89Hen wrote:http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... ed_he.html
It is true that Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance of American citizens—far vaster than any outsider had suspected, in some cases vaster than the agency’s overseers on the secret FISA court had permitted—have triggered a valuable debate, leading possibly to much-needed reforms.
If that were all that Snowden had done, if his stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the NSA’s domestic surveillance, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing.
But Snowden did much more than that. The documents that he gave the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman and the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA’s interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what’s going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide,” an effort that (in the Post’s words) “allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.” In his first interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in China and Hong Kong.
These operations have nothing to do with domestic surveillance or even spying on allies. They are not illegal, improper, or (in the context of 21st-century international politics) immoral. Exposing such operations has nothing to do with “whistle-blowing.”
Let's address these individually:
1) "The documents that he gave the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman and the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA’s interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan’s northwest territories"
Seriously?
Obama told the world how we found Osama…it was all over the news. We tracked cell phone calls and e-mails of Al Qaeda all over the world, including northern Pakistan...should we kill Obama for exposing that information, or does everyone give him a pass because it made him seem smart and in control of things?
Everyone in the world knows we’ve been tracking enemy radio transmissions since WWII. But now that Snowden has rehashed that info, including our government’s own admission of how we track AQ and other bad guys, we want to hang Snowden? WTF kind of thinking is that?
2)
about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan;
Huh? Let’s admit one thing…we lie to the Pakistanis and they lie to us. In fact, our whole relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and virtually the whole world is based upon lies – especially our government’s lies to our own population. Heck, our government lies to us about us…but it is only for our protection and best interest.
The riot part of all this is that our CIA is operating not-so-covertly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they are giving away hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars (almost entirely funded under the table, in black box funding), to purchase the "loyalty" of warlords (WARLORDS...hello) in both countries. These warlords have PROVEN to be as unreliable as, well, warlords. There have been numerous articles about these warlords taking our money for “loyalty,” and then buying guns for their people, and then launching attacks on our military. And yet, we continue to purchase “loyalty” from these really bad people who do really bad things to other people around them while continuously and openly telling us that they don’t want us around. Want a funny story...our CIA had a shop keeper on their payroll who was an “informant”. That informant was calling in drone strikes on random people because he was not a really good informant due to the small, yet relatively important, fact that he actually had absolutely ZERO connections to the local Taliban or AQ folks, but he wanted to continue to get money from his CIA handler (true story).
Face it, we are in a backwoods country that has always had infighting, and we expect loyalty from folks who know that we will sell them out in a heartbeat (and we have already, many times over)? Heck, we've repeatedly left our local loyal “recruits” alone as we exited their village and left them to be executed by the locals. Anyone remember our loyalty to our snitches in Vietnam? It is too comical that when Snowden supposedly “exposes” a CIA operation to gauge the loyalty of some recruits (an operation that had how much proven success versus the other failed loyalty operations?), an operation that has almost no long term probability of success, and no long term impact on the safety of Americans, and people want Snowden dead?
3)
about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what’s going on inside Iran;
C’mon, no one can be serious about being upset about this. If you aren’t concerned about the NSA being able to snoop on our e-mails, and believed they already doing that, then how can anyone be upset/surprised that we would be using those capabilities against Iran…and how could anyone, including the Iranians, not think we were doing it? The Iranian government and military already knew we were spying on their communications, so what is the big deal? Where was the big failure in our national defense grid that Snowden let folks know we were reading Iranian e-mails? Again, it is as if we are to believe that the Iranians didn‘t read or view the Obama Administration’s own interviews and press releases regarding our intelligence gathering about AQ and Pakistan.
No, the only ones who might not have been clued in were some Iranian business folks…and that is probably why we are upset. Some fat cat Wall Street insider trading boys no longer have an early leg up on oil production information (or some other product).
4)
about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls “worldwide,” an effort that (in the Post’s words) “allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.”
Again, Obama already announced that we tracked Osama and his buddies by connecting dots on their communications…e-mail and cell phone. Is the surprise (and the reason for hanging Snowden) that we were actually using that same technology “worldwide” instead of just on the AQ networks?
5)
In his first interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden revealed that the NSA routinely hacks into hundreds of computers in China and Hong Kong.
Shocking!
Round up the usual suspects!
Wait, we’ve been complaining for YEARS that Chinese hackers have been hacking into our defense department and businesses. So Snowden should be hanged for corroborating that we have been doing the same thing? You’re joking, right?
Snowden is a hero for exposing our government and businesses as a bunch of self-serving clowns that have ZERO respect for the privacy or safety of the average American (or anyone else in the world). We are not in Afghanistan to protect Americans...we are not in Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, or anywhere else to protect the average American. We are not spying in Germany, Mexico, Britain, France, or anywhere else to protect Americans. We are doing these things to gain a financial advantage for some wealthy and well connected businessmen.
I'll say it again...the same super secret computer programs that were developed to track metadata for the NSA are now being used to track consumer behavior. FACT. That is not at all a coincidence.
He exposed our government for what is is...a bunch of clowns catering to their own self interests and big business' desire to make more money off our people. The same "super secret" data gathering technology is conveniently being used by corporations to monitor people's behaviors. Duh.
