Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Conflation
Gak!
Rush is making a critical mistake in answering a hostile question about NSA eavesdropping. The caller challenged Rush to specify how the mere knowledge that NSA is spying on al Qaeda is harmful. Rush bobbled the question entirely, and seems to be missing a basic distinction.
I discussed this matter -- rather definitively -- back in December when it first came up. Still, the distinction needs to be emphasized. The legality of a leak is completely independent of whether it does harm or not. As with many other crimes, prosecution depends on context. When one football player smashes into another football player, that's part of the rules inherent in that context. If the same player made the same tackle on a stranger in the street, he'd be properly arrested for assault. Same here. There's nothing automatic or inherent about secrecy. The executive branch makes the decision to treat certain things as secret, and can decide to un-secret-ify the same things at any time for its own purposes. We assume that those purposes include protecting the nation from its enemies, even when the executive is as obviously incompetent as the present one. When somebody outside the executive branch, such as the NY Times, decides to declassify information, that's illegal, just as tackling in the street is illegal.
As I said before (and as Rush's caller said just now), this particular illegal declassification is harmless and possibly even helpful, because al Qaeda is a sophisticated spy-like group, well trained by Saddam's intelligence service. They already know how to play the countermeasures game, but I'm confident that NSA has enough resources to play the same game a little bit better.
Harmless doesn't mean legal, though. The street tackle is still assault even if the victim doesn't need a doctor. The Times fully intends to aid our enemies, as they have shown over and over in every possible context. So they should be prosecuted for sedition if not treason. ¶ 10:43 AM
Rush is making a critical mistake in answering a hostile question about NSA eavesdropping. The caller challenged Rush to specify how the mere knowledge that NSA is spying on al Qaeda is harmful. Rush bobbled the question entirely, and seems to be missing a basic distinction.
I discussed this matter -- rather definitively -- back in December when it first came up. Still, the distinction needs to be emphasized. The legality of a leak is completely independent of whether it does harm or not. As with many other crimes, prosecution depends on context. When one football player smashes into another football player, that's part of the rules inherent in that context. If the same player made the same tackle on a stranger in the street, he'd be properly arrested for assault. Same here. There's nothing automatic or inherent about secrecy. The executive branch makes the decision to treat certain things as secret, and can decide to un-secret-ify the same things at any time for its own purposes. We assume that those purposes include protecting the nation from its enemies, even when the executive is as obviously incompetent as the present one. When somebody outside the executive branch, such as the NY Times, decides to declassify information, that's illegal, just as tackling in the street is illegal.
As I said before (and as Rush's caller said just now), this particular illegal declassification is harmless and possibly even helpful, because al Qaeda is a sophisticated spy-like group, well trained by Saddam's intelligence service. They already know how to play the countermeasures game, but I'm confident that NSA has enough resources to play the same game a little bit better.
Harmless doesn't mean legal, though. The street tackle is still assault even if the victim doesn't need a doctor. The Times fully intends to aid our enemies, as they have shown over and over in every possible context. So they should be prosecuted for sedition if not treason. ¶ 10:43 AM
