A few days back, one of my colleagues wrote about Edward Snowden’s appearance on the JRE. In his post, he talked about how freely Snowden was able to communicate his motivation for the actions he took in 2013. In another post, he wrote about the various changes that have taken place in the internet space since those revelations. In both cases, the posts have been from the perspective, or at least with the assumption, that in an aggregate, those revelations were positive.
I think it is important to listen to the other side. Not as a means to cancel each other, but as a means to better understand the circumstances and to be better prepared for such dichotomies in the future.
To get that perspective, I listened to an episode of “Making Sense” by Sam Harris (below). In the episode, Harris spoke with ex-NSA and ex-CIA director, General Michael V. Hayden. General Hayden was promoting one of his books.
During the interview, one of the points of discussion are the Snowden revelations, which occurred about 8 years after Hayden left the agency (1999-2005). However, one of the programs Gen. Hayden implemented was the collection of domestic communications meta-data. The General speaks about this program in the interview and makes it appear as inconsequential. Even though we know that by collecting these records, the government was able to create a database which could give them the general whereabouts and routines of its citizens, which by violated their privacy.
On the other hand, Hayden notes that while the program in question may have been something worth bringing to the public’s attention, the rest of the revelations had little to do with public safety and more to do with disclosing top secret means of interception.
What do you think? Does the General make enough of an argument?
