Laz, I would imagine the moral dilemma over Edward Snowden and his actions could be likened to the Founding Fathers.
They broke the law too, but they felt they answered to a Higher Power, and that liberty for them and unborn generations was worth more than life.
Many of the firebrands of the American Revoultion were clergymen, so the whole moral dilemma matrix is nothing new.
I come down on the side of applauding Mr. Snowden’s actions.
Our government exceeded the bounds of its authority, knowingly, willingly, and multiple times, without regard to our Constitutional rights or legal limits put in place by law.
Further amplifying this theme is the following article from today, show that the NSA can listen in on our phone calls on an anlayst’s whim, warrants be damned:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3031810/posts
Lead paragraph from the source article:
“The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”
Note also this chilling paragraph from the source article:
“Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls — in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established “listening posts” that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, “whether they originate within the country or overseas.” That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.
William Binney, a former NSA technical director who helped to modernize the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network, told the Daily Caller this week that the NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. “They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that’s what they record,” Binney said.”
The drip, drip, drip technique of disclosures in now in effect.
If this government would purposely use the IRS top target political thought it did not agree with, there is no question it would use telephony and internet data against its perceived enemies as well.
The real moral dilemma is not about Edward Snowden.
The real moral dilemma is whether we understand that it is time to install new guards for our liberties, since the present ones have proven tyrannical, and what we are going to do about it.
Yours is the single most salient, cogent point on this thread -- my article included.