Impossibly Ironic Quote of the Day
“If the perspective is we’re trying to hide something because we did something wrong, we’re not.” — NSA head General Keith Alexander, testifying before Congress on his secret program of collecting information on millions of phone calls and emails.
BONUS: This next one isn’t so much ironic, as moronic. If you asked me to write about a fictional tool who would defend Big Brother with the lamest argument imaginable, I could not possible have outdone David Brooks. I guess that’s why he’s a world famous writer and I’m stuck in karaoke bars. Here’s Brooks on Snowden (HT2 LRC): “He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.”
So remember, if you ever find yourself with evidence that the government is secretly spying on millions of Americans, you should keep your mouth shut. Think of the children!
Well in the end it all depends on what the definition of is is does it not?
I love the quote “If the perspective is we’re trying to hide something because we did something wrong, we’re not.” What does the NSA think people are upset about? It is not that we think they did something wrong. It is that the evidence says they are doing something wrong.
Creating a Dragnet to simply store information so that you can go back and ‘prove’ something, does not fill me with a great deal of confidence. Additionally who is to keep them from making it all up at some point? All it takes is a bureaucrat with write access to a database and with such massive amounts of data I can make anyone look ‘bad’ and draw many nasty conclusions from falsified data.
This is a bad thing no matter how you look at it and I can promise it does not keep us any safer as the data is too massive to create an algorithm that will make sense of it all. At best you will find a thousand shadows cast by one real problem that may never develop.
On the Daily Show with John Oliver (Jon Stewart is away for a few months…) the other day, in his coverage on the spying scandal (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-10-2013/good-news–you-re-not-paranoid—nsa-oversight), John said: “Mr. President…No one is saying that you broke any laws. We’re just saying: It’s a little bit weird that you didn’t have to…”
How great would it be if the government stopped hiring young people because they were afraid their secrets might be exposed? Then we could just wait for Father Time to take care of this mess for us.
Brooks is hysterical. If everyone thought like him, we’d all be far *more* cynical, not less. Like: “There’s no point in releasing this info. The authoritative hierarchy insulates itself too well.” Brooks, for reasons I cannot understand, wants a society where folks like Snowden “know their place.” Maybe this is what David Brooks has to tell *himself* before he starts the day: “You’ve got a good gig here at the Times. Don’t rock the boat. Just smile and cheer and they’ll take care of you.”
Also, haven’t we seen examples Brooks’s ideal society? These authoritative hierarchies have existed in places like horrible Soviet Russia, in Italy (where the mafia emerged as an *independent* hierarchy!), and in FDR’s war-torn America. None of those places sound very nice to me.
That wasn’t even the most moronic line in that Brooks’ column. A mere two paragraphs later we get this:
He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.
Remember kids: the first rule of open government is that you can’t talk about open government.
I once needed an adjective to describe Brooks’s relationship to Obama; finding “lickspittle” inadequate I coined “suckspittle”.
I’m cheered that we can all dogpile David Brooks here, even Blackadder and Ken B, who are normally contentious-for-contentiousness-sake (some people have argued, of course I would NEVER endorse such wild speculation myself).
EconTalk just had a rather horrible interview with a “security specialist” who struck me as someone who doesn’t read much about the things he spends time opining about and as a result sees the world as this severely nuanced place that no one but he is able to appreciate. Anyway, he did make ONE good point and that point was that “connecting the dots” in intelligence work is not like a kid’s coloring book where the dots are numbered and you just string them together and it “forms a duck” as he said. Instead, it is like there are thousands of dots, none of which are numbered, and the intelligence analysts have the responsibility (and license!!) to string them together however they like.
And this is but one of many of the problems with the NSA’s “dragnet” as mentioned above– if you collect enough “dots”, you can connect them in a way to make almost anyone look guilty of something, or about to be guilty of something.
What’s ironic about America is we’re allowed to read books like 1984 and Animal Farm, watch movies like Minority Report, The Matrix and Equilibrium, and yet we’re still too stupid to “connect the dots” ourselves and resist this menace effectively. Or something. I think the solution is personal and individual so it’s easy for me to castigate “society” for this mess.
Even my disagreeableness has its limits.
You confuse provocative and contentious, but it is interesting we all seem down on Brooks. That’s actually a bit worrying and my first thought was maybe I was being unfair to him. But then I re-read what he wrote ….
Self-titled provocateur.
Awwwwkward.
Anyone find it funny that this atomistic individualist sacrificed his career and potentially his life for a purpose that only abstractly individually benefits him? I guess this is why Brooks is so against the naive, irrational individualist mindset…
Mr. Snowden is a traitor to American ideals because he’s so darn altruistic. Excellent point.
Is it a coincidence that during this week of great libertarian P.R. triumph that the dumbest of the dumbest (Brooks, Dionne, Lind, Konczal) come crawling out from under their respective rocks?
If you see something, say something.
It must be true, it was on the poster.
“He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.”
No. It is so much more reassuring that your employees are stooges willing to go along with any criminal scheme you may throw their way. What a wonderful world that would be. Brooks’ mentality is the same that shoveled Jews into the ovens.
I have worked for people like that and left their employ for just that reason. They thought, as a former Marine, that I would mindlessly follow any directive. They do not reallze that I am only bound to follow lawful orders. I do not know what sort of oath Snowden took, but any oath to do anything in violation of the law or the constitution is no oath at all, just like any contract to engage in illegal activity is not a binding contract.
Snowden knew what he was doing and the risks he took. He fully expects to experience il affects from his action. This separates him from from Manning who violated his oath and sought to evade any consequences as a whistle blower (I’ve never understood why whistle blowers wish to remain in their jobs. The mentality that lead to the malefeasance still exists. Why would anyone wish to remain under that cloud). Snowden’s actions harmed no one, Manning’s may well have. I know many here support Manning, and that is fine, but as Snowden demonstrates and clearly states, there are consequences for our actions. Snowden has a higher standing in my book. HE has a clearer sense of what he did and the likely consequences.
JimS
Jim,
I understand how reasonable people can have different opinions on how Manning and Snowden went about leaking information, but there are a couple things in your comment that are misleading:
1. The Pentagon itself has admitted that nobody was harmed as a result of the documents leaked by Manning. Also, I believe everything was actually marked Secret, a lower level security classification than the Top Secret docs that Snowden leaked.
2. It’s clear through Manning’s chats prior to being detained that he was fully aware of the consequences of his actions and was willing to bear that burden as long as the public was made fully aware of the crimes he witnessed. I’m not sure why you think he attempted to evade those consequences.
No US citizens were hurt by Manning’s leak. Informants and foreign nationals working with us were harmed or no longer could be used.
Manning witnessed no crime. He was simply upset by what he saw and thought it was wrong, but according to the articles of the UCMJ, the Geneva Convention, and the ROE there was no foul.
“Manning witnessed no crime. He was simply upset by what he saw and thought it was wrong, but according to the articles of the UCMJ, the Geneva Convention, and the ROE there was no foul.”
Were you watching a different leaked video? Because I saw obvious civilians being massacred because some bloke was wanting to kill some A-RABS and didn’t care if they were carrying cameras or rifles.
We are the “good guys”, and we would never use any of this info against any USA citizen unless you say something against our government, and we have to check all of you, to make sure you don’t say anything against our government. Also, we have to make sure you are paying all your taxes, and not doing anything else that is against the law.