Come on, Grandfather Newspaper!

The New York Times’s front page dedicates space to the article “Latest Release of Documents on NSA Includes 2004 Ruling on Email Surveillance.” Not for the first time, I can say how irritated I am with the grandfather of all news sources. Your bias is showing, guys.

Now, it may not all be down to the NYT. They state at the bottom of the article that “The full scope and details of any revelations in the documents were not immediately clear because of the large volume of materials and the late hour at which they became available. It appeared likely to take days for journalists, privacy advocates and other close watchers of surveillance policy issues to finish scouring the trove.” Almost like a disclaimer: we did our best on a tight schedule, but we reserve the right to revoke, change, or add to what is written here. Strange that the suddenly ‘transparent’ documents point the finger at the Bush Administration, contrasting with how the Obama Administration has treated the NSA surveillance.

A lot about this article confuses me. It begins by stating the documents talk about email data gathering that started during the Bush Admin. But that the dates of the rulings were redacted. Now, I remember hearing about the email data gathering about a decade ago. But this article doesn’t explain how they know when the information came out.

It isn’t just the finger pointing that annoyed me. It’s the wording. Look at this paragraph:

“Many of the documents have historic significance, showing how Bush administration surveillance programs that were initially conducted without court oversight and outside statutory authorization were brought under the authority of the surveillance court and subjected to oversight rules. The documents also included reports to Congress, training slides and regulations issued under President Obama.”

Historical significance. Two words that say it doesn’t matter what’s going on under the current administration, because it all started before the current president. ‘Initially conducted’ is key: the article doesn’t actually explain when the court oversight began. Did it happen during the Bush administration? Is that something they don’t want to reveal? And of course they will include reports to Congress under President Obama. But are there documents that were withheld from the Bush era that submitted to Congress as well?

Lots of political jargon goes unexplained. ‘An excess collection problem in 2009 was the result of “longstanding compliance issues associated with N.S.A.’s electronic communications and telephony bulk metadata collection programs” and that the N.S.A. “recognized that its compliance and oversight structure had not kept pace with its operational momentum.”’ For the regular Joe, like me, I’ve got to ask, what in the world does that mean? Journalists are supposed to help clarify the political issues for the citizens of the United States, not confuse them.

Then, the article says that the documents contain over 2000 declassified pages and refers constantly to them as ‘the trove.’ So…2000 out of how many?

Now, I am all for the government trying to be more transparent. But this article seems to miss the point. The author isn’t asking all the right questions. I am hoping that as the journalists read more into the declassified documents more information will come out that does more than point fingers.