I put "the terrorists" in quotes because they were Mr. Bernstein's words, not mine. The NSA is tasked with gathering foreign intelligence - in other words, espionage. That's their entire purpose, and has been their purpose since their inception. They should be gathering information on foreign military plans and capabilities, the intentions of foreign heads of state, foreign intelligence service actions carried out against the US, etc. And, of course, the plans of foreign terrorists. I don't like the overuse of the terrorist justification, but I can see why it's used so often. None of the other things I mentioned are of any immediate importance in the day-to-day life of the average American. Everyone remembers 9/11, though. I think it's a bit insulting to the American public to just wrap everything up by saying "we're doing this to protect you from terrorists", and it opens up the administration to a lot additional criticism by citing low incidence of foreign terrorist attacks against Americans.

Very little of what the media has reported to us has been about who the NSA is targeting or what information they're gathering, though - most of it has been centered on how they're collecting the information. Disclosures of sources and methods doesn't just have the potential to hurt counter-terrorist efforts, they have the potential to affect a much larger scope of national interests. It's dishonest on both the government and media's side to say that this is just a debate about terrorism.

Holding public hearings does harm to no one. No one is being arrested; no one is being charged with a crime. They are answering questions. Both sides are presenting information to lawmakers as well as the public. If this is your definition of fascism, then we must using different dictionaries.

The government doesn't hold a monopoly on lies and misdirection, either. There's no reason that you shouldn't be just as skeptical of the reporting of any news agency as you should from a government press release. Given the number of errors, misdirections and retractions that we've seen over the past few months, one really should be closely examining the reporting and asking how much is truth and how much is either misinterpretation or just hype to draw advertising dollars. A few example that I can recall that you wouldn't have seen on the HN front page:

- Misinterpretation of the BOUNDLESS INFORMANT slides that led to the series of "NSA is collecting millions of a communications inside (insert country here)": http://www.matthewaid.com/post/67998278561/greenwalds-interp...

- Innacuracies in the early PRISM reporting: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-is...

- Innaccuracies in the early XKeyscore reporting: https://medium.com/state-of-play/bb27db32ae38

- Stewart Baker, quoted extensively in the "NSA spies on porn" article, claims the authors omitted key parts of his quotes because it would make them look hypocritical: http://www.volokh.com/2013/11/27/understanding-enemy/

- A long list of early mistakes in NSA reporting: https://medium.com/state-of-play/f49beeaf6a9c

So no, I don't give journalists a free pass. The reporters who are looking at these documents have never touched these systems, and they're getting all of their information from a single source. They're not experts and I expect them to make mistakes. The also have newspapers to sell, and some of those articles are looser on the headlines than others. When they release a document, I expect to see members of the intelligence community come before Congress and get grilled over it, so that the public can get a better understanding of what they're seeing in the papers. In the same manner, when the press has information that could affect national interests, I expect them to answer questions in a public hearing about how they're handling that information, especially when they play such a huge role in guiding our understanding of the debate.

I prefer to apply a good deal of skepticism and critical thinking to anything I read on the internet. I like my Kool-Aid that way. How does yours taste?