Happy Father's Day to that father in the NSA.
We know you are there. You're a human with a conscience. It has not been stolen from you. You may've compartamentalized it in order to get along, but it is still there.
You're working within the Byzantine labyrinth of the NSA & it's outsourcing universe. This isn't 10 to 50 years from now where you'll have been replaced with a non-emotional substitute for a human. For the present, you still have some freedom of action. At some point, your successors will not. That's coming and you know it.
You have consciousness and the ability for self-introspection. Use that ability. None of your superiors can exercise the ability for self-reflection greater then you. Nor can politicians. They are not gods, and you are not a child. Accept that and use your own ability to reason in order to decide what is the moral imperative you face. We are not children that need to be lied to, nor are you. Don't lie to yourself that your own actions don't matter, or that you do not possess the qualifications to know what is illegal, unconstitutional, or immoral.
Think about not only the present, but the future as well. This country, and indeed the world, counts on you to release the information you have of criminal and unconstitutional activity. You must act as though no one else has the requisite access and moral compass to release that information, because that may very well be true.
Your superiors don't know what they're doing. They're not following a well-thought out masterplan that will lead to desired consequences. They are shooting from the hip. This type of spying enterprise, ON THIS SCALE, with no international power to oppose it, with no current adequate internal mechanisms to check it, has never been successfully done.
Your superiors don't know what the consequences for this will be, because there is no historical precedent that is 100% relevant. They, like you, are links in a chain that stretches from past imperfect precursors of Total Information Awareness surveillance to a future with consequences they could only guess at...if they tried. Your superiors don't even do that, they merely pat each other on the back via internal studies that reinforce their desire to get to the next paycheck with as few hassles as possible. Their concern is is appear to meet project goals within assigned deadlines, and not the consequences for civil society. They are focused on their own status within each organization affiliated with the NSA, and not on morality.
What you do know is all past leaders and spy systems fu*ked up time & time again. That is what history has shown. Don't be fooled by their blase swagger, they don't know what the fu*k they are doing when they chart new territory. They can only enact their plans, but they don't know what the consequences will be. No wars have ever gone according to plan after the shooting starts. The only guranteed outcome is death. Any illegal or unconstitutional programs of the NSA can only offer a kind of death to the body politic if let run to their conclusions.
Your role in stopping them is critical. You have the ability to save not only lives, but the soul of a country as well.
We are not, collectively, children. Your superiors may think that we are, but they are just as wrong about us, as they are about you. Give us the information, give us enough of it, and we will react.
You have a higher duty than merely to the agency within which you temporarily find yourself. You have a duty to yourself, the country, and the world. Don't let the next, and the next, and the next, and the next generations down. Above all, don't let yourself down.
You are human. Still. You possess an inner reality that has not yet been completely submerged to the office politics and desire for financial success your "superiors" expect to keep you quiet. You are a citizen of a free country inside your own head. Show the world what that means. Show us who you are. Reveal the illegality & the unconstitutionality, and thereby protect the freedom of thought and access to truth that any parent wishes for their own child to have access to one day.
Revealing illegality and unconstitutionality doesn't make you a terrorist.
You are not a terrorist.
Your children are not terrorists.
The cost will be great for you to do so. The cost not to do so, for you, would be even greater. You know that, even if no one else does, and that is why you'll speak out.