I'm out of my depth here, but I have a serious question for surveillance prognosticators: what does the scandal really say about critics of the American security state?

It seems to me that the outing of P4 was a result of both the strength and weakness of the US surveillance complex. If the FBI didn't have free reign to dig through private email without cause, or if the investigator hadn't been able to act as a whistleblower, this would probably still be secret.

What we're seeing here, as these critics have said, is the surveillance apparatus eating itself. While this raises serious questions about government power, it also begs the question: if the apparatus is so malicious, how did it unravel so quickly, without much help from critics?

To be honest, I haven't been following the scandal that closely. I know enough to be vaguely puzzled about why the FBI is so involved, but that's about it. I did hear an interesting argument today about the broader relationship between the surveillance apparatus, the security state, and civil liberties, though.

The basic claim is that the state having an extensive surveillance apparatus is actually conducive to civil liberties. The idea being that when the state has low information and some event happens (e.g. 9/11) the state tends to do abusive things like round up lots of people for interrogation/detainment on trumped up/bogus charges. However, if it has high information it then it can address those situations without such abuses.

Oh shit I see, this is all branching off the original article which I didn't see/read. I'll check it out at some point and then maybe respond more substantively.

Not a problem. Your comment is very interesting, with or without the article.

Do you actually believe that surveillance is better for civil liberties? My thought is that only holds true if it's also not a very good security state.

My point above is pretty much that: as far as security states go, ours is pretty half-assed, right? Our government can't keep a secret to save it's life. As a result, to use a hackneyed debate analogy, we're seeing the cracks without having to really examine them.

Another good one on the subject. Especially of note: the last sentence.

foreignpolicy.com