Edi­tors’ note: When ​“In Defense of PRISM,” an opin­ion piece pub­lished on InThe​se​Times​.com on July 3, 2013, received heavy crit­i­cism, we invit­ed jour­nal­ist and pri­va­cy advo­cate Zaid Jilani to write a rebuttal.

Progressivism isn't just about supporting government—it isn't now, nor has it ever been. We don't cheer on massive government subsidies for oil companies, Big Pharma, or for-profit colleges.

Some of the most promi­nent defend­ers of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agen­cy’s spy pro­grams are the peo­ple you might expect: right-wing author­i­tar­i­ans. There was Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell, who praised the agen­cy’s ​“law­ful pro­gram to pro­tect Amer­i­cans” and demand­ed the pros­e­cu­tion of whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den. There was for­mer Bush press sec­re­tary Ari Fleis­ch­er, who said ​“the pro­gram is a good one” and that it has ​“kept us safe.” And the list would­n’t be com­plete with for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, who praised the spy­ing pro­gram and even brought forth the spec­tre of ter­ror­ists smug­gling in a nuclear device to rebut critics.

None of this reac­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing from those like Cheney who have been at the fore­front of advanc­ing the brutish, vio­lent side of gov­ern­ment for years. What is more dis­con­cert­ing is that fact that self-avowed pro­gres­sives have risen to the defense of the NSA’s vio­la­tions of Amer­i­can freedom.

Louis Nay­man — a long­time union orga­niz­er who I’m sure has been involved in dif­fi­cult and impor­tant strug­gles as a pro­gres­sive activist — makes a major mis­step by sug­gest­ing that pro­gres­sives should be defend­ing the NSA’s conduct.

His arti­cle for In These Times, ​“In Defense of PRISM,” begins with a long series of unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims meant to defend the NSA recent­ly dis­closed domes­tic spy pro­grams. For exam­ple, Nay­man repeat­ed­ly asserts that the NSA’s phone and Inter­net sur­veil­lance pro­grams are beyond any doubt legal. But numer­ous legal schol­ars have point­ed out that the pow­ers the gov­ern­ment is claim­ing to have are incred­i­bly broad, and quite like­ly beyond the scope of pow­ers autho­rized under the Patri­ot Act. This is also the view of Rep. Jim Sense­bren­ner (R‑Wis.)—and he should know, he wrote it. Sec­tion 215 of the Patri­ot Act allows the gov­ern­ment to seek ​“tan­gi­ble things” after prov­ing rel­e­vance to a for­eign intel­li­grnce inves­ti­ga­tion. Seiz­ing the mil­lions of phone records under the log­ic that a hand­ful may have rel­e­vance is stretch­ing the law.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of mass sur­veil­lance itself has yet to be test­ed, although the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union is spon­sor­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge through the courts. For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore has said that he believes the NSA sur­veil­lance pro­grams are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

Nay­man also writes, ​“Accord­ing to NSA offi­cials, the sur­veil­lance in ques­tion has pre­vent­ed at least 50 planned ter­ror attacks against Amer­i­cans, includ­ing bomb­ings of the New York City sub­way sys­tem and the New York Stock Exchange.”

The impor­tant phrase here is ​“accord­ing to NSA offi­cials.” It is entire­ly pos­si­ble that PRISM and the NSA’s oth­er sur­veil­lance pro­grams have stopped ter­ror­ist attacks aimed at Amer­i­cans. But it’s also entire­ly pos­si­ble that they haven’t — we have no idea, and uncrit­i­cal­ly tak­ing the word of gov­ern­ment offi­cials would be a fool­ish choice.

Take, for exam­ple, the case of Najibul­lah Zazi, a man who alleged­ly plot­ted to bomb New York City sub­ways, whom NSA head Gen­er­al Kei­th Alexan­der, Sen. Diane Fein­stein (D‑Calif.) and oth­ers claimed was NSA mass sur­veil­lance pro­grams. As the Asso­ci­at­ed Press point­ed out, inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into Zaz­i’s case already had prob­a­ble cause to sus­pect that he was involved in plot­ting ter­ror­ism, mean­ing that obtain­ing a war­rant to sur­veil him would’ve been easy. In fact, British author­i­ties first learned of Zazi by seiz­ing the phys­i­cal com­put­ers of anoth­er ter­ror­ist sus­pect — mean­ing that they got wind of him through good old-fash­ioned police work, not mass surveillance.

Mean­while, there’s rea­son to believe the word of NSA offi­cials may not be good. We can’t for­get Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence James Clap­per’s infa­mous tes­ti­mo­ny before the Sen­ate in March:

WYDEN: ​“Does the NSA col­lect any type of data at all on mil­lions or hun­dreds of mil­lions of Americans?”

JAMES CLAP­PER: ​“No sir.”

WYDEN: ​“It does not?”

CLAP­PER: ​“Not wit­ting­ly. There are cas­es where they could inad­ver­tent­ly per­haps col­lect, but not wittingly.”

