Lots of overheated rhetoric about NSA activities right now so some reasoned perspective on what is at stake is needed.  Head on over to Hot Air for today’s Vent by Michelle Malkin wherein she visits the National Cryptalogic Museum and walks us through some of the important history of this critically important agency defending our national security.  Go watch the video.

The work of the NSA is critical to keeping you and me safe by spying on communications to learn what our enemies are doing.  Basic but absolutely essential spying stuff right?  So what exactly is it that people think the NSA does as the largest spying agency of the US government?  Spying obviously…. but on who?  Those other people, people somewhere else I think would be the answer from people upset by the recent news reports.  Of course everyone should realize that what the NSA is doing by spying on all those other people is completely illegal in those other places and would get agents executed in many nations across the world if caught.  Its called espionage and like all spy agencies its the NSA’s job to break every law and rule in the book in those other nations to get the information we need.  That’s spying.  That’s why it needs to stay secret, so we can keep doing it and get the vital information we need to stay safe.

Why take the risk of creating diplomatic incidents or even international crisis?  To protect you and me, to keep us safe and warm in our beds without a care in the world that’s why.  With terrorist organizations actively seeking to literally ‘destroy the USA’ this has taken on a whole new level of importance, as has the emphasis on who or what needs to be spied on.  If terrorists are going to infiltrate our country to place themselves to conduct attacks causing massive death and destruction, which they did on 9/11/2001 and are trying to right now, then is not the most critical information needed that which is about those agents who are already here and getting ready to complete such an attack?  Didn’t everyone get all upset and demand to know after 9/11 why they didn’t see it coming beforehand?  Are our intelligence people supposed to pull data out of thin air or what?  Use psychics maybe?  We are finding terrorist agents and sympathizers in small groups here and there across the US all the time, how do you think that happens?

This whole controversy is beyond stupid, it is dangerous.  The NSA collects data freely given by American corporations to be able to track who called who so that if they do find a potential spy the data can help them find others, information by the way that you or I can right now go out and purchase ourselves because it isn’t secret or private, and this is wrong how?  These people demanding this to be stopped are not serious people, they have a bone to pick about other things and they are using the possible perception of wrongdoing here to try to get political leverage.  In doing so they have already damaged our national security, AGAIN, and will hurt it even more if they succeed in getting the data collection stopped.

I’d like to know why the NSA isn’t demanding ALL of the data for national security purposes.  We are in a war with enemies dedicated to annihilating us if they can.  This isn’t some sort of law enforcement effort we are talking about the worst case is some drugs being sold or a murderer kills a few people and gets away to try again and probably be caught.  Those are discrete and comparatively minor threats to us as a people that we choose to handle in a very strict way to ensure that our way of life isn’t lost in the effort to fight crime, which to a reasonable extent is all to the well and good.  We’re talking now during this War about the possibility of seeing one or possibly many American cities being wiped off the map, or chemical or biological attacks that could kill hundreds of thousands or millions of us.  Allowing any such thing to happen is unacceptable on any level, and yes as with any war we might have to sacrifice any number of things for a while to see us through safely to victory.

If a major attack is made on our soil and there are mass casualties the same people protesting the NSA now will be demanding to know why it wasn’t stopped and who is responsible for allowing it to happen.  They will demand that names be named and people to pay a price for allowing the tragedy.  Those people will need to look in a mirror.