIs Snowden a whistle-blower or a traitor?
Debate on Edward Snowden’s culpability exposes a rift between Washington and Silicon Valley on values related to online privacy, says Peter Swire in The Washington Post. The former views Snowden as a...
View ArticleFreedom versus security
Our opinion: The disbanding of an NYPD unit that spied on Muslims, and recognition of journalists and newspapers that exposed domestic spying by the NSA, are reminders that we are still searching for a...
View ArticleGreenwald exposes himself as a hypocrite in new book
There are laws against domestic spying and there are laws against leaking classified documents, and it’s hypocritical for Glenn Greenwald to excuse his own illegal activities in publishing classified...
View ArticlePatriot Act expires, but U.S. able to spy
Contrary to media reports and pleas from politicians, allowing parts of the Patriot Act to expire will not jeopardize U.S. security interests, says Timothy Lee in Vox. The government will still “have...
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