Edward Snowden is a strange case. On one side, he’s an American Hero, as far as
I’m concerned – putting the best interest of his country ahead of his own
self-interest, and blowing the whistle when he saw an agency of the government
violating the Constitution, and exposing what is a crime being committed against our
country. The NSA needed to be
exposed. What they were doing was wrong,
and the cost to benefit ratio was waaaayyy skewed. If you want to live in a free country, you
just have to accept the fact that you won’t be 100% safe. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You also need to accept that you need fear a
government with power over you far more than you do some terrorists with a
pressure cooker. A warrant to collect
metadata on every call made within the US does not follow the letter of the
following phrase, much less the spirit:
“no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the
persons or things to be seized.”
Note the specificity.
Note that the letter of this amendment does not allow a government
agency to pull a warrant for “everything and everybody,” as the NSA is
currently doing. They need to pull a
warrant for a specific place, a specific person, and a specific thing. They are breaking the law, and I am thankful
that Edward Snowden was brave enough to stand in opposition to that and inform
the American people what the NSA was doing to their country.
I understand that at least for right now, this data isn’t
being used against "the people."
For
now.
But it will. Absolutely, positively will be used against
the people. There is no other
option.
Consider this – how will an incumbent ever be unseated when
he has all the dirt on his opponents, and all he needs to do is have some
“anonymous tipster” tip him off that his opponent visited porn websites and
made calls to a couple brothels?
Or the next time CPS comes to your house on a welfare check
because your bitch neighbor wanted to get back at you for mowing your lawn too
early on a Sunday morning, and when you stand before the tribunal after they
found an unflushed toilet in your home*, they present to the court that you’re
an unfit father because you visit S&M chatrooms and like to look at lesbian
porn. There is absolutely no doubt that
once the people get used to this monitoring, that the scope of it will be
expanded, and the purpose of it will shift to domestic criminal cases. None whatsoever, and if you don’t believe
that, you’re a damn fool.
On the other side, he’s a treasonous piece of shit who
shared this information with the Chinese and now, the Russians, thereby
committing a crime against our country, himself.
So I’m really torn about this guy. On one hand, I thank him, but on the other,
he is a traitorous bastard. So I’ll wait
for a bit to see how this unravels before I choose a side. I'm not really sure what his plan is, or what the upshot is for him, yet. If it turns out he did this for selfless reasons to serve his country (and no, the NSA is NOT America, and turning against the NSA, who are committing crimes against America is NOT treason) then I'll be against any attempt whatsoever to try him for any crime. But I'm afraid that his reasons for doing this are far from selfless - this reeks of self-aggrandizing, money seeking behavior to me, at least right now.
*This actually happened to my folks – well, minus the whole
S&M and lesbian porn thing. They
pissed off their neighbor somehow or another back when I was a toddler, and she
decided that she would call Child Services on them and report that Dad was
abusing us. CPS showed up at the door,
threatened their way into the house, and did a welfare check. One of us boys had used the toilet and forgot
to flush, and based on that, the CPS worker wrote down that the living
conditions in the house were unclean and unfit, and my folks had to spend the
next 6 months proving that they were fit parents, all because of a bitch
neighbor and a 3 year old son that forgot to flush the toilet. The house was not unclean in any other way –
my mom was a stay at home mom, and was fastidious about cleaning the house
every day.
Funny thing...how, exactly, do we KNOW what Snowden's sharing with anyone? Oh, yeah, from the Enemedia, who heard it from our oh-so-honest-and-trustworthy government.
ReplyDeleteSo it must be true, because there's absolutely no reason for either of these entities to engage in any sort of smear campaign as regards Mr. Snowden.
Just throwin' that out there.
Agreed wraith, bit the reports that he shared this information were coming from sources who really had no reason that I can think of to lie. Putin isn't exactly on the nsa payroll, I can only assume.
ReplyDeleteUnless there's some quid pro quo going on behind the scenes I can't figure out why he'd lie...
But your point is absolutely taken and well considered.