"Section 215 helps us find a needle in the haystack," Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last month, referring to the
PATRIOT Act provision that the National Security Agency says allows it
to scoop up everyone's telephone records. If Congress imposes limits
aimed at preventing such mass snooping, the Kentucky Republican warned,
"there might not be a haystack at all."
For those who wonder
how McConnell lost his battle to renew Section 215 without changes, a
plausible answer is that he and his allies picked the wrong metaphor.
What they meant to say (I think) was that the NSA needs all the help it
can get in the challenging task of identifying terrorists before they
attack. What the public heard was a defense of indiscriminate and
invasive yet ineffective data collection.
McConnell was by no means the first defender of the NSA's program to seize on the needle-in-a-haystack comparison. The first such reference in the Nexis news database came from Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff to Leon Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary.
"If you're looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack," Bash said during an MSNBC appearance on June 7, 2013. That was a couple of days after stories based on information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the agency's database.
There followed a pack of figurative needles in a field of proverbial haystacks. On June 11, Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, D-Md., recounted what intelligence officials said at a closed-door congressional briefing: "One of the things that was said ... was, 'Why do you need all of those numbers in a database?' And they said, 'To find a needle in a haystack, you need a haystack.'"
McConnell was by no means the first defender of the NSA's program to seize on the needle-in-a-haystack comparison. The first such reference in the Nexis news database came from Jeremy Bash, who served as chief of staff to Leon Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary.
"If you're looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack," Bash said during an MSNBC appearance on June 7, 2013. That was a couple of days after stories based on information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the agency's database.
There followed a pack of figurative needles in a field of proverbial haystacks. On June 11, Rep. C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, D-Md., recounted what intelligence officials said at a closed-door congressional briefing: "One of the things that was said ... was, 'Why do you need all of those numbers in a database?' And they said, 'To find a needle in a haystack, you need a haystack.'"
