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Edward Snowden is heralded as both a hero and villain. A privacy vigilante and a traitor. It just depends who you ask. The revelations he made about the NSA's surveillance programs have completely changed the face of online security, and changed the way everyone looks at the internet and privacy.

But just before the whistle was blown, it seems that the NSA was considering bringing its telephone data collection program to an end. Intelligence officials were, behind the scenes, questioning whether the benefits of gathering counter-terrorism information justified the colossal costs involved. Then Snowden went public and essentially forced the agency's hand.

With a massive public backlash against what the NSA had been doing, the agency was obviously keen to defend what it had been doing. Whatever attacks were thrown by privacy advocates, individuals and civil liberties campaigners, the NSA had a trump card. Fighting terrorism. The agency would, of course, never admit that perhaps it was going too far, or that its operations were costing too many millions of dollars; it had to vigorously defend what it had been doing.

The NSA became so wrapped up in defending what it had already been doing, that it managed to convince itself of the worth of continuing its work. After all, if the activities had been justifiable before, do they not continue to be justifiable? The 'threat' of terror attacks is something that has become part of the media and governmental narrative, seared into the public consciousness.

We havent been told that terrorist threats had vanished or even diminished; if anything, the threat -- if we're to believe what we're told -- is greater than ever. Throw 'defense of America' into the equation, and you can get away with just about anything. Chuck in a few instances of the word 'terror' for good measure, and you're good to go.

The Associated Press makes the surprising suggestions about the NSA's doubts about what it was doing. The timing is interesting as we are approaching the deadline by which the law authorizes the collection of phone data (June 2015). The NSA has managed to persuade itself of the value of various surveillance programs over the years, and Congress will take quite some convincing if the law is to be changed such that the programs are outlawed.

This is not the first time that it has been suggested that Snowden's revelations had an unexpected side-effect. A data sharing agreement between the NSA and the UK's GCHQ was, essentially, made legal because of the fact that Snowden had made it public. Up until that point it had been illegal for the two intelligence agencies to share information in the way they had been but once the cover was blown it was rather a different story.

It would be very surprising to see the NSA back down now. Even if we were told that phone, email, and other data collection was coming to an end, how many would believe it to be true? It was happening in the background before, who's to say that would not just continue?

Photo credit: Maren Wulf / Shutterstock

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Snowden's leaks served only to strengthen the NSA's resolve

WASHINGTON The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

Still, the behind-the-scenes NSA concerns, which have not been reported previously, could be relevant as Congress decides whether to renew or modify the phone records collection when the law authorizing it expires in June.

The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the "to and from" information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

After the program was disclosed, civil liberties advocates attacked it, saying the records could give a secret intelligence agency a road map to Americans' private activities. NSA officials presented a forceful rebuttal that helped shaped public opinion.

Responding to widespread criticism, President Barack Obama in January 2014 proposed that the NSA stop collecting the records, but instead request them when needed in terrorism investigations from telephone companies, which tend to keep them for 18 months.

Yet the president has insisted that legislation is required to adopt his proposal, and Congress has not acted. So the NSA continues to collect and store records of private U.S. phone calls for use in terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Many lawmakers want the program to continue as is.

Alexander argued that the program was an essential tool because it allows the FBI and the NSA to hunt for domestic plots by searching American calling records against phone numbers associated with international terrorists. He and other NSA officials support Obama's plan to let the phone companies keep the data, as long as the government quickly can search it.

Civil liberties activists say it was never a good idea to allow a secret intelligence agency to store records of Americans' private phone calls, and some are not sure the government should search them in bulk. They say government can point to only a single domestic terrorism defendant who was implicated by a phone records search under the program, a San Diego taxi driver who was convicted of raising $15,000 for a Somali terrorist group.

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