TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Julian Sanzhez tears apart the points made in an “open letter” supporting the NSA’s spying program signed by former intelligence officials. Here’s one excerpt, in response to the argument that collecting our phone records has been crucial to stopping attacks:

The crucial general point to understand about these claims for the efficacy of these programs is that if you have unlimited authority, then that will be what you end up using even if more limited authority would have sufficed. If we had never passed the Fourth Amendment, and the government could get “general warrants,” allowing police to search any home at will, they would never bother getting specific warrants based on probable cause. Then, every time police solved a crime through a search, they could accurately say “You see, we used a general warrant!” But that would be no argument for general warrants. The question to ask is: “Why couldn’t you have done it with a specific warrant instead?”