What do you believe is the difference between trusting journalist organizations with this information and trusting government organizations?
We (or rather, the USA)
don't trust government with such information. Or rather, there are extensive regulations and laws governing its use.
We expect the information government holds or has access to to be more sensitive than the information that private groups hold (although that may be slowly changing with the Googles and Facebooks of the world, but certainly holds true in this case) and that comes with stricter protections that we apply to private groups.
We can't deny the government access to all that data unless we want to fundamentally change the role of government, eliminating many functions. We can't have an NSA that spies on accepted targets (with warrants) which doesn't incidentally collect information about other individuals (as I said, I'm surprised it's only 9/10 given the nature of modern communications).
We can and should push for tighter controls and regulations, and a more effective system of review of the procedures. Either than or openly call for the US to give up on national security targeted surveillance at all. But people seem uniquely unwilling to actually engage in a debate over what is an acceptable role for the NSA.
As for not trusting journalists, I have no idea who actually has access to the information any more, how much was given to Chinese or Russian groups, how much has been trusted to Greenwald, etc. I don't know the procedures these groups and individuals use to decide what to publish, their technical security or ability to protect sensitive data from openly hostile groups, etc. In short, I have no sodding idea how much to trust them. My full expectation is that all of the information will end up published in the end, just given the nature of such leaks and previous examples.
I was also specifically talking about the national security information the Post said was in the leaks, not the privacy information. But why we trust governments and not journalists with that stuff should be obvious enough.
One of the problems with this leak in particular is that I can't see it accomplishing anything beyond what has already happened. There are already reviews and reforms of the minimisation procedures underway. The public already has a vague sense of rage about the NSA violating their privacy. This leak, which is uniquely violating individual's privacy, doesn't really add anything to either of those.
As I said, it does suggest a couple of points to me, mostly about how much Snowden actually had access to, but you can be sure the NSA is already reviewing those areas after the leak and didn't need the extra push.
As to the wider debate, can we maybe lock down what people view as an acceptable role for surveillance in modern society? Quick set of questions;
1) Should the NSA (or a similar body) be legally allowed to conduct secret surveillance against individuals? If so what conditions are the minimum requirement for doing so?
2) If any such surveillance is allowed it will obviously gather information about those who aren't the target. How can such information be handled? Can it be shared at all with other agencies who may have an interest in such people? Can it be used in support of an argument that such individuals should be new targets?
3) Should bulk metadata collection have stronger protections than traditional metadata collection (such as
pen registers)? What protections should be required on any such big data collections? What protections should be placed on the searches of such collections?
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