EDWARD SNOWDEN........SOLITARY LEAKER

[Whirlaway]

David Brooks has an OP-ED in today's NY Times; supporting NSA data sweeps and laying Snowden out as a pathetic person.........A bizarre analysis by the pseudo-conservative. I thought reader's comments were more poignant.

A sampling.....interesting reading.......

While I frequently agree with Mr. Brooks' points about the corrosion of community bonds, the matter at hand is exceptional. Underlying Mr. Brooks' argument is the belief that it would have been more morally correct for Snowden to continue collecting his fat wad of dough spying on people. Mr. Brooks would have preferred it if Snowden had kept his mouth shut, married his girlfriend, etc. In this exceptional circumstance, Mr. Brooks, you are wrong. The value society might derive rom Snowden's revelation, his "betrayal," remains unique and unknown. At best, Mr. Brooks' article is premature.

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I don't feel betrayed by Mr. Snowden. I feel relieved that someone, however imperfectly he may live his life, respected his fellow citizens enough to entrust them with information that our government has restricted us from knowing, and therefore, from challenging. 'Keeping us safe' could be a bumper sticker that could apply to any dictatorship or totalitarian state; keeping us safe while preserving our civil liberties is a governing philosophy that is essentially American, and our leaders shouldn't need a 29-year-old who never finished college to remind them of that.

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My goodness, David. You would think that this young man had been selling our nuclear launch codes to the Taliban, the way you are whipping yourself up here. While I can't comment on his moral character, and I might not align myself with him politically, the simple fact is that he revealed no data that would endanger any individual. He simply revealed practices which the government claims to be taking on our behalf, and yet everyone from MSNBC to CNN to Glenn Beck is outraged over them. Don't you believe that the people deserve to choose what policies reflect their values, and which don't?

The official response to this revelation has been, in effect, "tough luck", and an attempt to paint the people upset as part of a "fringe". And yet I have yet to see an article or poll on these data-mining techniques where a strong majority of the respondents have not been opposed to it, and this spans the political spectrum.

I see this sort of warrantless data collection as antithetical to our values. While I believe strongly that the government can function to promote the greater good, this type of surveillance (and similar revelations over the past decade or more) pushes people in my generation further down the road to cynicism and further away from engagement in civic life. This, in the long run, will prove more destructive than any terrorist plot these methods could intercept.

They may wish to harm us physically, but we alone are destroying our soul.

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I don't recall Edward Snowden taking an oath ".. to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States of America and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. So help me God"

I don't recall Edward Snowden authorizing spying on millions of Americans phone and internet transactions and personal business information without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Nor do I recall him targeting and authorizing killing Americans without due process or judicial review.

I do not recall Edward Snowden being a member of the lobbyist brought money driven immature ignorant partisan political wind bags in the U.S. Congress.

I do not recall Edward Snowden being the only person with a vote and access to this information in America.

Private entities seek personal private information for commerce.

Public entities have the power of regulation and taxation and investigation and prosecution and incarceration.

What does intelligence and privacy and freedom and liberty and security mean in America?

Is America no longer the home of the brave or the land of the free worthy of asking for God's blessings?

And who was the better exemplar of the true patriot acting in this drama?

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There is an Apple iPhone commercial which features all manner of people with earbuds in their ears, moving to their own music. What I see when I watch that is not people enjoying music, but rather people, especially kids, isolating themselves from the world around them.

While I tend to side with transparency, the reality is that this is no privacy in the online world. When a Snowden or a Manning exposes this kind of government surveillance I cannot fathom why anyone would think this was news unless they are, indeed, living solely inside their head. If Google knows your preferences, likes, desires, needs without you telling it with anything more than a keyword or a click, why wouldn't the government be able to access that same information. It's public record.

This is not simply the direct descendent of the Patriot Act; this is result of our self aggrandizement on Facebook, LinkedIn and the like. This is the result of living large inside our heads to our own private soundtrack, posting it on Facebook, and then complaining about our tastes being criticized.

In the final analysis, SCOTUS will be pulled into the fray if for no other reasons than to redefine privacy.

Snowden is not really a traitor....he simply said the Emperor was naked,...and then posted some pictures.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/op...?smid=pl-share

[CuteOldGuy]

[JD Barleycorn]

Frankly I don't care what Brooks has to say about anything. This is the guy who thought Obama would be a good president based on the crease in his pants. Brooks probably thinks a provider is a good fuck based on her personal grooming.

I have made a decision about Mr. Snowden. He is not a hero and he has gone beyond "good citizen" when he told the world (true or not) that the US is hacking China more than they are hacking us. That has absolutely nothing to do with American freedoms and is only designed to embarass the US. I still have a multitude of questions on how a high school drop out got a "top secret" clearance or access to this information. My clearance was only a "secret" and it was on a need to know basis. Do we need to drone him? NO! Do we need to get our hands back on him? YES! Should he go to trial? YES Charges remain to be seen.

[Whirlaway]

It wasn't a revelation to the Chinese that we are hacking their systems......to think otherwise is foolish....so Snowden didn't tell the Chinese anything they didn't already know.......

IMO Snowden is a patriot, until someone presents irrefutable evidence that he has harmed or endangered Americans.

People act like Snowden passed along nuclear secrets. He did nothing of the sort.

[SinsOfTheFlesh]

Originally Posted by Whirlaway

It wasn't a revelation to the Chinese that we are hacking their systems......to think otherwise is foolish....so Snowden didn't tell the Chinese anything they didn't already know.......

IMO Snowden is a patriot, until someone presents irrefutable evidence that he has harmed or endangered Americans.

People act like Snowden passed along nuclear secrets. He did nothing of the sort.

Snowden had my respect right up until he disclosed about China. He went from hero to zero as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter that China undoubtedly knew we had tried to hack into their computer systems. We know they try to hack us, its the way the world works. I get that. It still doesn't justify releasing information that compromises our national security and intelligence gathering capability.

Revealing that our gov't is spying on law abiding citizens is one thing. I applauded him for that. But I have zero respect or tolerance for leaking information that compromises our ability to gather intelligence.

[Whirlaway]

What "information" has he released regarding the China leak; he only made a statement regarding our China snooping..........confirming what everyone in the world likely thought.......how is that going from hero to zero.........

BTW, Snowden is no hero................he didn't risk his life by telling us about NSA snooping.

If you have a link to specific data he leaked; then please provide.

[CJ7]

Originally Posted by Whirlaway

What "information" has he released regarding the China leak; he only made a statement regarding our China snooping..........confirming what everyone in the world likely thought.......how is that going from hero to zero.........

BTW, Snowden is no hero................he didn't risk his life by telling us about NSA snooping.

If you have a link to specific data he leaked; then please provide.

The NSA leaker is talking to the Chinese press, and he wants China to know that the U.S. hacks its servers, too
Edward Snowden says he became so concerned about the National Security Agency's widespread collection of U.S. citizens' data, he decided to leak top secret U.S. documents to sympathetic journalists. So on May 20, recounts The Guardian, the NSA IT contractor boarded a plane for Hong Kong with a suitcase, a Rubik's Cube, one book, and four laptops "that enabled him to gain access to some of the U.S. government's most highly-classified secrets."

you have NO idea what snowden has or hasn't leaked do ya sport?