By David K. Shipler
To risk all
by being a whistleblower, you have to believe deeply in your society’s capacity
for self-correction, and Edward Snowden—after periods of doubt—is a believer,
it seems. Last week he hailed “the power of an informed public” in driving
Congress to make modest trims in the National Security Agency’s authority to collect
data on Americans’ electronic communications. This is the way an open democracy
is supposed to work: expose the wrongdoing and provoke reform.
But before we celebrate with
embarrassing rhapsodies, let’s remember how far the United States has to go. The
9/11 trauma has not yet healed, and the post-traumatic security measures—some sensible,
others excessive—have compromised the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee of the
people’s right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” Many
of the extreme methods of intrusion remain intact. Some have proved worse than
useless, overloading intelligence professionals with terabytes of distracting information
that’s hard to search and sift for the ominous patterns of incipient terrorism.
So there are both practical and
ideological reasons to abandon the excesses, yet they seem likely to stay largely
in place until several conditions develop.
If earlier spasms of anxiety in American
history are any guide, violations of constitutional rights in the interest of
national security come to an end when, a) they are so egregious that their
disclosure inflames the public; b) the perceived threat diminishes; and/or c)
courts find the measures illegal or unconstitutional. Early signs of each of
these can be seen, but only as slight beginnings of what may become significant
trends.
