On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 4:03 PM, Todd Davies <dav...@stanford.edu> wrote: > Two issues that are tending to get conflated in the wider discourse about > PRISM, Boundless Informant, etc. are: > (1) Are these programs justifieid? > (2) Was it justified to keep the existence of these programs secret?
(1) can't be answered in a vacuum of secrecy because— as almost anyone who finds the program concerning would agree— a fundamental concept of democracy is no one person or small group of people has the general moral authority to make that kind of decision— absent some kind of immediate exigency ... uh, which is really hard to argue for something which has gone on so long. And so absent (2) we can't even have the conversation about (1). I think these two points are less distinct than you think they are: (2) was the question Snowden needed to answer for himself so that the rest of us would be able to even consider (1). -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
