Spies and Pharisees

by Alan F.H. Wisdom

It seems as if the National Security Agency (NSA) is out of control. Every week, thanks to Edward Snowden and his fellow leakers, we learn of new programs to monitor more channels of communication and eavesdrop on more people. Phone calls, emails, Google, Yahoo. When it was just the presidents of Mexico and Brazil whose phones had been tapped, people outside those countries didn’t seem so upset. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, now that’s a woman we shouldn’t mess with!

The Wall Street Journal reports: “The agency [NSA] has been rebuked repeatedly by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for misrepresenting the nature of its spy programs and for violating the court’s confidential orders. In its defense, NSA officials have said the agency didn’t understand its own programs well enough to describe them accurately to the court.” There is no excuse for that kind of irresponsibility.

Harold Meyerson, a liberal columnist with whom I rarely agree, makes sense of the situation. “Spies will be spies; cops will be cops,” Meyerson remarks, “and bureaucracies will expand of their own accord if given the leeway. Their natural tendency is not to rein themselves in…. Spies, police and government agencies inherently have power to go rogue, which is why they must be monitored by authorities above and outside their organizations….”

Meyerson notes that “some of the most effective intelligence gatherers are probably obsessives …, people who push past boundaries to get results.” For that reason, he says, “we can’t trust those people or those agencies to grasp all the implications of their actions.”

Symptoms of Idolatry?

Meyerson’s argument should resonate with conservatives. This concern about agencies “going rogue” is one reason why we worry about government becoming too large and powerful. Sometimes, however, we forget to apply that same caution to the security and defense programs that we value. Liberals, on the other hand, are eager to rein in police, military, and intelligence operations about which they already harbor suspicions. Yet they often forget to apply the same wariness to concentrated power in the domestic social programs (such as Obamacare) that they favor. Both sides could stand to be more consistent in recognizing the corruptions of power.

Let me hasten to add that I recognize the need for U.S. intelligence programs like the NSA. Any great power needs to keep an eye on its adversaries, and sometimes also its allies. (The Europeans spy on us too.) But there is a point of obsessive excess where governments strive to master all available information. They almost want to “be like God, knowing good and evil” and everything in between (Gen. 3:5). They aim to anticipate all events and guarantee perfect security for their people.

This drive toward omniscience borders on idolatry. The practical problem is that neither the NSA nor any human organization can effectively process or wisely handle all the information that it is so greedily gathering. Abuses are inevitable. The knowledge after which we so frantically grasped comes back to bite us. (Ask Angela Merkel.)

Setting Limits in the Light of Day

This is why we Americans, as a free people under a constitutional order, need to set clear limits on the NSA and other agencies of our government. And we need mechanisms—better than we have currently, it seems—to hold those agencies accountable to stay within the limits we have set.

Do we want our government to have access to all telephone “metadata” (whom we called, when, and for how long)? Under what conditions? These and similar questions are now being debated in the open, where they belong. The U.S. Congress is weighing competing bills to set parameters for NSA surveillance.

That this discussion is taking place is thanks to Edward Snowden. I am distressed that Snowden betrayed the oath that he took when he was given access to classified information, and believe he should be prepared to pay the penalty for his betrayal. Nevertheless, I also believe that Snowden performed a public service by bringing NSA monitoring programs out into the light of day, where the American people and their elected representatives can decide what is to be done.

One report last week cited unnamed U.S. officials as admitting that “the relationship with Germany’s leader [Merkel], important to U.S. security and economic interests, has been damaged by the disclosure of a program [intercepting her cell phone transmissions] that many inside the government never imagined would be made public.” This expectation of perpetual secrecy was foolish, both practically and philosophically. I think we need to accept that in this information-rich and communication-intense world we now inhabit, everything will eventually become public. There’s always going to be an Edward Snowden somewhere, someday.

We probably can and should attempt to keep the operational details of many intelligence programs secret. But the broad outlines of those programs—whom we are targeting, and what methods are allowed—should be subject to public scrutiny and public approval in a democratic nation such as the United States. If our government isn’t prepared publicly to stand behind its intelligence activities, then it shouldn’t be doing them in the first place.

‘Nothing Secret that Will Not Become Known’

In the Gospels, Jesus commends transparency in his followers. “No one after lighting a lamp hides it under a jar, or puts it under a bed,” he says, “but puts it on a lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light” (Luke 8:16). By contrast, Jesus warns: “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will be not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops.” (Luke 12:1b-3)

Surely we can see that this passage speaks, in a strange way, to the NSA, Edward Snowden, Angela Merkel, and everyone else who is so desperate to guard their own secrets and find out everyone else’s secrets. We’re all going to be stripped naked one day, and only the grace of God can reclothe us.

Our country stands under that same judgment too. I’m afraid we may have picked up a bit of “the yeast of the Pharisees” if we boast of being “the leader of the free world” and yet do things in the dark that we never intended to acknowledge in the light.