Big Transparency for the NSA

[Commentary] 'Big data" is one name for the insight that collecting all the information in a massive database will uncover facts that collecting only some of the information cannot.

This is not news to Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency. Gen. Alexander is a zealous advocate of getting it all whenever practically and legally possible. He sees increased agility in uncovering terrorist connections by acquiring vast databases of telephone records, including those of American citizens. Now the intelligence community's big-data ambitions have prompted big privacy alarms. The nation's intelligence chief, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, is struggling with how to restore trust.

Where the government sees three branches of government working together in harmony, the public sees a disturbing pattern of secret law and secret government accompanied by demands to "trust us, we are keeping you safe." Secret checks and balances appear to be nothing more than a pale shadow of our constitutional design.

Openness is a value in itself, but it is also a necessary precondition to the effective functioning of our three branches of government. President Obama has called for a "national conversation" about "the general problem of data, these big data sets" and their implications for privacy. A Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, recommended by the 9/11 Commission but moribund for years, is back in business, just in time to lead it. A national conversation will be meaningful only if a new policy of openness continues and deepens. It is long overdue.

[Edgar is a visiting fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Affairs.]