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<\/a>So I found myself feeling a little torn a couple of weeks ago when my son Nicholas and I were reading the newspaper over breakfast.<\/p>\nThe Adirondack Daily Enterprise had an article under a headline suggesting that there was a scandal in Washington over the Obama administration’s prosecution of “whistleblowers”.<\/p>\n
But in the actual article, the employees being investigated — in some cases actively prosecuted — weren’t whistleblowers, they were leakers.<\/p>\n
After reading the kinds of secrets that each person had revealed to a journalist<\/a>, Nicholas said, “This makes sense to me.\u00a0 Some of these leaks could be pretty dangerous.”<\/p>\n And to my surprise, in many of the instances, I had to agree.<\/p>\n And in the weeks that followed, as news organizations unveiled scandal after scandal — from government surveillance of Associated Press reporters to the massive spy-agency phone database — I found myself similarly conflicted.<\/p>\n The real problem, it seems to me, is not that these prosecutions are underway, or that specific government programs are in place that gather data on American citizens.<\/p>\n The problem is that we’ve stumbled into this post-9\/11 war-on-terror era without having a full and reasoned debate over what we’re comfortable doing (and not doing) in the name of national security.<\/p>\n In the panicked months and years after the twin towers fell, Congress authorized all kinds of big changes, from the Patriot Act to the organization of the Homeland Security department to the “hardening” of the US-Canada border.<\/p>\n We all began allowing ourselves to be poked and prodded and scanned and photographed with far more regularity and intrusiveness than ever before in modern American history.<\/p>\n I think a lot of people — liberal Democrats, in particular — expected the Obama administration to roll back or disavow many of those programs.<\/p>\n His campaign rhetoric did appear to distance him significantly from the Bush-era anti-terror stance and he nodded in that direction again during his recent speech rejecting a “boundless global war on terror.”<\/a><\/p>\n I think it’s fair to say that the disconnect between Obama’s words and deeds — talking softly and carrying a big Predator drone — may cost him politically.<\/p>\n But this isn’t really about Obama.\u00a0 It’s about the rest of us.\u00a0 There’s clearly a need for a much wider debate over the costs and benefits of the “take no chances leave no stone unturned” approach to national security.<\/p>\n Right now, government officials say they want to keep all of our phone records, pretty much forever, in case they ever need to go back and review our past activity<\/a>.<\/p>\n Are we cool with that?\u00a0 Are we cool with Homeland Security checkpoints on our rural roads?\u00a0 And what else would we be cool with if it meant a marginally better chance of safety?<\/p>\n And what should we do about those government employees who leak sensitive information to the press, often motivated by the best intentions?<\/p>\n