Been following your posts on this topic as yours is an opinion I've long respected here on FR.
I honestly don't think there's more to this than meets the eye. Snowden blew the lid off the NSA spying on you and I via the internet, social media, facebook, etc.. etc.. etc.. The NSA has HUGE data correlation capabilities, many of which make Hadoop pale by comparison.
Snowden's upset (rightfully so..) that our Government is spying on us, the very American's and Citizen's that the same Government is supposed to protect and in the process, leave us alone. (Not spy on us.)
I really think if Snowden had any "secrets" to our intelligence gathering capabilities, he'd have been "disappeared" by now.
If anything, our Government is trying to cover its tracks by making Snowden the bad guy - when the Government itself "is the bad guy." I think most people see through that facade.
Everything else that's transpired these last few weeks has been nothing less than an attempt to embarass America and specifically, AMERICANS for being so naieve that our Government would never spy on us. We accuse (rightly..) other Governments of spying on their citizens. China is a prime example of spying on its citizens via the internet. In the same breath, many American's defend our Government saying what China does could never happen here.
Guess what? It has. It started under Echelon during the Clinton Administration, grew under Bush and has mushroomed and been exposed under Obama.
PRISM isn't "new." IMO it's simply a maturation of technologies, information gathering processes, and data correlation technologies all brought together under a single program to monitor us.
No, I'm not paranoid. It's happening. If you're read anything I've posted since being here in 1998 I'm about the last person on FR who buys into conspiracy theories. On this topic, I happen to have some expertise on how the technologies the Government uses can be exploited to do the things they are.
Back to Snowden: at this point, he's nothing more than a tool for our Intel community rivals to embarass the USA. Those politicians who accuse Snowden of "treason" who should be "hanged" are doing nothing more than putting their thumb in our eyes in an attempt to blind us to what's really going on.
Sadly, some of those same politicians I had much respect and admiration for, but not anymore. Not now that they've exposed their true feelings towards you and I, the American People.
Respectfully,
USC.
“Guess what? It has. It started under Echelon during the Clinton Administration, grew under Bush and has mushroomed and been exposed under Obama.”
Echelon was started during the Truman years and has probably evolved to what we are seeing and hearing.