NSA Domestic Spying, Whistleblowing, and Workplace Spirituality

Patrick Lang on the NSA domestic spying scandal

“On Foreign Soil.” The National Security Agency (NSA) is the biggest, richest potentially most invasive of all the parts of the US intelligence community. Its electronic “reach” extends across the world and deep into outer space. If you communicate through electronic means, your messages, telephone calls, etc. are all potentially at the “disposal” of NSA. It was not the intention of Congress that this mighty power should be exercised against citizens of the United States on American soil. Consequently, the law governing the operations of NSA and the governing rules and culture of the agency has prevented such abuses for many years. The functionaries of NSA like everyone else in the intelligence community are American citizens and they, like the great majority of Americans, value our freedom as human beings before almost everything else. It is not surprising to me that some of them have”blown the whistle” on this abuse of NSA’s power, an abuse directed at the American people. (emphasis added).

When the government of the US is under traditional leadership, eavesdropping on American citizens is a matter governed by law and residing in the Department of Justice. The federal police (FBI) are the people who do such a thing after having obtained a court order and as part of a criminal investigation.

In this case an agency of the national intelligence agency dedicated to the defense of the state against foreign enemies has been used to violate the privacy of the very citizens whose representatives created it for their protection.

What are we, cattle? Are we here to herded about and safeguarded by wise and superior beings who function on a plane of existence where the rules we made for our own governance no longer apply to them?

In the early 1980’s the Inspector General asked me to destroy a file on the basis that I was holding information on a US citizen. The file happened to be a resume of an Air Force Captain who had just completed a graduate degree in Soviet Studies. He had given me his resume in the hopes that I would contact him if a job became available. On the principle that one never argues with an IG, I destroyed the file – but kept the rolodex card with the Captain’s name and phone number.

The IG was serious about not keeping files on US citizens.

I’m encouraged by Col. Lang’s speculation that NSA employees blew the whistle on the administration.

Institutions – corporate, governmental, or ecclesial – can make laws and regulations designed to insure ethical behavior. The laws will be meaningless, unless someone lives by them. Gregory Pierce, the author of Spirituality at Work states that “making the system work” is one of the ten essential disciplines of workplace spirituality. (Go here for my review.) Assuming that Col. Lang is right, it looks as if a few brave NSA employees have ensured that the system will work and exposed a criminal act on the part of the administration.