If anything happens in politics you can bet somebody planned it that way. When Edward Snowden leaked to the British Press that the US was spying on everybody the reaction was predictable and swift. From all parts of the political spectrum came calls for tightening security coupled with calls for less spying.
But as the dust around the initial revelation settled more and more information about the extent of government spying became available which of course sent everybody scrambling to put an end to such abuses. Now however the other shoe has dropped.
The Obama administration has ordered a government-wide reassessment of how almost 5 million Americans have been granted classified information security clearances and whether each person currently approved to see sensitive national security secrets truly has a need for such access.
Clapper asked agencies to perform a top-to-bottom scrub of the teeming rolls of people authorized to access classified information and to remove anyone deemed not to have a so-called need to know. [POLITICO]
At first this may seem like a perfectly good step to take, considering that nobody really knows who is among those 5 million folks. But consider this.
The Obama administration has been accused of "purging" the military of leaders they don't trust. While the top to bottom scrub of "people authorized to access classified information" sounds good, might it also eliminate those who are in a position to warn America about further abuses yet to come?
I for one do not thing Snowden is a hero. I believe he is a criminal. But what part in a larger chess game might he have played? Is it possible that Snowden's revelations about the extent of government spying created a "crisis" too good to waste? Might the outrage over his revelations have provided the Obama administration with exactly the kind of atmosphere they needed in order to put blinders on others who could report on abuses yet to come?
Many people today say that they do not trust "government". This is a common expression and one that reveals a core of ignorance. There is no entity operating on its own called "the government". We are a nation of self governed, a representative republic which functions through the actions of human beings. Saying that you do not trust "our government" suggests that you do not trust people to govern themselves.
What is I believe a more correct statement would be for these people to say "I don't trust those people who are now in charge of our government". So in the context of the news that the Obama administration is going to "purge" people from the list of those entitled to know what is going on behind the scenes, might it not be appropriate to ask: "Do you trust Obama to determine who gets to see what he is up to?"
Granted, national security does indeed require some things be kept secret, but since liberty likewise extends at least the same amount of privacy to the rest of us which should be our greater concern, that our privacy is being violated, or that the private actions of those who run our government is protected from view?
In Obama's world it's all a big chess game. What moves will the King authorize for his own protection? That's the real question.