Why Peter King is jackass, Part IV
by digby
Lindsey Beyerstein explains why Peter King is a jackass. Well, not really. But she explains why his idea of Glenn Greenwald being prosecuted is outrageous. And more importantly, she explains this, which shouldn't have to be explained, but apparently needs to be:
Journalism is constitutionally protected because it serves as a check on power of all kinds. We count on journalists to expose wrongdoing and force transparency on the institutions that affect our lives. We want to live in a world where every decision maker knows that, at least in principle, her orders could end up on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, because the mere possibility of accountability serves as a check on abuse of power. Every decision maker needs to know that if she pushes her underlings to violate their core values, she is ultimately at their mercy.
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If a government has too much power to enforce secrecy it becomes unaccountable to its people. This lack of accountability increases the risk that the government will break the law behind closed doors and it also stunts the public’s ability to decide what the law should be. In the post-9/11 era, our leaders have assembled a huge and largely opaque national security bureaucracy that is supposedly tasked with keeping us safe from terrorism. The American people are largely left in the dark about how well these programs work, how much they cost, and what tradeoffs are being made between liberty and security. When secrecy is taken to extremes, it becomes paternalistic and anti-democratic. We couldn’t have a national conversation about whether the NSA should be tracking the metadata of our phone calls until journalists revealed that the program existed.
Some Snowden critics have attempted to deny him the mantle of “whistleblower” because he leaked information about a program that was being overseen by the FISA courts. They maintain that a true whistleblower would only sound the alarm against an illegal program. However, just because a program is being overseen by a secret court doesn’t guarantee that it is constitutional. Only the Supreme Court can decide that. But as long as a program remains secret, there’s a Catch-22 in effect: The Supreme Court can’t review the constitutionality of the program until someone sues to challenge it, but if nobody knows they’ve been targeted by a secret program, nobody has standing to bring a lawsuit.
Snowden’s revelations broke that impasse. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union announced that it had filed a court challenge to the program. Snowden’s leak revealed that Verizon Business Network Services had been ordered to give up the metadata for all the calls made by its customers. As a customer of VBNS, the ACLU has standing to sue.
It's outrageous that the system was rigged (and it was rigged) in order to prevent the US Supreme Court from determining the constitutionality of these programs. That president Obama tried to pretend that this was all done according to the system, with all three branches "signing off," was also outrageous. If you consider a couple of Senators and Congressmen sworn to secrecy and a secret unaccountable court an adequate check on executive power you have a funny idea of what constitutional checks and balances really mean.
The free press is part of our system for this very reason. History had shown the writers of the constitution that it was important to provide an outside check against government power. I'm sure there are risks involved. But when you look back in our history, these sorts of leaks have been far more likely to have shown government to have abused its power than to have caused a major security problem. (If they did, we've nonetheless managed to remain secure in spite of them.) And it has resulted in what Beyerstein describes -- an ever so slightly chastened government, at least temporarily, and more concern for whether their endeavors are in keeping with our values.
The tension always exists --- the government bureaucracies and certain ambitious types exploit the zeitgeist of the moment to build their power and then they are forced to pull back when the press reveals what they've been up to. And even then it's not enough. As the run up to Iraq showed in living color, the press is far more likely to be a toady for government power than to threaten it most of the time. It's not as if it doesn't show a very unhealthy deference for government most of the time.
Meanwhile, the Military Industrial Complex, the secret security/surveillance state and the various police agencies on both the federal and state levels have become huge and unaccountable bureaucracies, particularly in the wake of 9/11. (It was floundering there for a few years without the Cold War to justify its existence, it's growth hindered by a lack of urgency.) These are the pieces of the US government that are the real third rail in American politics. And they are threatening to squeeze out everything else.
We have the taxpayers paying six figure salaries to NSA contractors all over the world, sponsoring gigantic new programs and building complexes and the bureaucracy is growing like flesh eating bacteria. This is all happening under the radar at the same time that we are shamefully cutting food stamps and Meals on Wheels. This "defense/security" budget is untouchable (what of it actually shown on the budget --- we really have no idea how much is spent on this stuff) even as our leaders propose to cut the meager incomes of people who are too old and too sick to work. That's the real trade-off: this unaccountable, secret bureaucracy spends as much as it wants while average citizens are squeezed every which way --- and have their rights abused in the process.
We jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander—with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets,” says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House, and at the expense of everybody else.”
Are we even allowed to have an opinion on whether that's really worth it or is "consent of the governed" just an archaic old relic from a time when America wasn't existentially threatened by losers armed with pressure cookers and underwear bombs? Are we expected to sacrifice our rights and our financial well-being for this unaccountable secret war without even questioning whether it's effective, constitutional, rational or right?
I know one thing: if it weren't for the First Amendment, we would never get enough information to even ask the question.
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