‘No Place to Hide’ by Glenn Greenwald, on the NSA’s sweeping efforts to ‘Know it All’

By David Cole, Published: May 12

... Other revelations are less surprising, although Greenwald tends to deliver them as if they were all equally scandalous. He reports, for example, that the NSA cooperates with other countries’ spy agencies, even as they spy on us and we on them. Is anyone other than Greenwald “shocked, shocked” by this news? He notes that the NSA collects data not only for counterterrorism purposes but for economic and diplomatic advantage. Again, did anyone think otherwise? Since 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has expressly authorized the collection of “foreign intelligence information,” defined to include any information about a foreign power or territory that “relates to .?.?. the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.” Surely oil supplies and trade negotiations are as relevant to our foreign affairs as terrorism is. And it hardly follows that, as Greenwald claims, “stopping terror is clearly a pretext” for the NSA.

Some disclosures raise more questions about Greenwald’s judgment than about the NSA’s activities. One document, for example, identifies the specific methods used to bug 24 named foreign embassies. The document reveals top-secret methods and targets, and its disclosure is likely to undermine legitimate intelligence-gathering and cause serious diplomatic problems. Yet it is difficult to see what possible value it adds to the public debate. It is one thing to disclose secret government practices that raise serious moral, political and constitutional concerns — as many of Snowden’s disclosures have done. But bugging foreign embassies is at the core of foreign intelligence, and there is nothing particularly surprising about the fact that we do it.

Greenwald does not always recognize the difference between justified and unjustified disclosures. And that’s too bad, as Snowden placed his trust in Greenwald to make such calls.

Greenwald’s descriptions of NSA programs can also be misleading. He never mentions, for example, that there are significant “back-end” limits on how the agency can search and use much of the data it collects. These limitations constitute the core of the NSA’s defenses of its programs. While I don’t find those defenses entirely convincing, a serious effort to grapple with the issue would not simply ignore them ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-place-to-hide-by-glenn-greenwald-on-the-nsas-sweeping-efforts-to-know-it-all/2014/05/12/dfa45dee-d628-11e3-8a78-8fe50322a72c_story.html