Snowden and the civil libertarians lost

He didn’t change public opinion. A CNN poll released this week found 61 percent of Americans want to renew the law that allows the “National Security Administration to collect and analyze information on the phone calls of most Americans in order to locate suspected terrorists.” For years, the Pew/Washington Post poll has asked if it was more important “for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy” or “for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats?” Support for the former was at 62 percent just after the Snowden leaks and was at 63 percent back in January.

Snowden himself has made a lighter impression on Americans than you might have thought. In April, HBO’s John Oliver showed Snowden video of people on the street who didn’t know who he was, and told him, “On the plus side, you might be able to go home because it seems like no one knows who the f*** you are.”

Because grassroots Americans were not interested in a dramatic curtailing of surveillance authority, Congress responded with a law that keeps the NSA in business. Nevertheless, even if privacy advocates didn’t get what they did, should we praise Snowden for getting us to this point?

“None of this debate would have happened without Snowden’s revelations” is a tautology we often hear. But that assertion is based on the assumption that the NSA was out of control, the checks and balances provided by the congressional intelligence committees and the FISA court had failed, and only the exposure provided by Snowden could rein in the security state.