What Snowden did helped us as a society. He exposed Obama as a liar, the NSA as a thief, and made it politically impossible for legislators to ignore or endorse any form of secret surveillance. But he will personally suffer for that. Whether in the figurative prison of Russian citizenship, or more likely in the literal underground Federal prison in Florence, CO, where security is so tight that inmates are shown their mail on television screens instead of being allowed to touch it, he is going to pay for what he did for the rest of his life. In my view, we should all thank him for his sacrifice.
Of course you still have to get a huge bubble popped first.
P. S. Military-industrial complex will be too busy selling factories for scraps to care.
I also think that people are underestimating the sheer level of hatred that government types have for Snowden. My guess is that eventually the CIA will kidnap him and either return him to the US for prosecution under a story that he was traveling somewhere and got caught, or they will simply torture and kill him, making it look like a robbery or kidnapping gone wrong. He wouldn't be the first we've done it to.
In this particular case, I think you'll find that the politics work out so that the rednecks aren't the disgruntled ones.
"Dropping the charges" would be more accurate.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140727/07183528026/forme...
(I have no particular opinion about whether Americans should consider Snowden a hero or a traitor.)
The system also failed: no-one like him should have ever been granted the access he received. That does not excuse his misbehaviour.
I doubt he'll ever get what he deserves; rather, he will be feted and glorified by similar immature, unpatriotic idiots. He'll probably never even recognise the magnitude of the evil he's committed.
Medal of Freedom? For the record I was pro-Snowden and for a very long time thought the same - NSA and TOR, etc unwarrented secret courts, etc. Some of them need change and are wrong I agree. But if Snowden was not a a double agent or for that matter a Moscow pawn, he would have had more finesse with the information he released.
People are naive, myself included - no one knows what it takes to keep people safe. Look at the world around you and see whats going on and don't take it for granted.
This statement is so ironic that it is almost dumbfounding. Look up the term "blowback". The U.S. (in particular, our bellicose foreign policy and insatiable appetite for oil) is the originator of many if not all of the geopolitical disasters which jeopardize our national security. That is to say, the security apparatus that Snowden has so deftly undermined is in large part responsible for creating the very phenomenon it claims to counteract. I don't care who he's working for, the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are now aware of this fact, including a large number of Americans, makes him a hero.
So you're saying we need a government babysitter then? Sure, there are some things you need a government to help protect you from. How, though, is reading all my emails and recording all my phone calls keeping ME safe? Are they protecting me from myself? No. It's an excuse for the powers that be to control the population and expand their power.
You hear that NSA? You're a bunch of schmucks. I don't care how many watchlists you have me on.
There is an agenda here. We may not be able to see all of it at once, but it exists, and projecting incompetence is part of it.
I wouldn't go so far as malice (history's greatest monsters thought they were doing right by their country), but to portray the NSA's behavior as incompetent does a great disservice to you, me, and everyone else who should be outraged by this. We should feel as if these intrusive searches and such are a direct attack on us and our culture and our country.
Because that's what they are.
EDIT: Added citations
[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-source-nsa-leaker-snowdens...
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/02/ecuador-rafael-...
that Domestic Spying is wrong but Snowden revealed international espionage way more than domestic. I am fine with international espionage its why I pay taxes and if the USA stops guess whats going to happen via China ?
