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2013-06-10 Home Front: WoT
Edward Snowden: "I mistakenly believed in Champ's promises"
I am very concerned about this.

Too many things about this episode have a smell. Snowden first runs to Hong Kong: hello, everyone, that is now known as China. He then chooses the odious, venomous, kooky Glenn Greenwald as his point man, and the hard-left Guardian as his venue, for revealing the information. It appears he never tried appropriate whistleblower channels. It appears that the Post and the Times took a pass. Wonder why?

I'll wait for more information to come out before I label him a hero. At the present time my instincts say that he's more interested in harming our country than he is in informing us about a dangerous problem. He comes across more as a Julian Assange, complete with Messiah-like complex, or as a uber-Bradley Manning. Neither Assange nor Bradley are heroes in any way, and that the same crowd is now comparing Snowden to these two tells me everything I need to know.

But here's the bottom line: when the Bush administration was pushing similar intel gathering programs, it wasn't at the same time using the IRS to attack its (many) political enemies. How many times did Cindy Sheehan get audited? None. How many progressive organizations were stymied in their applications for tax exemptions? None. How many times did Medea Benjamin get her passport yanked after flying off to a country that was hating on us? Zero.

In other words, we had some basic trust that the government, always bumbling and stumbling, at least understood the basic difference between right and wrong, and was trying to gather intel in an honest attempt to protect us. George Bush may have been inept but he had a decent moral core.

Perhaps the people at NSA still understand and believe in right and wrong. But what about Champ and his people? What about the Democrats who are running in 2016 (Hillary, Warren, Biden, etc). How many of them will respect the use of intel and not use government as a tool to strike at their perceived political enemies?

That trust is fragile. Now it's been strained and may be broken.

That is why so many people believe PRISM is automatically wrong, when perhaps it isn't. That is why no one really believes that the NSA is gathering data just to keep terrorists from attacking us -- after all, we've seen what the IRS is doing. And the lead person in that caper has just been promoted and runs the IRS office in charge of Obamacare.

Mr. Snowden and Mr. Greenwald are not heroes. Greenwald is a nasty, bigoted, hard-core leftist who wants America 'transformed' into a socialist (and perhaps Bolshevik) state. He's not my hero. Mr. Snowden either is a tool or is a traitor. I'm not sure which is worse this morning.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-06-10 03:31|| || Front Page|| [11126 views ]  Top

#1 This statement should qualify him to use mental illness as a defense.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-06-10 07:47||   2013-06-10 07:47|| Front Page Top

#2 Could this be part of a larger, staged plot



Posted by Au Auric 2013-06-10 10:15||   2013-06-10 10:15|| Front Page Top

#3 According to The Guardian, Snowden has a sticker on his computer that reads, "I Support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation."

He says he was a "spy", also may have had a EFF connection. I'd still like to know how he passed those Lifestyle Poly's.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-06-10 10:45||   2013-06-10 10:45|| Front Page Top

#4 I share the same concerns Besoeker. We need to collect intel--that's a given. There also needs to be checks and balances built into the system that make the government and workers responsible to the people who put them there--namely us. Presently, I have little trust for the present administration and its agenda. Bureaucracies, once built have a way of expanding and expanding. At the same time, the right hand of such a bureaucracy tends to not know what the left-hand is doing. The mission message often gets distorted and incoherent. If the government is spying wholesale on the American public, that information could be used by an administration (Republican or Democrat) in partisan and thuggish ways for all sorts of nefarious purposes. A nation that is blind to such machinations can get into trouble as did Germany prior to and during WWII. Somehow, there has to be a moral compass that guides what our government does.
Posted by JohnQC 2013-06-10 10:52||   2013-06-10 10:52|| Front Page Top

#5 Have not validated, but read this morning that the USAF has suspended Security Clearance Periodic Re-Investigations (PR's)...due to dreaded "sequester cutbacks". I wonder wen young Eddies PR was coming due ?
Posted by Besoeker 2013-06-10 11:17||   2013-06-10 11:17|| Front Page Top

