Comments on: Snowden’s story: how much veracity is there in “Verax”?

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:58:57 +0000

Weren’t open: correction.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:57:41 +0000

“Investigate journalism is worse than dead, it’s a travesty of its former self.”

It’s always been this bad. It was just not that easy to tell because the sources were open and the internet wasn’t around to use data mining or open crowd source analysis.

By: artfldgr

artfldgr — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:24:08 +0000

just to be clear: The “right to privacy” protects the taking of human life through abortion, but not the phone call of the mother who sets the appointment.

thanks Blackmun

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:34:47 +0000

There are a lot of evidence about Leftist operations which people don’t know about it.

I find it amusing that people are speculating more about Leftist hit jobs now a days, when there is thin to non existent evidence suggesting it, than they were in the past when such things were already history and de-classified.

I wonder if people’s paranoia results from their unsure uncertainty with Leftist methods. They didn’t see it with the Left 1 year or 10 years ago, so they wonder if they are getting set up now by whatever.

That’s not a particularly good strategic position to be in. Always reacting to Leftist antics, real or imagined, while ignoring what else is going on.

If everything is a Leftist or Communist or Chinese or Russian plot, then what was going on in the US 10-30 years ago? 30-60 years ago?

Do people think such things were non existent and did little to no damage to the US?

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:30:36 +0000

“a fifty-ish bureaucrat finally and absolutely outraged by the perversion that a perfectly viable intelligence-gathering technique has been put to by the current administration.”

Older people are more likely to toe the status quo line. If they did not, the NSA would destroy them. Like they did that other guy who talked (but never presented evidence) about NSA surveillance methods.

By: JJ formerly Jimmy J.

JJ formerly Jimmy J. — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:19:28 +0000

Great comment, expat. Your input on this issue has, IMO, been very much on point.

By: Darrell

Darrell — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 02:11:35 +0000

Hawaii is expensive, I would not be surprised if he got a COLA stipend on top of his 122K base salary, quite plausible. Civil servants get one based on location, I would think the contractors do it also.

By: Ed Bonderenka

Ed Bonderenka — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:19:50 +0000

If you paid Snowden 200k and his associates 122k, that’s the number you’d say you paid him, just to keep peace in the labor force.
Snowden might have claimed 200k just to stir it up, also.

By: Sgt. Mom

Sgt. Mom — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:42:34 +0000

One of my on-line hangouts is Rantburg, where a fair number of commenters and contributers have a background in all kinds of arcane arts – like IT, the military, intelligence analysis, and the people with big brains there are kind of wary about Snowdon. There are things that in their experience, just don’t add up. He’s fairly young, and a contract employee, who he went to in order to break his ‘big scoop’ is … curious. (Glenn Greenwald, and the Guardian – the Guardian, whose detestation of all things establishment American is notorious…) The timing is also convenient. I hate to sound so paranoid – but things are getting wierd. I would have put a lot more credit in Snowdon as a whistle-blower if he had been a career intelligence-IT guy with a long career in the intelligence agencies, a fifty-ish bureaucrat finally and absolutely outraged by the perversion that a perfectly viable intelligence-gathering technique has been put to by the current administration.
My daughter (thirty-something two-hitch Marine) is wondering exactly who in higher echelons of power benefits from the news of these revelations, long-term. I wonder – if he wasn’t a plant to begin with,

By: expat

expat — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:59:26 +0000

Egomaniacs like Snowden are really easy to play. Snowden said he had tried to tell co-workers about the problems with massive data collection but was ignored. Just imagine how he would respond if a foreign operative started paying attention to him and fed his ego. Now we know that Russia says he should apply for asylum. China has a weapon to use if we push back on their hacking empire. America suffers from this leak because it is likely to make policy changes based on panic reactions or base political motives, not on a thoughtful assessment of any abuses and effective means to combat them. It also diverts attention away from another big problem, namely how political correctness and overconfidence in massive data collection turn our attention from possibly more effective means of fighting terrorism.

I don’t trust the Obama administration because everything is weighed through political lenses. I suspect we will have more damage control than problem solving, much to the detriment of both our liberty and our security.