[trevelyan]

I would personally prefer they stopped feeding the Snowden soap opera and focused instead on meaningful policy and governance questions, such as:

* did Congress intend to authorize warrantless surveillance when it passed the legislation being used by the NSA to justify its current policies and wrap them in a cloak of legality?

* which of the leaked materials w/r/t NSA surveillance can and should be considered highly-classified? What is the national security justification for keeping these materials out of public view?

* if Snowden was in a position of administrative privilege that gave him access to highly-sensitive materials without reasonable oversight, why was he employed by a private-sector company? What are the implications of this for FOIA requests, administrative costs, government transparency and checks against potential abuse? (seriously... what on earth is B.A. doing in this story?)

* do the stories released by the NSA to justify warrantless surveillance really justify the actions taken in the light of the law? i.e. is stopping a cab driver from sending 8k to Somalia really the sort of urgent and time-sensitive national security concern that should preclude the government from spending a day or two to get a targeted warrant?

Regardless of whether we agree or disagree on what a reasonable person would conclude on these questions, it seems self-evident that these questions are much more important than most of what the NYT has treated as front-page news on the subject matter.