14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA has been trying to mitigate the damage of the string of leaks originating from Edward Snowden the best way it knows how, with ignorance, denials, misdirection.
Those strategies work great once or twice, but since the leaks just keep on hitting, the agency is starting to look outmaneuvered and caught by surprise by each new leak, something it's clearly not comfortable with.
The NSA has operated rather arrogantly for many, many years now. Under the presumption that it knows what's best for the American citizen, the NSA has done anything in its power to pursue broader surveillance and broader tools.
After more than a decade of unchallenged expansion, during which time the White House has enthusiastically supported all expansion efforts, it's understandable that the NSA doesn't feel like it has to answer to anyone, let alone the average citizen.
This is more than obvious from its responses to all the recent leaks, which have ranged from ignoring them completely, to claiming that everything it does is legal (which is only true because it pushed for ever more abusive legislation), and to saying that all its activities are designed to fight terrorism, even snooping into the private records of Brazil's largest company, the oil giant Petrobras.
The NSA has dealt with leaks and controversy before and it knows that it all goes away soon enough. But it has never faced a string of leaks like the ones over the past months. And, while its strategy of hiding its head in the sand waiting for all of it to blow over has worked in the past, it won't work this time.
It's clear that the journalists in possession of the Snowden documents aren't going to give up anytime soon and it's clear that there are plenty more embarrassing or worrying things about the NSA left to discover in the tens of thousands of documents.
The White House has been fainting some response, putting together a mock oversight panel, but even with the general indifference characteristic of our times and even with spineless country leaders criticizing the US but doing nothing concrete about that, something will have to change; the NSA and the US government will have to start answering eventually to the people they're supposed to serve.