Again, Onto the NSA and the Defense of Mr. Snowden

Just a really quick set of comments on the current round of media gems given by Republican members of the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees.  Apparently, both Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Tex.), chairs of the House Committees on Intelligence and Home Security, respectively, claimed that Edward Snowden had to have acted in collaboration with the Russians to unearth all of the secret information on NSA surveillance activities released by Snowden.  Rogers, further, bemoaned the fact that NSA was being forced to adjust to a transformation of communications protocols by Al Qaeda in response to the revelations made by Snowden (see Hayley Tsukayama, "NSA Program Defenders Question Snowden's Motives," in Washington Post (19 Jan 2014), at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/nsa-program-defenders-question-snowdens-motives/2014/01/19/091fccaa-811d-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html).  Two comments.  First, Putin and Russian intelligence has nothing to gain from a degradation of U.S. intelligence capabilities against Al Qaeda - one way or another, the U.S. and Russia are both engaged in conflict against Sunni Islamic extremism and we have more to gain from collaborations rather than conflict.  Insofar as I may have strong misgivings about how Mr. Putin is addressing Sunni Islamic militants within Russia's borders, I cannot imagine that the disclosure of federal surveillance programs to Russia would, in any significant way, benefit Russian intelligence and counter-terrorism operations, especially against militant Islamists in the North Caucasus.  Second, the fact that Al Qaeda is changing their communications protocols does not mitigate the problem that NSA was operating a surveillance program in possible violation of Fourth Amendment protections to the privacy of American citizens without any knowledge that it was doing so!  These were programs that should have been discussed in public, before members of relevant Congressional committees, at least as a matter of principle if not inclusive of detailed information on contemplated surveillance programs or technologies, with footage or, at least, appropriately censored transcripts available for public inspection upon request under the Freedom of Information Act.  As American citizens, we have a right, at this moment, to ask why, in the name of God, it took an measely NSA contractor to spill the beans on what the federal government was doing in possible violation of our individual privacy protections!  Beyond these point, the effort of the Obama administration to curtail NSA information collections appears both inadequate to the larger problem entailed by the initial existence of such programs and, on the other hand, potentially, detrimental to national security.  Emphatically, nobody in the administration seems to have adequately made a public case for why metadata collection was necessary in the first place!  Neither the administration nor the relevant Congressional committees are engaging the American public on the purpose behind the NSA's programs in a way that can convincingly make the case that they are required to maintain our national security.  Instead, the administration is simply going to amend their operations in a way that may degrade their abilities to undertake adequate measure to safeguard the American public without any discussion before our representatives in Congress or dissemination of priniciples for consideration by the public at large.  To briefly reiterate what I had offered in a previous set of posts on the NSA surveillance scandal, in my view, this is not a strict question of what is allowed or not allowed under the Fourth Amendment - it is a question of what the American polity, through its elected representatives, is willing to enact as a matter of law and national security policy.  I, therefore, do not want the Obama administration to enact a handful of policy changes without obtaining Congressional approval.  I, further, do not want the federal judiciary to stick its nose in and invalidate procedures that might be necessary and warranted to keep the country safe.  I want Congress to be informed and to debate the principles underlying these programs through procedures that are fully transparent to the American public.  To a significant extent, this seems to be exactly what Mr. Snowden wanted too!