Newest NSA Revelation Proves Whistleblowers are Essential

If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about -- except when you do.

Washington Post: The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.

Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.

The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

It turns out that we've made it so easy to spy on Americans that it happens accidentally, According to the report, "A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a 'large number' of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused the U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a 'quality assurance' review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff."

What if Snowden was a Russian whistleblower?

Conor Friedersdorf asks us to consider a very instructive scenario.

Imagine that an employee of a secretive surveillance agency in Russia or China landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, somehow called a press conference, and revealed that the leaders of his country were secretly gathering up the private data of all Russians or Chinese in previously unknown ways, and that they were also spying on many Americans.

What would be the right thing to do in that situation? Should Obama return the leaker to Russia or China to face charges of revealing classified information and likely spend the rest of his life in prison? Or would the demands of justice and morality be better served by granting political asylum?

For all the freaking out about Russia granting Snowden temporary asylum, the fact is that all that freaking out is just ritual. The people doing it (at least those in government) have to do it, but it’s doubtful they ever seriously expected any other outcome. Russia will not do something simply because we demand it, for the same reason we do not automatically bend to Russian demands. Some people may not like the outcome, but thems the breaks.

We shouldn’t punish Russia for taking in Snowden, because it’s likely we would do the same if the situation was reversed. The global issues involved in our relationship with Russia are far more important than punishing someone who’s embarrassed the United States.

"To me, the U.S. would be foolish to let the Edward Snowden controversy affect its relationship with a nuclear power or to prioritize Snowden when so many more important issues are at stake," Friedersdorf writes.