NSA Ruling Reminds Us That Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security Is a Bipartisan Impulse

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit yesterday ruled that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of Americans' telephone records was illegal and probably unconstitutional. For Democrats who see Donald Trump as an unprecedented threat because of his disregard for the Constitution, the decision is a useful reminder that sacrificing civil liberties on the altar of national security is a bipartisan rite.

The NSA program, which was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, indiscriminately collected telephone "metadata"—indicating who was calling whom and how long they talked—about millions of Americans for years. The program, which the USA FREEDOM Act ended in 2015, began under George W. Bush but continued during Barack Obama's administration, which concealed its existence, then speciously defended its legality and usefulness.

"The administration has now lost all credibility," The New York Times editorialized after Snowden's revelations. "Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

James Clapper, the Air Force general whom Obama appointed as director of national intelligence, epitomized the administration's dishonesty by blatantly lying to a Senate committee about the NSA's data collection practices three months before the phone record database was revealed, then repeatedly lying about lying. In his latest incarnation, Clapper is a vociferous Trump critic who blames Russia for the election of a president he despises as a man "whose first instincts are to twist and distort truth to his advantage."