Is the NSA scandal a tipping point?

Edward Snowden’s leaked documents about current US government surveillance programs have produced a predictable flurry of news reports and Congressional outrage. The vast expansion of the government counterterrorism bureaucracy since 9/11 has been documented repeatedly, with little real effect. Nor is it unexpected that all these agencies would push for ever more powers and funding, and rely on ever more secrecy to avoid as much oversight as they can get away with. So I don’t find it surprising to discover that the NSA has been collecting information about the telephone habits of Americans. It was common knowledge years ago that the NSA had installed major tapping equipment – whole floors of buildings - at several major telephone and internet hubs in the US.

 I do find it appalling:

(a) that the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, by the recent admission of its own chief justice, receives such limited, biased, and one-sided information from the agencies that it supervises that in effect it can’t really supervise them at all. In fact, one program ran for months before the court heard about it, declared it unconstitutional, and brought it (we hope) to a halt. (see the Washington Post article Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited. )

(b) that last March, before the Snowden leaks, when Director of Intelligence James Clapper was asked by Senator Wyden at a Senate hearing if NSA collected “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”, Clapper lied and responded “No sir.” It is hard to see what effective oversight Congress can exercise if the agency heads it questions can lie, apparently with impunity, since Clapper hasn’t been fired for this.

(c) that the NSA broke its own privacy rules, if perhaps inadvertently, thousands of times in a year, according to its own internal investigation, but never revealed this fact to the Congressional intelligence committee that is supposed to have oversight. Only when Edward Snowden leaked the report was it ever acknowledged by the NSA. (see the Washington Post article NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds. )

It’s pretty clear from these revelations that the government counter-terrorism agencies are running amok with their surveillance activities, no doubt at a horrendous cost. Despite President Obama’s rather feeble public assurances, it is clear that the oversight procedures in place are thoroughly ineffective. And in fact, without Edward Snowden’s indiscretions, we wouldn’t even know about it.

The question is whether these revelations will be a tipping point, resulting in any effective action to restrain them, or whether after a short media feeding frenzy things will simply go back to the way they were, and the government will continue to infringe increasingly on the privacy of American citizens without their knowledge or assent.