Part Two of Frontline's State of Secrets aired tonite. Here are my thoughts:
1. It is clear that the policy to gather all information is fundamental and spans all administrations at least from GWB to the present. Indeed, one could call it "existential" as Hayden did in a somewhat oblique manner. It will not end by committee report or even passage of law. It will be forced underground. Until and unless the intelligence agencies are broken up and public scrutiny is applied to their replacements.
2. I think the country is learning and will learn better that "information" only takes you so far. Motive, the human heart are not knowable by data alone. You need real intelligence--street level relationships--to really understand those. Google will fail its advertisers in this regard. The NSA will fail (and has failed) the public in preventing terrorism by this method. It will lead to a tower of babel, much information, inadequately and poorly understood, because it fails to understand human nature or the human heart. The efforts at predicting precisely human behavior, long sought by advertisers and now by the neo-liberal state generally will fail. And we should assist this failure with every opportunity we have and every step we take. At bottom, it is our freedom and our very humanity that is at stake.
3. Finally, one is left with the look in the eye of the early whistleblowers--which I would describe as a combination of shell shock and disillusionment perhaps of a different generation. The Watergate generation, that actually believed that corruption could be corrected and not quite believing the sacrifice they were made to make to do the right thing. And compare with the new generation, Snowden, Manning, Assange, which isn't quite so shellshocked or disillusioned because not illusioned in the first place--zen-like as Frontline put it--fully understanding the consequences of their actions and the rather complete sacrifice it will take in advance and accepting it.