Some Operate in the Shadows.

Some Shrink in the Light.
But Some Shine.*

WASHINGTON — ... After a federal judge here said in a ruling on Monday that the N.S.A.’s collection of phone data on all Americans was “almost Orwellian,” an assault on privacy that would leave James Madison “aghast,” a civil liberties group ... plastered a D.C. bus with the words “Thank you, Edward Snowden!”...
...
After W. and Dick Cheney ignored warnings of an Al Qaeda strike, they proliferated a mind-set that there was no step too far to protect us from that happening again, be it attacking a country that hadn’t attacked us, torturing, warrantless wiretapping, spying Stasi-style on our allies or denying prisoners due process.

Judge Leon wrestled with the legality of holding detainees at Guan- tánamo Bay and now he suggests that the N.S.A. snooping may be unconstitutional.
...
“It’s one thing to say that people expect phone companies to occasionally provide information to law enforcement,” he wrote, “it is quite another to suggest that our citizens expect all phone companies to operate what is effectively a joint intelligence-gathering operation with the government.”

Though the Justice Department tried to justify the mammoth hoovering by insisting on the need for speed, the judge pointed out that the N.S.A. couldn’t cite a single instance in which its haystack of data had produced the needle to puncture an imminent attack.
...
Judge Leon struck a blow for the proposition that our moral and legal values regarding privacy are not obsolete just because some government employees out in suburban Maryland in a secretive agency with its own exit off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway got carried away with their cool new toys.

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*...On You Crazy Diamond.
(All of You Out There).