Huffington Post
Title: Drawing the Line on Government Surveillance
The article speaks about both sides of the controversy.
Here is an article from a liberal perspective published by The Week.
Title: The liberal case for high-tech NSA surveillance
This liberal post took me by surprise because prior to reading it I had expected it to criticize the government. However, the libertarians didn't rage against the Patriot Act. Though it may seem hypocritical, but when it comes down to it, liberals are interested in "the proper use of government to maximize common good." What makes the article a stronger case than the ones that we read in class is that this article actually revealed a time in which the government was actually able to uncover an attack before many people were injured or even killed.
Lastly, in comparison here is an article from The American Conservative.
Title: NSA blowback
Jessynhs, I agree with you when it comes to my initial surprise of the article. I must admit that if I hadn't read the title I might have thought that this article was much more right than it really is. I am glad that it provided a link to an actual prevention case, a detail commonly forgotten in a bunch of other posts. Not trying to let any personal bias leak into my response, I feel that this is a well-written article.
ReplyDeleteHowever, something I learned at Georgetown University over the summer is that it is so incredibly hard to actually predict impending disaster. The model "it's as simple as connecting the dots" doesn't work well, because we have to connect individual stars together in a galaxy of mostly irrelevant data, and there aren't any fun numbers to guide us along our way. That's why it is still very possible for tragedies such as the Boston Marathon Bombing to occur, as even if the entire DI is investigating a case, there is still a shockingly high probability that it's going to happen.
That acknowledged, I am bothered by the Constitutional violation which is prevalent in the NSA Scandal. What scares me most is how much Constitutional liberty we are taking away, just to improve the odds of preventing incoming hysteria from impossibly slim to relatively slim.
But I'm not one who likes to see innocent people die, either. That is why at the end of the day, I'm OK with the NSA surveillance. The chance to save a life is a chance to take. I'm just crossing my fingers that it doesn't get too out of hand.
I was a bit surprised as well to find that so recently Liberals were opposed to the Patriot Act. It seems the liberal way is to expand the scope of government in all cases, but in fact what they said was true--liberals, like most rational folk, oppose "abuses of power that harm individuals yet do nothing to keep us safe," to quote from the article. I feel you may have misinterpreted the difference between libertarians and liberals however, because libertarians are up in arms about the Patriot Act--they always will be against the expansion of the federal government. While liberals may see merit in its implementation as a preventative measure, (we saw evidence from the article for once) libertarians view it as one of those "abuses of power that harm individuals yet do nothing to keep us safe." Greenwald is recognized in the article as a strident libertarian, but the way the article added emphasis does alter what Greenwald was likely intending to say. He points to the fact that the Patriot Act enables intrusive surveillance, and the article seems to claim that because he didn't identify it as the immediate cause means he doesn't disapprove of it. I point you to the official platform of the Libertarian Party--http://www.lp.org/issues/current-issues in which they claim that "it is essential that we repeal the Patriot Act." While the article attempts to portray Greenwald as the arbiter for the Libertarian Party and spin his words in a certain way, the skew towards the liberal agenda is prominent.
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