LETTER: Snowden put a light on NSA’s illegal activities
To the editor:
Thursday’s Pierucci’s Politics column said Snowden should be punished for his actions to the fullest extent of the law, i.e. he should be put to death. That’s the maximum punishment for treason. Seems kind of harsh for revealing crimes against every U.S. citizens liberty carried out by our own government.
Also published Thursday was the report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that said the mass data collection carried out by the NSA under section 215 of the Patriot Act was unconstitutional and illegal, and it needs to be stopped; also that this program is ineffective and has yet to do one good thing to prevent terrorism. This is after NSA officials have testified to Congress that this particular program has stopped 54 terrorist plots. Wait, they changed that to 13. Hold on, they changed that to one, sort of – It verified intelligence we already had.
Congress can’t get straight answers from the NSA.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., organized a meeting with Bruce Schneier – renowned cryptographer and security expert, also one of the few people analyzing the leaked Snowden documents – on Jan. 16 because the NSA wasn’t forthcoming about their activities, and they wanted someone with access to the leaked documents to tell them what was going on.
Congress gets better information on the NSA’s activities from outsiders. It’s probably time we really start looking into their activities.
But Snowden shouldn’t have gone to outsiders to reveal this stuff, right? He should have gone to the intelligence committees, lead by Diane Feinstein and Mike Rogers. Those two have also been the biggest cheerleaders for the mass data collection program. I’m pretty confident this illegal activity would still be dust under the rug had Snowden gone to them.
Also suggested by these same lawmakers is that Snowden was working for foreign governments. Only lawmakers have suggested this; our own FBI and CIA have denied have any evidence suggesting this. The FBI has gone so far as to say they are confident Snowden was acting independently.
Pierucci suggests security is more important than br
inging these unconstitutional privacy-invading programs to light. In response, I quote Ben Franklin with an all-too quoted line in this debate that Snowden made possible; “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Scott Nielsen