OPINION
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD LJWorld.com Monday, August 19, 2013
8A
EDITORIALS
A fresh start
Intelligence officer defends secrecy By Andrew Liepman Los Angeles Times
The start of the school year is a time of renewal and opportunity for students and school personnel — as well as the entire Lawrence community.
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t’s the kindling that ignites the year in Lawrence, perhaps as nowhere else. It’s an exciting time that invigorates the town and brings to students, teachers and school personnel each year a new opportunity, a fresh start. Youngsters in elementary classrooms meet new teachers, see who their classmates are, make new friends and renew old friendships. They get to open that first box of brand-new crayons, sharpen those first pencils, encounter exciting learning technology, look through new textbooks, and learn the school rules. It’s a time for thinking about all the extracurricular opportunities and fun things to work on with classmates, eager to learn. For teachers, it has been a time of planning and organizing the opening of classrooms, getting those bulletin boards ready, thinking about students and new ideas for teaching, greeting colleagues and sharing with them. Every year is a new year, and any problems of prior years are put in the past. It’s a time for thinking about new and effective ways to work with all students and parents, knowing this community supports its teachers and schools. On Mount Oread, sorority rush has begun, football is in the air, basketball is around the corner. Touchdowns, baskets and personal goals and GPAs are woven together in the fabric of student and faculty life as another cycle of semesters begins. Along Massachusetts Street and throughout the business community, the economic engine of the city has kicked into another gear. Soon the seasons will begin to change and we’ll wonder how the summer days have passed so quickly. But for now, it’s a great time, a new beginning, a fresh start. Let’s enjoy it and resolve to make it the best ever.
OLD HOME TOWN
100
From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Aug. 19, 1913: “August 21, 1913, marks the semi-centennial of the burning of YEARS the City of Lawrence by William AGO Clark Quantrell and his followIN 1913 ers. On Wednesday and Thursday of this week 50 years afterward, citizens of the Lawrence of today will pay tribute to the early settlers who came here and lost their lives on that day. The survivors of the massacre have been invited to be the guests of the city on this occasion and a large number of them have accepted the invitations and will be here.... The principal event of the day will be the memorial in the afternoon at the Bowersock Theater, only about fifty yards from the site of the old Free State Hotel, which was burned by Quantrell and his men fifty years ago.” — Compiled by Sarah St. John
Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com/ news/lawrence/history/old_home_town.
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Edward Snowden is now out of his limbo at Moscow’s airport, presumably ensconced in some Russian dacha, wondering what the next phase of his young life will bring. Having spent 30 years in the intelligence business, I fervently hope the food is lousy, the winter is cold, and the Internet access is awful. But I worry less about what happens to this one man and more about the damage Snowden has done — and could still do — to America’s long-term ability to strike the right balance between privacy and security. Ever since Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, leaked top-secret material about its surveillance programs, he and the U.S. government have locked horns about the nature of those programs. But those following the Snowden saga should understand two key points. First, though many things need to be kept secret in today’s dangerous world, is safer because we’ve made a point of the line between “secret” and “not se- understanding their methods better than cret” is fuzzy rather than stark, and if they understand ours. I understand the trade-offs here. But the intelligence community isn’t keeping I understand the trade-offs things from the American people because here. But the intelligence we don’t trust them, but rather because community isn’t keeping things once important security information is out there, anyone can access it, including from the American people those who would do us harm. because we don’t trust them, That’s why I find the Snowden conbut rather because once troversy so frustrating. I realize many important security information Americans don’t trust their governI wish I could change that. I wish is out there, anyone can access ment. I could tell people the amazing things it, including those who would I witnessed during my 30 years in the CIA, that I’ve never seen people work do us harm.” harder or more selflessly, that for little the goal is security, the harsh truth is money and long hours, people took it for that we should often err toward more granted that their flaws would be scrusecrets rather than fewer. Second, de- tinized and their successes ignored. But spite the grumbling from Snowden and I’ve been around long enough to know his admirers, the U.S. government truly that deep-rooted distrust of governdoes make strenuous efforts not to vio- ment is immune to stories from people late privacy, not just because it respects like me. The conspiracy buffs are too privacy (which it does), but because it busy howling in protest at the thought simply doesn’t have the time to read ir- that their government could uncover relevant emails or listen in on conver- how long they spent on the phone with sations unconnected to possible plots their dear aunt. against American civilians. Your aunt’s not the target Impossible situation Let me break this to you gently. The Incidents like the Snowden affair put government is not interested in your my former colleagues in the intelligence conversations with your aunt, unless, community in an impossible position. of course, she is a key terrorist leader. Yes, the official explanations about the More than 100 billion emails were sent virtues of data-collection efforts can every day last year — 100 billion, every sound self-justifying and vague. But day. In that vast mass of data lurk a few they’re still right. I know firsthand that bits that are of urgent interest and vast Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA director, terabytes of tedium that are not. Unforis telling the truth when he talks about tunately, the metadata (the phone numplots that have been preempted and at- bers, length of contact, and so forth, but tacks that have been foiled because of not the content of the conversations) intelligence his agency collected. I know that sketch the contours of a call to your because I was on the inside, I have long family member may fall into the same held security clearances, and I participat- enormous bucket of information that ed in many of the activities he describes. includes information on the next terrorI spent years in the middle of the effort ist threat. As Jeremy Bash, the former to identify, disentangle, and ultimately chief of staff of the CIA, memorably put attack al-Qaida. We didn’t operate in se- it, “If you’re looking for a needle in the crecy because we were ashamed. We op- haystack, you need a haystack.” erated in the dark because we had to. AlUnfortunately, during the Snowden Qaida and its affiliates study our actions. affair, many news outlets have spent They learn from our mistakes. America more time examining ways the govern-
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ment could abuse the information it has access to while giving scant mention to the lengths to which the intelligence community goes to protect privacy. We have spent enormous amounts of time and effort figuring out how to disaggregate the important specks from the overwhelming bulk of irrelevant data.
