All week I’ve been meaning to compile news and commentary on the National Security Agency’s massive data collection. Long ago I stopped being surprised or disappointed by President Barack Obama’s policies on surveillance and civil liberties. Nevertheless, the information leaked by Edward Snowden is a big story.

Glenn Thrush remembered that “Snowden was the name of the sacrificial lamb/waist-gunner who haunted Yossarian” in Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22. Inspired by that coincidence, I offer 22 links related to the NSA revelations after the jump.

If you haven’t done so already, I recommend reading Glenn Greenwald’s original reporting for The Guardian: “NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily”, “NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others,” and “Boundless Informant: the NSA’s secret tool to track global surveillance data.” The Guardian has posted more reporting about the NSA here.

Greenwald summarized the big news during his appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

There are two key findings. One is that there are members of the Congress who have responsibility for oversight, for checking the people who run this vast secret apparatus of spying to make sure they are not abusing their power. These people in Congress have continuously asked for the NSA to provide basic information about how many Americans they are spying on, how many conversations and telephone and chats of Americans they are intercepting, and the NSA continuously tells them we don’t have the capability to tell you that, to even give you a rough estimate. So with these documents that we published show, that were marked top secret to prevent the American people from learning about them, was that the NSA keeps extremely precise statistics, all the data that the senators announced (ph) where the NSA has falsely claimed does not exist, and the other thing that it does, as you said, is it indicates just how vast and massive the NSA is in terms of sweeping up all forms of communication around the globe, including domestically.

Snowden explained his reasons for leaking the classified documents in this interview. The Guardian profiled the “source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history” here.

Documentary film-maker Laura Poitras played a key role in breaking this story and spoke to Salon about how events unfolded. Barton Gellman and Poitras shared the by-line on the Washington Post’s report about the Prism program.

Late last week, President Obama defended his administration’s policies at a press conference. Jamie Dupree posted the full text of Obama’s remarks. Reading the transcript, I was embarrassed for the former constitutional law professor.

Daniel Ellsberg, who was put on trial for reporting the leaked Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, has credited Snowden.

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended. […]

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads – they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were “briefed” on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country. […]

There are legitimate reasons for secrecy […] But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that’s why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.

Similarly, John Cassidy argued that Snowden is a hero.

So what is Snowden’s real crime? Like Ellsberg, Vanunu, and Bradley Manning before him, he uncovered questionable activities that those in power would rather have kept secret. That’s the valuable role that whistle-blowers play in a free society, and it’s one that, in each individual case, should be weighed against the breach of trust they commit, and the potential harm their revelations can cause. In some instances, conceivably, the interests of the state should prevail. Here, though, the scales are clearly tipped in Snowden’s favor.

The New York Times editorial board speculated on what will happen to Snowden now.

Most likely, he will be charged with disclosure of classified information under the Espionage Act, which carries a possible 10-year jail term for each count. Mr. Snowden broke the agreement he made to keep these materials secret. He appeared forthright in confessing to the act and can use his testimony, should he be brought to trial, to make the case that he exposed a serious abuse of power (though, technically, he did not blow the whistle on fraud or criminal activity).

That’s what civil disobedience means: accepting the consequences of one’s actions to make a larger point. Mr. Snowden may well be going to jail for exposing practices that should never have been secret in the first place.

Jeffrey Toobin argues that Snowden is no hero, but rather “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.”

These were legally authorized programs; in the case of Verizon Business’s phone records, Snowden certainly knew this, because he leaked the very court order that approved the continuation of the project. So he wasn’t blowing the whistle on anything illegal; he was exposing something that failed to meet his own standards of propriety. The question, of course, is whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they don’t like. That’s what Snowden has done.

If everything was so above-board, why did the director of intelligence lie about the breadth of surveillance during a Congressional hearing? General James Clapper should be charged with perjury, but of course that would never happen.

Speaking of people who deserve to be in prison, John Yoo, a key architect of our country’s torture policy in George W. Bush’s administration, made the case for prosecuting Snowden at the National Review’s site.

The latest nationwide survey by Pew Research finds that a majority of Americans don’t mind if the government’s counter-terrorism policies intrude on millions of people’s privacy.

I mostly agree with Jamelle Bouie’s conjecture on why the public doesn’t care about surveillance.

Finally, Timothy B. Lee suggests “Five ways to stop the NSA from spying on you,” and Kris Holt advises on “How to navigate the Internet around PRISM.”

Please share any relevant comments in this thread.

P.S. – I agree with Kevin Roose: one big takeaway from this story is “Beware the IT guy.”

Several dozen organizations signed this open letter to Congress (pdf):

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;

2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;

3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

UPDATE: As Alexander Burns chronicles here, the beltway establishment has shown bipartisan contempt toward Snowden.