> We've had government secrets for hundreds of years, yet lately we seem to have an upsurge in leakers. What has changed? Have "those dang kids" just given up on traditional structures of authority, as Brooks believes?

Well, Brooks come off as a huge blowhard to me, but the government is pretty objectively less evil than it's been in the past (My Lai, COINTELPRO, Syphilis testing on unsuspecting blacks, state-condoned lynching, Trail of Tears, ECHELON, HUAC, Slavery, the Three-Fifths Compromise, the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, "Separate But Equal", Kent State, Jim Crow laws, Nisei detainment camps, etc. etc. etc.)

I personally feel the reason that leaking is increasing is simply that it's easier to do, and the perceived consequences on national security are much less.

Back in the day you leak nuclear missile plans and you could get the entire world killed by tipping MAD over too far. But even this leak of NSA collection schemes will not drastically change the overall geopolitical picture, even if it does potentially lead to degradation of counter-terrorism capability.

However it's also possible that people are becoming more idealistic faster than the government is becoming less evil, which would IMO explain much of the hysterics over issues like this that can't be explained by their relative impact in an historical context.

Do you think you can reasonably predict how history will come to see the government that you refer to?

(I'm thinking that lots of things that seem normal now might not seem so reasonable in 30 years)

I can't reasonably predict the weather next week. But either way, I don't choose what to do based on what some Ph.D. will think of it 40 years from now, I choose what to do based on whether it's right or wrong. When it's not that simple, I try to go by what is the best overall solution.

I can see how the way I phrased it brings up the eyes of some Ph.D., but I was thinking more about having a complete picture of things, or new information changing the context of interpretation for things, etc.

Well, I always reserve the right to change my mind when the facts change, or my understanding of them does. I don't like to think I'm locked into a certain viewpoint or worse, that my viewpoint changes to be what's most advantageous for me personally at any given phase in my life. And I do think I have a good understanding of history.

But at the same time I think that a good understanding of history's past failures can enable you to essentially "try again correctly" in the future.

I think all of us agree that civil liberties are important and that a government's protection of its citizens is important. I see it as an area of tension, but not as a bloodfight like some on both sides of that issue.

Brook's position is vital to have out in public. It's basically the governments argument, written in plain English.

With it out in public, the public can deal with it, as you are doing. Had this article not appeared, you would not have posted what you did.

As for the smearing, I have no doubt that these reporters and commentators fully believe in what they are saying. They believe in their government and the believe in the war on terror.

Wait, hold on. I want this to come across as respectfully as possible -- I'm not attacking you personally -- but I believe you're falling into the very trap the author of the article is trying to point out. Namely, "... it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state."

You construct a scenario with two choices: "those dang kids" and "system itself grown evil"

Well, the first one works to highlight absurdity because "dang kids" isn't a homogeneous group all working towards a coherent end. There's a lot of dang kids around and a lot of them hold different conflicting beliefs and are working towards different conflicting goals.

But the "system itself" isn't a homogeneous group working towards a coherent end either. The "system" is a giant, confused, messy, bureaucracy that doesn't get together Thursday nights for bowling, evil and 10 cent wings. That's why, behind communication intercepts, our favorite topic to bitch about is govt inefficiency and waste.

I don't necessarily agree with the article and I'm not saying that there aren't valid criticisms of the system (giant, confused, messy, bureaucratic) or even of parts of the system (NSA being evil and the President being complicit in that evil).

But if we're going to call the NSA's mass surveillance evil (about which I won't argue), then I'd hazard to say that part of that "evil" is the paternalistic nature of this idea that in order to save our freedom (from TERROR!) we must give up that freedom (to BIG DATA!). In other words, someone else knows what's best.

So we need to be careful that, in fighting this idea that the govt knows best so just trust them to do the right thing for all of us, we don't turn into that govt. You write "Or has the system itself grown evil enough that people view their obligation to their fellow citizen more important than their obligation to the structures created by those citizens?"

If citizens are more concerned with -- and name your own whipping boy here: Reality TV, facebook, buying a new car / bigger house, getting fatter, getting hawter, whatevs -- and they vote in leaders who perpetuate these acts then in a sense we all get what they deserve. It's not fair but it's the nature of living in a society.

Awkward sentence construction aside, you can't save people from themselves. Doing so, in this case, makes you the thing you're fighting. And I think that's what the author in the NYT was saying. It's dangerous to start thinking "I know better than the system" because the person has now internalized some very dangerous assumptions. He no longer sees the world as a place filled with people. He sees the world in very stark, black and white, him vs the system, terms. And the rest of us, we're part of the system (that is, vs him). That kind of thinking leads to some very, very bad places but I'll save that for a different tl;dr comment.

And I hope that doesn't come across as an attack on you. I don't know that I agree or disagree with your comment in it's entirety but you made an interesting generalization from a very specific thing and that's what I was reacting to.

The problem with Brooks's arguments is that they fail as soon as you apply them to other NSA whistle blowers like Bill Binney and Tom Drake. He paints Snowden as a young, incompetent, introverted outcast who "couldn't navigate the institution of high school." That mud just doesn't stick on the others who blew the whistle for the same moral reasons as Snowden, like 40-year NSA veteran Binney.

Was Daniel Ellsberg a youthful, rebellious societal outcast, unable to navigate the country's institutions? Just someone who was eager to confront authority?

Good points. Just as an aside, I often hear people repeat the mantra that government needs secrecy, but have yet to hear a justification which is worth the many rampant abuses covered by its cloak.

My own government has of late been justifying its own abuses by claiming commercial-in-confidence with the private partnerships it is operating, not to mention they just exempted parliamentary privileges from FOI.