Clap­per lat­er told the media that his response that day was the ​“most truth­ful, or least untruth­ful” response he could give.

After this spree of mis­lead­ing state­ments from top gov­ern­ment offi­cials, it would be fol­ly to sim­ply trust those in pow­er. Recall that most of this mass sur­veil­lance stems from the opin­ions of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Court (FISC) — a court whose rul­ings are secret, deny­ing us the abil­i­ty to even debate whether we as Amer­i­cans are com­fort­able with mass gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance we don’t even know is happening.

Fol­low­ing Nay­man’s sub­stan­tive defense of the NSA — which, while flawed, is some­thing rea­son­able peo­ple can debate — his argu­ment veers into much more per­ni­cious ter­ri­to­ry. ​“The more the Left aids and abets the reac­tionary Right’s cyn­i­cal cri­tique of gov­ern­ment, the more both sides make the case to replace col­lec­tive mis­sion and account­abil­i­ty with the free hand of the mar­ket,” writes Nay­man, along with some mis­sives aimed at char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion of Edward Snow­den — he seems not to under­stand or to will­ful­ly ignore the fact that Snow­den is flee­ing to coun­tries unwill­ing to be bul­lied by the gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton, not bas­tions of press free­dom that would instant­ly turn him over to CIA inter­roga­tors (see the recent EU cap­ture of Boli­vian pres­i­dent Evo Morales, known glob­al­ly as a friend of labor and the poor, qual­i­ties that should insire sol­i­dar­i­ty from Nayman.

He goes on to con­demn pro­gres­sives who are crit­i­cal of gov­ern­ment spy­ing for ​“doing the Tea Party’s dirty work,” and con­cludes that if ​“pro­gres­sives believe in a legit­i­mate and nec­es­sary role for gov­ern­ment in achiev­ing social and eco­nom­ic jus­tice, we ought to think twice before dele­git­imiz­ing the government’s nation­al secu­ri­ty function.”

But he actu­al­ly gets the log­ic back­wards. Pro­gres­sives should not aim to val­i­date actions by the gov­ern­ment that vio­late our own pro­gres­sive prin­ci­ples of human rights, free­dom and jus­tice. If that was the case, then pro­gres­sives would be hold­ing mass ral­lies prais­ing the War On Drugs, which puts mil­lions of peo­ple behind bars for non­vi­o­lent drug crimes, two-thirds of them racial minori­ties. Or we would be demand­ing more fund­ing for drone strikes in Pakistan.

If pro­gres­sives real­ly were to accept the prin­ci­ple that we should defend gov­ern­ment no mat­ter what it does just so some peo­ple in the Tea Par­ty don’t use that same mes­sage to attack food stamps or some oth­er pro­gram we favor, we’d soon find our­selves with a ridicu­lous and counter-pro­duc­tive mes­sage. We as pro­gres­sives would not only be defend­ing pro­grams that empow­er peo­ple, like Medicare, but also ones that oppressed peo­ple, like the gov­ern­ment-imposed Jim Crow laws. We’d have to be in favor of wast­ing mon­ey on the F‑22 if we advo­cate for a nation­al high-speed rail system.

Reflex­ive­ly back­ing gov­ern­ment, no mat­ter what it does, is not pro­gres­sive. Pro­gres­sivism isn’t just about sup­port­ing gov­ern­ment — it isn’t now, nor has it ever been. We don’t cheer on mas­sive gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for oil com­pa­nies, Big Phar­ma, or for-prof­it col­leges. We don’t sup­port all gov­ern­ment spend­ing — like the cost­ly and ille­gal war in Iraq.

In fact, it’s impor­tant that the move­ment proac­tive­ly stand against abus­es by the gov­ern­ment, if for no oth­er rea­son than polit­i­cal self-preser­va­tion. That’s the dif­fer­ence between Amer­i­can pro­gres­sives — for whom basic free­doms of pri­va­cy, speech, and due process have always been an impor­tant prin­ci­ple — and the author­i­tar­i­an Left that ruled coun­tries like the Sovi­et Union.

If the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to abuse peo­ple’s rights by invad­ing their pri­va­cy with pro­grams of ques­tion­able con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty and pol­i­cy mer­it, Amer­i­cans will fail to trust it to han­dle their health insur­ance, to fund their schools, to clean up the air they breathe.

Gov­ern­ment can be an incred­i­bly pos­i­tive force when it is trans­par­ent, account­able and empow­er­ing. When it is not those things, not only should we oppose it, but we should be proud that there are peo­ple on the Right who are will­ing to join with us in that cause — they’re help­ing us actu­al­ly increase faith in the pos­i­tive aspects of the pub­lic sec­tor by address­ing its abus­es. Not only can we advo­cate for rolling back the nation­al secu­ri­ty state and imple­ment­ing pos­i­tive gov­ern­ment pro­grams like Medicare for All and a nation­al liv­ing wage, but if we are to win over the Amer­i­can pub­lic, it may very well be nec­es­sary to do both.

The author works part-time for the advo­ca­cy group Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, which has raised funds for Snow­den’s legal defense.