Snowden’s ‘secrets’ should not surprise

[struggle4progress]

By Lou Kilzer
Published: Saturday, August 3, 2013, 9:30 p.m.
Updated 2 hours ago

... “One thing that is ‘new' is that there is controversy, where previously there was pretty much none,” John Pike, who directs the national security website GlobalSecurity.org, said of Snowden's disclosures ...

Marc Ambinder, who co-authored a book that discussed XKEYSCORE, pointed out online that searching LinkedIn profiles for national security information will yield hundreds of individuals who worked for NSA and list fluency in XKEYSCORE as a skill ...

In December 2005, The New York Times — after waiting for more than a year at the Bush administration's request — revealed the essence of what would evolve into the capture of telephone and Internet content ...

Six months later, USA Today laid out the metadata aspect: “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth” ...

President Obama campaigned in 2008 with a pledge to end warrantless wiretaps ... As a senator in 2008, Obama voted to amend the FISA legislation to require warrants for such spying ... As president, Obama has fought to retain the 2008 changes ...

http://triblive.com/news/editorspicks/4408043-74/nsa-snowden-program

[soryang]

1. The Panopticon doesn't have the desired chilling effect...

...on First Amendment activity unless everyone in the herd is informed by the mainstream media.

[Fumesucker]

2. Well yeah, but most of us aren't as cluless as Congressmen

[struggle4progress]

3. There is, sadly, a surprising amount of truth to that statement. The good folk in Congress

will often appreciate accurate reliable info from constituents, and the bad folk there won't care to be educated -- but whenever an issue has any complexity, there's a good chance the typical Senator or Representative doesn't know a lot about it