The Camel's Nose

The Colonel Flaggs responsible for this country's vast military-intelligence complex have responded to growing criticism over the NSA's PRISM program:

The National Security Agency surveillance programs made public this month have helped foil more than 50 terrorist plots since Sept. 11, including one to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, top intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday.

The officials appeared before the House Intelligence Committee and answered mostly friendly questions to defend the programs, which collect phone records inside the United States and monitor Internet communications overseas.

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director.
At least 10 of the foiled plots were “homeland-based threats,” he said.

Source: NBC News

You'll pardon me if I call BS - I'm just having trouble believing a single word the government says in defense of the PRISM program. Government spooks would say just about anything to keep the broad, unchecked powers they were granted in the hysteria following 9/11.

Were there not similar claims from the government that torture - pardon me..."Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" -  had "saved lives" in order to shut up justified criticism over our intel-gathering activities? To the surprise of nobody save perhaps Dick Cheney, it was later revealed that so-called "Enhanced Interrogation" had saved exactly zero lives, and may in fact have put our troops in greater danger.

I'm reminded of an allegorical story that is often trotted out in politics: the camel and the tent. It is said that once a camel sticks its nose in your tent, it's like having a foot in the door - there's nothing to stop the camel from working the rest of its body into the tent, thus taking it over.

After 9/11, scared Americans decided that they would give up much of their "essential liberty" for a "measure of security" and granted the government a battery of unprecedented powers to collect information on its own citizens.

In recent years, Americans have largely gotten over our post-9/11 hysteria that gave us the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, and other questionable national security apparatuses. Nevertheless, it has proven exceedingly difficult to rid the government of the excessive powers that were granted after 9/11. Perhaps worst of all, however, is the fact that some Americans have gotten so used to the "new normal" of Big Brother government that they have barely batted an eye over the PRISM program.

The camel's nose is in the tent, and it's going to be tough to push him back out...