Some Americans worry that the NSA conducts its surveillance in secret, under the supervision of a secret court with secret rules. But as Hendrik Hertzberg writes, "I still don't know of a single instance where the N.S.A. data program has encroached on or repressed any particular person's or group's freedom of expression or association in a tangible way. Nor have I come across a clear explanation of exactly how the program could be put to such a purpose." Yeah. How would you even abuse a vast database detailing the private communications of Americans?

Sure, the program has been conducted in secret for years, but does anyone really think we wouldn't know immediately if there were problems? The president staked his word on running the most transparent government in history! He has specifically promised to protect whistleblowers -- who would surely emerge to document NSA abuses, confident that they'd be shielded from prosecution, or at least that they'd be able to get asylum somewhere without being vilified in the media. It's true that the Church Committee documented abuses totally unknown to the public for decades after they happened. But although we call the generation that committed those abuses the "Greatest," there's good reason to believe today's leaders are more morally upright and much more able to resist being corrupted by secrecy and power. Just think about it. Doesn't it intuitively seem like we're better than our elders, and that the kinds of abuses that happened in the past couldn't possible happen now? Let's go with our gut.

"Even if the program could be misused in that way, for it to happen you would have to have a malevolent government," Hertzberg continues, "or, at least, a government with a malevolent, out-of-control component or powerful official or officials." Indeed, some low-level guy unknown to most Americans could never steal this data and flee to China or Russia. And obviously, all abuses of power are perpetrated by malevolent, out-of-control sociopaths. Well-meaning leaders never perpetrate abuses, and miscarriages of justice are always deliberate and never mistakes. Institutional arrangements and the degree of public scrutiny to which they're subject aren't even important unless you've got guys like Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover running things. And what are the odds of a pair like that becoming, say, president and FBI director at the same time? Listening to civil libertarians, you'd swear that America was capable of building torture chambers. What a bunch of alarmist crazies.

What you have to understand is that rules are in place to protect your rights. Sure, the government has the technical ability to look at domestic and not just foreign communications; and it has the technical ability to look at the contents of your communications, not just the metadata. But do you really think that NSA personnel would break the rules? Is there any precedent to suggest they'd break the law, or that people who broke surveillance law would be granted retroactive immunity? And if they just focus on metadata, what compromising material on innocent people could they possibly find? How many members of Congress would gladly hand over their metadata to any reporter who asked? Dozens? Hundreds?

