The following is from an editorial in The Concord (N.H.) Monitor:
Two years ago, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, warned that the American people "will be extremely surprised when they learn how the Patriot Act is secretly being interpreted."
Now, thanks to Edward Snowden, we know. And, yes, we were surprised to learn that government was vacuuming up the records of every telephone call, all in the name of national security. Surprised, but not shocked. Trust in government is too shaky for that.
Snowden also outed a National Security Agency program with the spy-thriller name Prism that collects data from email, photos and other information transmitted overseas via the Internet.
What Snowden did was, of course, illegal. But his actions were also a service to the nation, which as some members of Congress and President Barack Obama have noted, needs to have a frank discussion about how to balance security and privacy.
How much intrusion into citizens' private lives is warranted in the name of security? Is the collection of that data "reasonable," or an unreasonable, unwarranted search under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution? Are we a democratic society, a surveillance society or both? Can both exist simultaneously?
Did the data collection programs need to be secret? We doubt it. The public, polls suggest, is only too willing to ignore Benjamin Franklin's warning that people who trade liberty for security will get neither. And any terrorist with a thimble full of brains expects that phone and Internet communications will be monitored.
A government that watches its citizens needs to be watched back. Abuse of power has a long history.
It's time to talk about where we are — a nation with a Patriot Act that's open to semi-secret if not secret interpretation, national security letters that forbid citizens to say they are being secretly investigated and personal privacy that seems a distant memory — and where as a nation we want to be.