NSA Overreach
Could Endanger Our Safety
By DICK MORRIS
Published on
DickMorris.com on August 2, 2013
After the Vietnam War, the Pentagon reflected on its wartime policies
and military tactics and came to understand that they fanned public
distrust in the military which, in turn, limited public support of their
actions. Our defense leaders grasped that they needed to modify
their tactics and policies in order to rebuild public confidence and
soon military prestige was restored and the military's effectiveness
returned.
The National Security Agency and the entire intelligence establishment
needs to go through this same process of self-reflection and to realize
that their overreaching in surveillance and their futile efforts to
cover-up what they are doing are undermining public support.
Because we live in a democracy, unless the NSA gets it and grasps that
it can't continue to conceal and overreach and still get the public
backing it needs to fulfill its mission, they may face a backlash which
could cripple their efforts to protect us.
One thinks back to the 70s when a Senate committee headed by Idaho
Democrat Sen. Frank Church investigated CIA activities and horrified
Americans with its tales of secrecy, assassinations, abductions and the
like.
The results of the Church hearings were that
the CIA was effectively crippled for a decade and we were helpless and
blind as a nation.
But the criticism of the NSA will not be muted nor should it be.
The agency is invading our privacy is outrageous ways that are
inconsistent with democratic government and refuses to be honest or open
that defies accountable and transparent governance.
General Petraeus understood that if the military in Iraq attacked
civilians, while it might kill some insurgents, the price of alienating
ordinary Iraqis was not worth it. It is that sort of thinking we
need at the NSA. They must grasp that if they push the envelope on
surveillance and lie about it they will undermine the democratic mandate
they need to operate.
I would have voted to cut off NSA surveillance funding to get their
attention and to penetrate the arrogant, self-involved secrecy which
permeates the agency. It was rejected by seven votes. Next
time, it will probably pass unless or until the NSA gets that it just
can't do stuff like this and get away with it.
If the surveillance is helpful in smashing terror plots, that's just too
bad. The NSA, like the New York Police Department, had just better
come up with ways to stop terrorists that comports with our notions of
privacy and limitations on government action and authority.
Of course, the NSA could go the other way and decide to double-down and
use its access to our secrets to terrify us and suppress dissent.
Then we will be en route to a fascist state. One hopes that's not
on their menu of options, but sometimes I am not so sure.
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