If you’ve been paying attention to surveillance and civil liberties issues over the past fifteen years, you’ve likely learned to recognize a particular pattern. Senator Ron Wyden will o…
But Wyden’s letter is the equivalent of a fire alarm. He’s seen something. He can’t say what. But he wants there to be a record that he raised the concern.
While one sure appreciates that someone can have a perfect(!) record on this bad stuff, it feels rather underwhelming and a bit too on the nose on “Democrats block the status quo from turning left” theory. If he knew what those things were at the time and did not respond by fully disclosing what he knew, it’s not too different from helping the regime. “First they came for…” and all that. After all, he’s so far done less than your run-of-the-mill whistleblower.
Oh no, these classified documents mysteriously showed up at a drop point where a journalist found it!
Granted, the current surveillance state makes that kind of thing easy to track, “who accessed those docs, when; who printed and when”, but he could look into alternatives.
It’s already 2026, fascism has been a thing for a while, fire alarms are on by-default (so he’s not really that much use to us if all he can do is say “oh look the obvious fire alarm is doing fire alarm noises”). We should expect and demand more than this as the bare, minimum decency.
While one sure appreciates that someone can have a perfect(!) record on this bad stuff, it feels rather underwhelming and a bit too on the nose on “Democrats block the status quo from turning left” theory. If he knew what those things were at the time and did not respond by fully disclosing what he knew, it’s not too different from helping the regime. “First they came for…” and all that. After all, he’s so far done less than your run-of-the-mill whistleblower.
Because it’s a felony to divulge classified information. He’s not much use to us if he’s lost his clearance and his job and is probably in prison.
Oh no, these classified documents mysteriously showed up at a drop point where a journalist found it!
Granted, the current surveillance state makes that kind of thing easy to track, “who accessed those docs, when; who printed and when”, but he could look into alternatives.
It’s already 2026, fascism has been a thing for a while, fire alarms are on by-default (so he’s not really that much use to us if all he can do is say “oh look the obvious fire alarm is doing fire alarm noises”). We should expect and demand more than this as the bare, minimum decency.