Government

An intelligence contractor's disclosure of covert National Security Agency surveillance programs reopened a debate Monday over how much the government relies on private companies for spy work and whether those firms must do more to vet employees and protect secret information. The leaks last week by Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden that revealed the NSA's phone and Internet surveillance underscored how deeply involved private contractors, including many based in Maryland, have become in U.S. intelligence gathering.

Every time I drive between Baltimore and Washington and come upon those big, spooky National Security Agency buildings in Fort Meade, I have cinematic thoughts about what goes on inside. I imagine the best and brightest of surveillance nerds spying on nuclear activity in Iran, on terrorist training camps in Yemen, on Kim Jong-un's playroom in North Korea. I also assume they're watching me as I drive along Route 32, taking my picture and running it through face-recognition software, recording the license plate on my car. If there's a cellphone in use, they're probably listening to the conversation, too. But wait.

The Harford County executive heads the executive branch of the county's government. Elected every four years, the county executive leads a Cabinet composed of directors, departments and agencies, including Public Works, Treasury, Planning and Zoning, Community Services, Economic Development, and Parks and Recreation. The seven-member Harford County Council operates as the legislative branch. Six council members are elected every four years, one from each of the county's six voting districts.

In response to the acknowledged abuses of his own Justice Department, President Barack Obama has urged Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, to reintroduce legislation for a "journalist shield law. " And in typical Washington fashion, the proposed act would do nothing to prevent the abuses that supposedly make the law so necessary. We saw a similar response to the horrible Connecticut school shootings last December -- a raft of laws that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy in the first place.

A report late Wednesday that a top-secret court authorized the National Security Agency to collect the telephone records of millions of Verizon customers should raise serious concerns about the scope of the Obama administration's domestic surveillance program and the threat it poses to citizens' privacy. The fact that the government can secretly order communications firms to turn over massive amounts of potentially sensitive information about customers without their knowledge calls into question the administration's commitment to transparency and the ability of the special court charged with overseeing such requests to protect citizens' rights.

The Eastern Shore's civil rights history is not a happy one. From the lynchings of the 1930s to the Cambridge riots of the 1960s, the Shore has struggled with race relations. Much of that is in the past - although perhaps not entirely. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, civil rights groups used federal Voting Rights Act lawsuits (or in some cases, the threat of them) to convince towns and counties with large black populations to create voting districts with majority-minority populations.

Anne Arundel County's government e-mail system is back up an running today, according to Tracie Reynolds, a county spokeswoman. The system was shut down on Friday night so that information technology workers could fix problems with the system. Last week, government workers and elected officials encountered issues with the system, including delays in sending and receiving messages or messages not going through. The shutdown came at a busy time for the County Council, whose members are getting a lot of e-mail messages about issues such as the county budget, which is scheduled to be finalized on Tuesday.

A Defense Science Board report made public last week contained shocking allegations about the extent of Chinese military hacking of American defense technologies. Though China's government denies it - huffily insisting that it has no need for American military technology - the report disclosed that Chinese cyberattacks had yielded data from dozens of weapons systems, including missile defenses and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. That comes on top of reports that Chinese hackers had successfully infiltrated the computer systems of a wide variety of U.S. corporations, think tanks and media outlets.

Editor: I am trying to figure out why people with good government jobs have to commit crimes. A previous member of the Harford County Sheriff's Department pleaded guilty to misuse of office to gain extra money. An APG employee was sentenced to six months in jail for spending government money for herself. These people lost jobs, income, insurance and retirement benefits in addition to any jail time and/or probation that they may get. To make it worse they put a bad light on the other government employees who are honest and hardworking.