Regarding this post, a reader writes:

I’m sorry, you’re just straight up wrong when it comes to the AT&T Internet traffic logging. The “leaks”, and the indignation arising from them, aren’t the result of some Leftist desire to punish AT&T for anti-union actions, or for downsizing their workforce, at least not on the part of the EFF. They are, for the most part, the reasoned responses of people who understand the technology involved, and are rightfully horrified by a.) the potential for abuse of the monitoring methodology, and b.) that this is being attached to the war on terrorism to justify what, absent that justification, would strike almost everyone as a horrific violation of the principles of both the Constitution and the Internet. AT&T is logging traffic at the application layer. This means that they see, plaintext, any information that is transmitted through their routers in San Francisco. More on that in a second. They aren’t viewing binary data, or data that is in any other way obfuscated, they’re seeing the text of email, of IM’s of every flavor, the HTML returned to a user, and the requests that he made to the webpage that produced that HTML. They can, and do, record the images that you’re viewing. They can, and do, record un-encrypted financial information that you access. Basically, unless there’s encryption around it, even the people at AT&T have access to this data. Even if the data is encrypted (as all data should be), the NSA has almost definitely managed to overcome the protection offered by 128-bit SSL. Now, back to the routers in SF. AT&T’s logging isn’t restricted to their customers, they log every bit of data that goes through their hardware in California. AT&T is one of the largest data backbone providers in the country (maybe the largest, I’d need to look at the numbers). If you can manage to get ANY traffic to a California-based server without going through an AT&T pipeline at some point, I’d be amazed. That means that millions of Internet users, who have signed no contract with AT&T, and would have no reason to expect that AT&T would log ANYTHING about their Internet activity, are subject to this tracking and logging. This puts users in a no-alternative world. People can’t simply stop communicating with web-servers in California, but, at the same time, they can’t switch to an anonymous cellphone service, switch their landline providers, or any other method open to people who don’t wish to have their voice traffic logged by the NSA. Now, please don’t mistake me for someone who is anything but wholeheartedly in support of the war on terrorism. That, however, doesn’t mean that I can’t question the methodology and effectiveness that the government uses, especially when that methodology threatens to erode the freedom of the Internet, and the privacy (not privacy rights, mind you, I’m no believer in penumbras and enumerations) of the citizenry. This kind of blanket surveillance is likely to have little to no value in the war on terror, and there are plenty of alternatives to it.

These are all good points. But all I said in my original post was that thus far, we only know what the whistleblowers are telling us. Unlike its response to the New York Times international eavesdropping stories, the administration is refusing to confirm or deny these reports. The result is a ludicrous tension in which members of Congress are telling us they’ve been briefed and that the program is legal, and then in the next breath telling us that they can’t confirm the existence of the program.

At some point, if it is at all interested in convincing people like this reader that these NSA data-mining programs both protect privacy and effectively prevent terrorist attacks, the Bush administration is going to have to resolve this tension by making its case to the American people. Polls continue to show support for the program, suggesting almost no political downside. Furthermore, the program has the potential to be more popular if people understood the constitutional arguments supporting it. But in the absence of a clear explanation from the administration, this story will continue to alienate erstwhile supporters like the author of this e-mail.

The danger, of course, is that a full explanation of the program would reveal even more details about the methods we use to intercept al Qaeda communications and prevent terror attacks. But let’s be realistic here: That cat is unfortunately out of the bag. Those whose job is to liaison between the administration and the press had better take the initiative away from the leakers and figure out a way to explain this program in a way that does not compromise it further. It doesn’t sound easy, but that is their job. If the privacy absolutists destroy this program like they destroyed TIA because these liaisons were not able to convince the American public that data-mining is not a dirty word, then the White House has a potentially deadly failure to communicate.