Food for thought.
In all honesty, the IC would really wish to -not- have to examine -any- data, meta or otherwise, from Americans, regardless of legality, as it makes the job of finding the important bad guy stuff easier if there were a way to easily separate it. However, bad guys know the best way to hide is among the innocent, so any intelligence collection has to run a fine line between privacy, legal, and capability. If the metadata is being used, its because its the best way to draw this line.
If there were a really clear way to selectively avoid ANY monitoring of ANY type of communication involving American citizens, they would do it in a nanosecond, as it means the volume analyzed would be millions if not billions of times smaller, cheaper, and more effective.
So if there is metadata monitoring, its because its the best way to balance mission (a sliding scale) with legal (a hard line) and cost (a sliding scale).
That being said, there are appropriate ways of whistleblowing on any -illegal- activities, that DONT involve fleeing the country with classified information with the hope of avoiding prosecution.
No, *much* of the the IC does so wish. Most are decent Americans. But, we both know the Church Commission existed for a reason. This frankly reminds me of HTLINGUAL. The CIA claimed to be taking pictures or otherwise recording the outside of US mail, which is legal AFAIK but IANAL. Reality is, they started opening the mail. It's kinda a routine cycle. Intel goes way too far, gets their chain yanked until the next emergency, and then goes way too far. Repeat.
Also, "way", singular. The appropriate way is "report it to the DOD, through JWICS", who will pass it to Congress. This is legally the ONLY way to whistleblow TS material from the NSA, outside of NSA OIG.
http://www.dodig.mil/programs/whistleblower/icwpa.htmlTice, Binney, Drake, etc attest how well that works. This goes back to ThinThread vs Trailblazer. ThinThread had protection mechanisms, Trailblazer did not. NSA brass and the politicians intentionally went Trailblazer. Which expensively flopped. The rest of the projects under Stellar Winds did not. Intentional or not, the NSA brass allowed projects to NOT have sufficient 4th Amendment protection. I'm willing to grant they were overzealous in trying to track bad guys, and merely failed to properly implement safeguards, under Stellar Winds (or whatever codeword they're using this month). PRISM falls under the bucket. Regardless of intentions, they have gone too far.
I fully admit I do NOT know the full extent of the circumstances and law in this matter. No one can, because very large parts are classified and will never see daylight. Some for the right reasons, some because it helps covering up mistakes. We both remember a dozen clusters that got swept under a TS security blanket to keep it out of the news and cover up some boss's personal mistake.
My thought is this...if (as he claims) he was trying "to do the right thing", why did he flee? He could have walked into a congressperson's office, reporter in tow, and given his interview right there, or at the NYT, or wherever, made just as big of a scene, had the same effect, but minimized potential damage to the mission.
His behavior smacks more of attempting to cover "I'm going to hurt them" with "I'm doing the 'right' thing".
If he was really bright, yes. He'd have turned himself in with multiple reporters from multiple foreign countries. AFTER putting out a Torrent of very very heavily encrypted files with much worse information, and multiple servers outside the US ready to shoot out the key if he was held without communication. It's fairly unlikely he would have been blackbagged and put on a ghost detainee ship, or tortured, or handed over to a foreign government for torture, or whatnot. But certainly not impossible. For that sort of thing, the only life insurance you have is what damage you can do from beyond the grave or salt pit.
Dude still walked from a $200k gig, a nice house in Hawaii, a girlfriend, etc. At best, he's on the run for the rest of his life. At worst, he's the next El-Masri. Or believed he might be. Realistically, due to Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the real worst case is life in prison, probably without whatever new term they use for torture. He'll probably do two decades in prison, with a sentence being commuted once he's long faded from memory.
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