The recurring government shutdown threats when it's time to pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling hardly inspire confidence. Nor do the lawmakers' inability to pass even relatively modest gun control legislation in the wake of an appalling series of mass murders, or to enact desperately needed immigration reform.
But that's no excuse to give up. As the great Pink taught us, you've got to get up and try.
And so four senators, led by Ron Wyden, D-Ore., last week introduced legislation that would rein in the National Security Agency's rampant surveillance campaign revealed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Good for them.
The bill would:
• End the bulk collection of telephone records of American citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom have no ties to terrorism or other nefarious deeds.
• Scale back the PRISM program, under which the government can obtain people's digital records from major Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
• Make the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court somewhat less secret, declassifying its major opinions and for the first time creating an independent advocate who could serve as a counterweight to government demands.
• Allow private companies to be more open about instances when they are asked to share information about the communications of American citizens.
Of course, I wouldn't advise you to bet the rent money that the bill will become law anytime soon. But the sheer fact that it is on the table shows how much the climate has changed in the wake of the Snowden tsunami.
Even die-hard supporters of the surveillance, like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are jumping on the reform bandwagon. Feinstein and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., are also drafting legislation, although their proposal is likely ! to nibble around the edges rather than be as far-reaching as Wyden's.
RIEDER: Snowden affects House vote on phone records
We've come a long way since June, when Feinstein said Snowden was guilty of treason and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, labeled him a "traitor," while commentators who should know better were dismissing him as a slacker and a loser. Public opinion surveys have shown real concern on the part of the American people about the extent of the government snooping.
There's no doubt Snowden broke the law by releasing classified information. And if he ever tires of his Russian redoubt and returns to the U.S. — don't wager heavily on that, either — he would and should face prosecution.
But I give him credit for the way he released information, not via a massive, indiscriminate document drop but by working with respected news organizations, including Britain's Guardian newspaper, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
On Sunday the Times had another Snowden special, on the NSA's efforts to track the social connections of U.S. citizens.
We live in a dangerous world, and it's obviously important that intelligence agencies do their utmost to protect us. But it's also vital that they do it, well, intelligently — and ethically.
The wholesale collection of the communications records of ordinary citizens, authorized without their knowledge, is just not the way to go in a free society. Spy away on the bad guys, sure, but with appropriate safeguards.
And it's not clear what, if anything, we have gotten in return for the erosion of our privacy. As The New York Times reported last week, "Officials have struggled to identify terrorist attacks that would have been prevented by the call log program, which has existed in its current form since 2006."
Sadly, there are some who remain in denial about this troubling episode. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last week, defenders of the surveillance fell back on that time-dishonored stra! tegy of b! laming the messenger. NSA Director Keith Alexander and Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind., said the furor was due to shoddy reporting by the news media.
But most people know better. And let's hope, ultimately, pressure will build for meaningful reform.
As Wyden said in a speech in July, "If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we will all live to regret it."
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