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John Nichols on why America needs less secrecy

NSA protest
Alli McCracken joins activists protesting the surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA outside the Justice Department where U.S. President Barack Obama gave a major speech on reforming the NSA January 17, 2014 in Washington, DC.
Win McNamee/Getty Images

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America needs more government secrecy, argued David Frum, The Atlantic's senior editor, on The Daily Circuit last week.

"This is a normal part of the way states operate, and there's a certain amount of normal hypocrisy that surrounds it," he said on The Daily Circuit. "You want better information. You don't want to embarrass one another that you're trying to collect this information. And to claim that there's something improper about governments trying to get information on the outside world in order to protect their people, that is an extremely radical claim. And, I think it's gotten a lot of traction in the Snowden era without it really being thought about."

John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation, joins The Daily Circuit to discuss the other side of the argument. He says America needs less government secrecy to protect the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.