What depresses me is the court's acceptance that this involved "'very pressing' issues of national security". The US courts are also far too cowed by executive

What depresses me is the court's acceptance that this involved "'very pressing' issues of national security". The US courts are also far too cowed by executive assertions of "national security". As if there were a clear, bright line of demarcation between everyday ho-hum government data and secrets so critical that their revelation poses an existential danger to civilization itself. In fact, none of the data released by Snowden is a danger to national security in any sense. The identity of spies has not been released. No passcodes to nuclear weapons have been revealed. The courts ought to take responsibility to assess the legitimacy of executive privilege claims and make judgments based on the actual content being protected. But for whatever reason, they are afraid to do so.