The Propaganda of Surveillance

My column for Medium this week:

However, it is difficult to avoid noting how much the McClatchy story helps the intelligence community. The U.S. government has been dogged with Edward Snowden’s leaks about its pervasive surveillance programs. Then, in one fell swoop, there is a success story where the U.S. government’s vast surveillance powers do some act of unequivocal good, and that it did not involve sifting through the emails or phone calls of innocent people. Breaking with its usual modus operandi, the CIA did not hide its role with the Lebanese government — thereby assuring that when a Lebanese government official spoke to a reporter about it, a positive story would propagate.

Read the rest here.