He was a traitor only to the NSA, not to the constitution. And as for foreign policy, i’m glad he revealed the we listen to Merkel’s phone, that we have reciprocal agreements where foreign nations spy on our citizens while we spy on theirs, etc.
As I see it about 90% of our foreign policy is now conducted in secret, in direct opposition to what most Americans think is right. The Secret regime allows this. This current war has lasted 3 times longer than WWII and shows no sign of stopping.
We have been fighting so long we are now switching sides and fighting WITH Al Qeida in Syria, Libya, and Egypt.
This is all enabled by our massive secrecy regime. I think its way past time for some disinfecting sunshine.
I’m reminded of a documentary about the rise of the 3rd Reich told from the German perspective. In the documentary was a letter from a German citizen who complained that “The Gestapo tells us of all these threats we face but treat us as if these threats were in our own homes”.
Snowden is a traitor, on par or worse than the Walkers. Good people will die because of him. Many probably already have.
Whether phone billing records (what’s getting all the attention) are kept in big databases by telcos where they can be subpoenaed daily, or in big databases by the NSA where they just query at will, the fact is that the data exists whether or not it sits in one place or another. What matters is what’s actually -done- with the data. Good people can argue that one or the other is better or worse. There’s no evidence that there has been any actual misuse of these billing records. To me... I’m not sure what a misuse might be. Looking up the called numbers of random Americans for no reason tells them... What?
If the NSA didn’t have it, some dweeb at the phone company still does. Again... The data exists. What matters is what things are done with the data. Is that dweeb at the phone company a threat to me? Maybe? Though I’m not sure how.
I’m just a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing. Seems to me this is all exactly the sort of basic data that, if nobody WAS collecting it, we’d all be infuriated at their incompetence. At a minimum, we should expect that the NSA should be able to track back phone calls when they find a hot number in the field to see who they’ve been talking to. Should they not? Really?