Posted on 06/10/2013 3:14:09 PM PDT by Fred
The UK Guardian revealed the source for its stories on the NSA phone-monitoring story (and, evidently, the Washington Post story about the PRISM Internet snooping program) is a 29-year-old IT specialist for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton named Edward Snowden.
He says he enlisted in the Army with an eye towards fighting in Iraq because “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” ended up spending three years as a CIA security technician, and voted for Barack Obama. He now claims to be deeply disillusioned about Iraq, the CIA, and Obama. He might be one of the most disillusioned people in the whole world.
He’s also dishonest, having lied to his supervisors and claimed he needed time off for epilepsy treatment, when in reality he was copying classified documents and preparing for a flight to Hong Kong, abandoning his family and girlfriend in Hawaii without telling them what he was up to. He’s holed up in a posh Hong Kong hotel now, supposedly because he knows the U.S. government can’t get him there, and because Hong Kong has “a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent.”
Yes, when I ponder the spirit of free speech and dissent, China is the first world government that pops into my mind. Snowden is evidently thinking about defecting to China, insisting that Americans have that wonderful nation all wrong, and it’s not really our enemy. He also talks about seeking refuge in Iceland, and while he makes that sound like a wistful daydream, NBC News says activists in Iceland are pressuring their government to grant him asylum, while Snowden may have underestimated the willingness of authorities in Hong Kong to hand him over to American law enforcement. There has been some speculation that he might have been working as a Chinese espionage agent all along.
How does that happen with his spotty questionably background?
NEWSFLASH
I guess you’re okay with Big Brother snooping through everything you do, say, think or pray without a warrant
NEWSFLASH
It’s unconstitutional and unacceptable
NEWSFLASH
If you knew what was right, you would be outraged at the confirmation of what the founding fathers would never dream of in their worst nightmares.
NEWSFLASH
Why are some people more outraged at the leaker than at what was leaked? It’s amazing.
I keep expecting to see the name Alex Jones in these articles. This is the kind of soul shattering stuff that he talks about on his show.
If you exhibit unusual comprehension of a task and have unique ideas on how to accomplish it you could easily find yourself in charge of the entire operation if your superiors agree with your line of thinking. That’s what happens in IT or anywhere that new ideas are in high demand.
IMHO, we’re discussing 20 year old hi technology, which isn’t so hi-tech anymore.
The parties who are getting all fired up about this entire affair should have been fired up 7 years ago, and probably about 15 years ago.
Data mining off metadata is old school.
Cloud computing, the internals of new operating systems, and neural computing are the areas where policy today needs to be closely monitored to avoid extremely criminal and unconstitutional behaviors. It’s just the education level of the vast majority of political influence lags those issues by at least 20 years.
Smoke and mirrors.
In what way?
He is a perfect tool, broke, never going to make much money, drop-out etc... So trap him with the big salary and get LEVERAGE to use against him... blackmail extortion etc.... It all worked for a while, but no more... It all stinks...Big question, why not OUT this stuff during the 2012 election where it would have done the most damage to his God Obama?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.