The Daily Banter's Bob Cesca has a useful timeline on the NSA data-mining story and the "shoddy and misleading," speculative journamalism that blew it up:
But the [Glenn] Greenwald and Washington Post stories are somehow bombshells, taken at face value. Has our collective attention span become so ridiculously short that we’re suddenly shocked by news of the NSA attaining data about Americans as a means of fighting evildoers? Has everyone been asleep for the last 12 years?
To summarize, yes, the NSA routinely requests information from the tech giants. But the NSA doesn’t have “direct access” to servers nor is it randomly collecting information about you personally. Yet rending of garments and general apoplexy has ruled the day, complete with predictable invective about the president being “worse than Bush” and that anyone who reported on the new information debunking the initial report was and is an Obamabot apologist.Indeed, as Cesca points out, anyone with a pulse since 2005 would have been exposed to these stories:
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, New York Times, December 2005In other words: Duh.
NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls, USA Today, May 2006
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say), Wired, March 2012
U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens, The Wall Street Journal, December 2012
But those with a libertarian, anti-government agenda see this as a time to pile on, whether the facts follow or not. It's good to see some push-back.
UPDATE: Now Greenwald is saying there are more
UPDATE II: The person who leaked the story to Greenwald has revealed himself as Edward Snowden, a man so tuned in and dedicated to transparency, free speech and civil liberties that he fled to...China! Genius!
UPDATE III: Oh, and apparently Snowden is a Paultard. Perhaps asylum in the libertarian paradise of Somalia is in order?
