Peter Singer — The Spying Game

Supporters of democracy ought to think long and hard before prosecuting people like Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and Snowden. If we think that democracy is a good thing, then we must believe that the public should know as much as possible about what the government it elects is doing. Snowden has said that he made the disclosures because “the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.”

He’s right about that. How can a democracy determine whether there should be government surveillance of the kind that the NSA is conducting if it has no idea that such programs exist? Indeed, Snowden’s leaks also revealed that National Intelligence Director James Clapper misled the US Congress about the NSA’s surveillance practices in his testimony at a hearing held in March by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Project Syndicate
The Spying Game
Peter Singer | Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, and one of the world’s most prominent ethicists.