Later On

Glenn Greenwald explains an important concept that many seem to overlook:

In 2006, when the British police — using (among other things) electronic surveillance conducted by both the U.S. and British Governments — thwarted a Terrorist plot to blow up transcontinental airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean, right-wing polemicists everywhere claimed that this was vindication for the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping program.  But there was one rather enormous problem with that claim:  namely, the surveillance in question was entirely legal, conducted by obtaining warrants under the supervision of the FISA court where required by law.  The disruption of that Terrorist plot thus proved exactly the opposite of what was widely claimed:  namely, the extremely broad parameters of FISA easily allowed surveillance of dangerous Terrorists, and there was therefore no need to break the law as Bush officials did.  But because the distinction between “legal” and “illegal” is no longer recognized when it comes to government acts, that fact eluded virtually all discussions of the British airplane plot.  To prove that “legal surveillance is good” was to prove that “Bush’s illegal eavesdropping was justified.”

Yesterday, the three individuals who spearheaded that Terrorist plot were convicted in a British court.  The New York Times‘ Robert Mackey wrote about these convictions today and noted that a major piece of evidence used in the trial was email messages intercepted by the National Security Agency.  Mackey ends his commentary with this question — one he obviously thinks is both piercing and provocative:

Given the continuing controversy in the United States over N.S.A. surveillance when it involves U.S. citizens, do readers who oppose letting the authorities read the private e-mail correspondence of Americans feel any differently about the issue knowing that the agency’s monitoring of these foreign nationals may have helped disrupt a major plot in this case?

This reflects the core ignorance — the central deceit — that has driven national security discussions in the U.S. since 9/11, at least.  Contrary to Mackey’s assumption, there is no controversy over whether the NSA should be able to engage in surveillance of telephone conversations and emails.  There is virtually nobody who believes that the NSA should be barred from intercepting the emails or eavesdropping on the telephone conversations of actual Terrorist suspects.  The category of people to whom Mackey purports to address his question — those who “oppose letting the authorities read the private e-mail correspondence of Americans” — does not exist in any meaningful number, and it never has.  To frame the issue this way is to reveal a radical ignorance of the issues — almost four years after his newspaper first revealed the illegal eavesdropping program.

The surveillance controversy is not and never has been over whether the Government should be able to intercept the communications of Terrorist suspects.  The law (FISA) has always allowed such interception since its inception and virtually nobody opposes that.  Nor was there controversy about whether the NSA could intercept foreign-to-foreign communications, as they did here.  The controversy was and is whether they should be able to engage in surveillance of American citizens in violation of the law — i.e., without judicial oversight and/or beyond the parameters the law allows. The 2009 NYT article to which Mackey links (to reference “the continuing controversy”) has nothing to do with opposition to interception of the emails of Terrorist suspects.  Virtually nobody opposes that.  It has to do with interceptions of emails of American citizens where the interceptions are illegal.  Why are so many people incapable of comprehending the difference between “legal surveillance” and “illegal surveillance”?  Are those concepts really that difficult?  Here is the “continuing controversy” as the article to which Mackey links described it: …

Continue reading. And note this important update at the end:

Illustrating how the Internet/blog model has improved — and can continue to improve — establishment journalism, it was the NYT‘s own commenters who, reading what Mackey wrote with a critical eye, jumped all over his misstatements in his comment section and caused him, first, to re-write the question he posed and then, when that satisfied nobody, to delete it entirely.  Mackey then appeared in my section to address what I wrote (here).  Numerous commenters here wrote worthwhile responses to him, and my reply to him is here.We’re a long way away from the days when journalists like Mackey could speak to their readers in a one-way monologue, and never hear any criticisms other than some stray Letters to the Editor that would trickle in days later and have little effect on anything.