June 14, 2013

Partisan Hypocrisy and NSA Surveillance

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One of the hot themes of the day is calling out hypocrisy on the NSA spying story: Republicans used to love it when Bush was in charge, but now it’s an assault on our freedoms when Obama is in charge. Democrats are the same in reverse. Dave Weigel writes about this here, Michael Gerson warns his fellow Republicans about it here, and Glenn Greenwald berates Democrats about it here. Plus, of course, we can back this up with hard numbers from that infamous Pew poll earlier this week showing that Republican and Democratic attitudes have swapped sides over the past few years.

As it happens, I think this narrative is being exaggerated a bit as the media enters feeding frenzy stage. Still, there’s plainly something to it. So what about me? Have my views changed? I’d probably have to dig pretty deeply into my archives to know for sure, but for what it’s worth, here’s my position as best as I can reconstruct it:

  • My basic view hasn’t changed: I didn’t like this stuff back in 2005 and I don’t like it now. I doubt very much that the benefit is substantial enough to justify the rather obvious potential for abuse.
  • At the same time, I never viewed NSA’s surveillance programs as self-evidently worthless. My best guess is that they provide genuinely useful information and probably really do help detect/prevent terrorist activity.
  • What’s more, part of my objection to the program in 2005 was that it involved warrantless surveillance. Like it or not, that’s changed. Congress essentially gave its blessing to the program in 2008 and, as Glenn Greenwald confirmed last week, it’s now done under the aegis of warrants lawfully issued to telcos (for the phone record program) and tech companies (for the PRISM program).
  • On a personal note, I’ll confess that it’s hard to sustain a feeling of outrage over this. We had a huge fight about all this stuff five years ago and we lost. Now everyone is supposedly shocked, shocked that NSA is hoovering up huge amounts of private data. Well, of course they are. We lost.
  • But despite my personal fatigue over this—something I won’t pretend to be proud of—I’m glad that Edward Snowden has put these programs back in the spotlight. It gives better folks than me a second bite at the apple of public opinion.

On another note, Glenn Greenwald keeps promising that there are more blockbusters to come that are even more blockbusterish than what he’s revealed so far. Given that, it’s probably wise for everyone to hold off on any final judgments for now. Let’s wait a bit and see what he has for us.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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