In times of war and national emergency, it’s sometimes necessary to sacrifice civil liberties to secure vital gains in public safety. In those cases, we may have to accept a loss of privacy or freedom rather than invite mass slaughter of Americans. The National Security Agency’s domestic phone records collection is not one of those. …
For critics of the surveillance state, it is tempting to see President Obama’s speech a few weeks ago as a partial victory: Prompted by Edward Snowden’s leaks and the public pressure for National Security Agency reforms, he announced significant changes to the program that collects and stores information about all telephone calls. And he promised …
There is no peace treaty, no humbled enemy, no national glory and certainly no newfound freedom. The “liberation” of Iraq leaves a widely hated puppet dictator in charge with a mandate “to see that process of strengthened central authority continue,” in the words of a U.S. cable revealed by WikiLeaks. Still, the U.S. has declared …