#6 This NSA-Prism, soon-to-be-a-conspiracy-circus, reminds me of the Echelon-NSA conspiracy theories 12 15 years ago.
Posted by Willy 2013-06-10 12:19||   2013-06-10 12:19|| Front Page Top

#7 I also smelled something nasty when I read he fled to Hong Kong. Not New Zealand, Australia or some other ally but China. Nobody has denied what he said was wrong either, which seems odd to me. I really don't know what to make of it but something about this whole thing is strange.
Posted by rjschwarz 2013-06-10 14:42||   2013-06-10 14:42|| Front Page Top

#8 No extradition treaty in Hong Kong, and the $$ ammount paid by the Guardian must have been big.
Too bad he will accidently fall down the stairs some day and break his neck. TSK
Posted by Mugsy Glink 2013-06-10 14:46||   2013-06-10 14:46|| Front Page Top

#9 
Posted by Yosemite Sam 2013-06-10 14:47||   2013-06-10 14:47|| Front Page Top

#10 Hey Big Daddy DIRNSA, those intrusive "lifestyle" polygraphs sure are effective, eh? Morons. Good old-fashioned hard work in security pays off, trusting in pseudoscience does not.

/petpeeve-aired

This fella is awfully young to be having a ricin heart attack. Jus sayin.

As for this "hero", this one strikes me as naive. Seems the rot at CIA set in at NSA, and this kid got an eye full, and did what his generation has been trained to do: spill it to the press and intarwebz. Unlike Asshanger in the Wiki leaks, this spill isnt getting people killed - only political damage. I wish more people would wake the hell up, especially those on the inside. I pray all us old fogeys cant be the only ones remaining that apolitically remember the mission and remember our Constitutional oath - and act on it, with a decisive No when needed.

In some ways, I can't say as I blame the kid, if people and things have gotten as bad as they seem in Big Daddy's house. Now I know how those old timers felt when the Nixon crap (and its aftermath) swept the intelligence services. Seems they need to learn that all over again. I wonder what ever happened to dissolve the security directives, and other laws and executive orders that put hard limits on collecting against "US Persons"... BClinton let them rot, Bush weakened them in the rush after 9/11 and Champ seems to believe more is better, in terms of government intrusion into citizens lives.

Posted by OldSpook 2013-06-10 15:49||   2013-06-10 15:49|| Front Page Top

#11 Most of the statements issued by officials ring of one old line - we burned the village to protect it.
Posted by Procopius2k 2013-06-10 16:06||   2013-06-10 16:06|| Front Page Top

#12 OS nails it.

Black helicopter time: Fast Eddie had only paced the halls of NSA for a few months. Could his former employer sent him over to conflict their growing cyber programme ?
Posted by Besoeker 2013-06-10 16:18||   2013-06-10 16:18|| Front Page Top

#13 " I mistakenly believed in Obama’s promises"

Many Americans are guilty of believed in Champ. Some still do but that seems to be changing. Maybe that is the change he promised.
Posted by JohnQC 2013-06-10 17:16||   2013-06-10 17:16|| Front Page Top

#14 Old Spook
Great to see someone who knows pointing out the polygraph nonsense.
Posted by European Conservative 2013-06-10 19:32||   2013-06-10 19:32|| Front Page Top

#15 The young man exposed the fact that the NSA was gathering all communications made by each and every American.

The NSA had then came out of the closet.

Mission accomplished.
Posted by Winky Sproing5899 2013-06-10 19:34||   2013-06-10 19:34|| Front Page Top

#16 actually the US and Hong Kong do have an extradition treaty

there might however be a PRC overide on matters of 'defense of the country'
Posted by lord garth 2013-06-10 19:37||   2013-06-10 19:37|| Front Page Top

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