The NSA is leading us to a dark place

The United States has a long history of maintaining covert intelligence agencies, and that can make sense in the realpolitik, game theory world of geopolitics. During the Cold War, knowing the behind-the-scenes position of the U.S.S.R likely helped avoid mis-steps that could have resulted in nuclear catastrophe. Likewise, on issues such as US-China relations, Iranian nuclear negotiations, and trade talks, there is a place for covertly acquiring information about the intentions of other players to avoid serious blunders. Spying is often called the "world's second-oldest profession," and it's not going anywhere soon.

That said, the growth of the military-intelligence-industrial complex since 9/11 is unprecedented in its scope, brazen unconstitutionality, and lack of accountability or oversight. Collecting data (or metadata) about the communications of millions of citizens and non-citizens alike, without a warrant or an even a stated suspicion, is clearly a violation of the fourth amendment of the Constitution, no matter how much garbled legal justification the intelligence community condescends to toss us. Instead of allowing the NSA to collect the whole haystack in hopes of finding the needle, we need to return to traditional police work of following leads. As the fourth amendment declares: "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." If we choose as citizens to accept the NSA's assertion of authority to collect "things" (metadata is a thing) without warrant, we are agreeing to retreat on the fundamental ideals of our nation.

"Verily, we shall remove SSL certificates betwixt the public internet and Google Cloud" 

Furthermore, this spying program has failed to provide us with workable intelligence. The NSA has recently admitted that their surveillance program has foiled at most one or two terrorist plots in the US. The increased scope of our spying has also backfired dramatically on several fronts. The NSA's programs have weakened the structure of internet security for everyone, and raised doubts about products offered by US tech companies, risking about $35 billion in sales. Our major alliances, which have a much more real and substantive effect on security than one or two terrorist plots, are being greatly strained by revelations that we're tapping their communications to an unprecedented extent. In the meantime, the image of the USA around the world is becoming one of an enormous, ominous, secretive empire, dealing illegal assassinations from airborne robots and collecting every communication. It is hard to imagine that this does not effect our ability to partner with state and non-state actors around the world. With all this considered, a reasonable argument could be made that the power grabs made by the intelligence community in recent years have done more to weaken U.S. security than to enhance it.

After the abject tragedy of 9/11, Americans shifted priorities in the (dubious but workable concept of a) balance between security and freedom by enacting the patriot act and funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to spy agencies. This recalculation was understandable at a time of great trepidation, but it is now time to seriously reassess the choices we made. I do not deny the need for good intelligence, nor do I doubt the motives of the people working for these agencies. The military-intelligence-industrial complex, like all bureacracies, has a tendency to perpetuate itself, and to grab power - their evil is banal. Our spooks have a certain threat-centered perspective, and that perspective is blind to important priorities that we have as citizens, such as maintaining open relations with our allies and a secure internet. We have to accept that no amount of spying or drone striking can ever guarantee that there will never be a terrorist attack again. A reduction in the risk of a terrorist attack from 1% to 0.1% is not worth throwing our principles out the window and becoming the death-robot in the sky.