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the nsa surveillance program and the fbi surveillance of journalists are linked logically and contextually: taken together they provide a more comprehensive image of both the extent/nature of these surveillance programs (and the bizarre claims concerning legality that have been coming from the administration) and their motives. for example, taking thse programs together provides an index of the very broad interpretation of the notion of "enemy" that this administration has developed--separating them would not. from 9/11/2011, this administration has consistently conflated dissent and "the enemy"---the reverse of this is that the administration also conflates the "national interest" with its particular political objectives. under this kind of logic, the administration has launched programs that track phone records for huge swatches of the population (nsa), the activities of antiwar groups and the activities of journalists who may or may not be suspected of passing along leaked information.
if you chose to look at these programs through the legal frameworks that should (but in this case do not) shape them (except perhaps at the level of claims concernign their legality), you could split them apart: but i would see this as a political judgement being routed through a particular dimension of the situation to the exclusion of others that would have to be argued for. i do not see this as a smple empirical question.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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