Today the President gave one of those serious speeches, the kind intended to assure America it's safe to go back to sleep because the NSA is full of good people who just want to do their job and OMG THERE COULD BE TERRORISTS UNDER YOUR BED!!!
I'm not going to critique the speech or the promises made. We've had lots of promises over the years about how we should trust the government to spy on us for our own good, and we've had lots of practice forgetting just how well those promises have been kept in the absence of fresh air and sunlight. In the modern fear-based society, privacy and oversight are luxuries, and the Bill of Rights has now become the Bill of Good Intentions. So be it.
BUT…. If the NSA is really that good, if they really have that much access to everything under the sun - our phone calls, emails, text messages and God knows what else (and even He may not have the Need to Know), I have questions.
1) How in hell does bad software work quietly for months stealing credit card info from millions of people, and how does that info get into the places in the world the NSA is supposed to be watching with no alarm bells going off?
2) Hundreds of thousands of people are still either without drinking water or worried if they can really trust what comes out of their faucets days later. So, is the NSA going to use all that metadata they've been collecting to help law enforcement unravel what the bozos behind Freedom Industries were doing all this time and who they were talking to - and what else are they up to? I mean, suppose instead of freedom-loving capitalists, it had been actual terrorists who punctured the tanks? Isn't that the kind of thing the NSA is supposed to prevent?
3) Any chance the NSA can turn up some useful emails and phone records in Chris Christie's little Bridgegate fiasco? I mean, think of the damage to economy if bad actors could just screw up our major transportation links on a whim. Is the NSA looking out for that? Sounds like they should be.
Yeah, the NSA is really keeping us safe. We do know one thing for sure - our government is doing everything it can to make sure we'll be safe from future Edward Snowdens….