System well monitored This is done under tight and wellthought-out strictures. I witnessed firsthand the consequences of breaking the privacy rules of my former organization, the National Counterterrorism Center. As the center’s deputy director, I had to fire people, good people, and remove others from their posts for failing to follow the rules about how information could be accessed and used. It didn’t happen often, and it was never a malicious attempt to gather private information. We had mandatory training and full-time staffers to supervise privacy regulations. We used precious resources to hire lawyers and civil liberties experts to oversee our efforts. And on those few occasions when we made mistakes, the punishments were swift and harsh. Yes, some things that are classified probably don’t need to be. That may undermine public trust and dilute our ability to protect the data that really need protecting. But some things — especially U.S. sources and methods — must be kept secret. Snowden didn’t offer fresh insight about a massive policy failure. Rather, he took upon himself the authority to decide what tradecraft the intelligence community needs to keep his fellow citizens safe. Sadly, Snowden has captured the public’s imagination and attention, and the government’s reaction now seems too little, too late and too reactive. But the intelligence community — always a less sympathetic protagonist than a self-styled whistle-blower — actually has a good story to tell about how seriously the government takes privacy issues. We should tell it. — Andrew Liepman, a senior analyst at Rand Corp., was a career CIA officer and is a former deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Distrust of government is growing By Gene A. Budig and Alan Heaps
Every poll and every survey show that there is growing mistrust of the federal government. Consider the following.
The Pew Research Center tells us that only 26 percent of the public trusts the government in Washington “just about always/most of the time.” Seventy three percent trust the government in Washington “some of the time/never.” In 2002, 55 percent trusted Washington.
The Reader’s Digest / Wagner Group compiled a list of the 100 “most trusted people in America.” It contains only one currently elected official, President Obama at No. 65. Judge Judy ranks higher, at 28, than any Supreme Court justice. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg comes in at 36.
A survey of 18- to 29-yearold undergraduates by the Institute of Politics at Harvard finds that the only one federal institution -- the military -- has a positive trust ranking. The Supreme Court, president, Congress, and federal government – from best to worst – are distrusted. All show a decline in trust since 2010.
The decline in trust in government is not limited to the United States. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, in 17 of the 25 countries
surveyed in 2012, “government is now trusted by less than half to do what is right.” Only 12 were in Budig this category in 2011. Distrust, in and of itself, is not necessarily negative. It can be a powerful motivating factor that leads to vigilance, q u e s t i o n - Heaps ing, criticism and debate on important and complex issues. But there is a tipping point, a point where the mistrust becomes so great that people turn away from government and seek solutions elsewhere. In this environment democracy cannot survive. We may, in fact, be at that tipping point because we are seeing that turning away phenomenon. A recent USA TODAY/Bipartisan Policy Center poll of a nationally representative sample of adults asked which was the best way to make major positive changes in our society: “through local, state, and federal governments”
or “through community involvement?” By a whopping two-to-one margin (60 to 28 percent), those polled opted for community involvement. Aside from rhetoric, Washington has shown little enthusiasm for restoring our trust. But if it ever does get serious, it will require aggressive movement on three parallel paths. One, it must break the gridlock and show us, not through words but through bold and comprehensive action, that it is ready, willing and able to make this nation a better place. This requires backing away from the paralyzing partisanship that has taken hold of our nation’s capital. Two, it must prove that it is concerned with the many not the few. There is a perception, if not a reality, that Washington is primarily interested in serving the wealthy, the powerful, the entrenched powers. It is viewed as the guardians of the status quo rather than progress. Three, it must become more transparent. Those outside the beltway believe that agendas are hidden, decisions are made in secret, through a process understood and available to only a few. Changes of this kind will be neither easy nor fast. Just look at the number of candidates, on both the left and the right, who we have elected on the
promise to “change the way Washington does business” only to see them quickly become part of the system they once so thoroughly excoriated. There is old adage that, in a democracy, you get the government you deserve. In the case of the United States, this is certainly true. Ultimately, we elect most of the officials, we tolerate their behavior and, in many ways, their values mirror those of the larger society. Real change will only come about when we demand that it happen. As Cassius said: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves…” A final word to the wise: No country has met with greater success than the United States in using a unique form of democracy, one that relies on the art of political compromise in the governmental process. Extremists need to be herd, from the far left and the far right and every group in between, but they cannot dominate on matters of fundamental and essential importance to the nation. In so many ways, common sense has eluded us in recent times. — Gene Budig is past president of three major state universities, including Kansas University, and of Major League Baseball’s American League. Alan Heaps is a former vice president at the College Board in New York City.