The program is classified. Its more effective if it remains so. Since it is now public, though he wishes it wasn't, he's happy and willing to publicly debate the issue of privacy vs security. He's made it quite clear that he struggles with the issue himself.
Leaking classified information is illegal, thus it generally should be prosecuted. Though we also have whistleblower laws that protect people who are leaking evidence of criminal conduct.
We just didn't know we cared.
So, yes, we knew section 215, FISA, etc existed, but no one has been able to (yet) successfully challenge them fully because any legal basis for challenging has been (in many cases actively) kept secret.
I'm not sure what the parallel with whistleblowing should be in a case of allegation but not yet a conclusive decision in court, but I'm pretty sure governments shouldn't be entitled to more protection against potential damage to their reputation than an alleged but not convicted sex offender.
(Just to be clear, I'm not commenting on the appropriateness of the policy toward disclosure of suspected sex offenders, just the double standard that would arise if the UK government objected to this kind of whistleblowing using your "innocent until proven guilty" argument.)
But here we go, perhaps the whistleblower technically broke the letter of the law. It doesn't sound like he was leaked illegal activities so he doesn't have the benefit of that particular shield. And just the other day a few on HN were arguing that a prosecutor should not be able to use prosecutorial discretion.
I think we can all definitely agree his heart is in the right place though (and all the previous elements of my ode to him still apply), so I wonder what we would think of prosecutorial discretion after this?
Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original leaks.
We can also have the debate about whether they overly classify things and should be more open in the first place, but that's not the same thing.
Yes, it is. The whole thing is cohesive. Penetration at the source is the only thing that will halt government secrecy, and condemning those who leak classified information is egregious and a grave disservice to those people.
Classified information should only pertain to anything with national security at stake. The in-country data mining obviously did not.
The government classifies everything it doesn't want the public to know these days, and then tries to arrest everyone who leaks those documents. I think we need to stop thinking about what's legal and what's illegal, and start thinking about what moral and immoral. Many of these laws are immoral.
Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing.
Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to argue that we didn't have a functioning democracy in its absence.
Your central point is well received, but you rebutted a partial straw man.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act
Additionally it would be interesting if the leakers leaked more to get a softer punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence
Also, I have to add, I'm a little ashamed of my country today. But I feel vindicated as a programmer that we were right! We knew it all along. Things like this have been reported for years. But no one cared. Finally this is plastered on every major publication and people no longer think it's some conspiracy theory or exaggeration of normal security measures. So now's the real test. What do we do? How do we fix this? Our innate liberties have been trampled and threatened. Have some self-respect and speak your mind at work, people.
The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.
So in the case of programs like this, if the hypothetical terr'ists know about it, that lets them know services to avoid, or communications methods to avoid, etc., which might enable them to form networks that the NSA would otherwise have been able to unravel before their next terrorist attack.
So it's not completely inconceivable that there's a valid reason to apply classification standards.
I happen to think that the importance of transparency is such that we need to at least have that public discussion about what types of records NSA would be storing, searching, and examining.
But at the same time the NSA has literally been doing this for decades, Congress has had classified hearings for longer, and the Republic has refused to fall. I don't know for sure about classified courts, but neither would that surprise me too much.
Therefore, I see no reason why our sacred liberties should be secretly sacrificed as "tactics" in an eternal, global war.
Better to declare global perpetual war against pools, bathtubs, or uncooked food. It would be cheaper and save more lives. Oh, and, preserve the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom.
Or, is a life lost to a one who has claimed jihad worth more than one from uncooked food?
It may be that Bush was right, that terrorists wish us to abandon our liberties. So, too do the disciples of Leo Strauss who want to elevate to warriors the ideology of people who are merely sad, pathetic men no different from the killers of random school shootings, and deserve no more.
Remember we oppose tools such as these based on what the government might be able to do with them to abuse their citizens, just like we field militaries based on what other nations might be able to do.
So far your Salafi army example applies in reverse as well: The U.S. government hasn't been running around actually repressing the citizenry. Certainly we should take measures to ensure they can't, but as long as we're worrying about what people might do then I don't see why it's shameful to worry about what Islamists might do as well.