I just can’t agree where you are going and why. Those make perfect sense given the situation, tactically. And has been mentioned here and everywhere, Snowden isn’t the focus anyway. I just think you are still a little stuck in your old statist believing ways on this. I understand, but hope you pop this latest bubble.

Tow examples of how that works. The first is Monica Lewwinski. The Clinton apologists were just starting their campaign of trashing Lewinski and her character, but the blue dress was revealed and then it went back to being about Clinton.

The second example is the Zimmerman trial. The Sanford police knew there was no case, but the race baiters decided to make a cause of it and it became about Zimmerman, the child with a bright future, and race, not about self defense. Now, with the trial, we are talking about self defense again.

There are always people who try to change the subject to personality and character and the government is at the forefront of that. Forget about Snowden and whether he is traitor or hero. To me, the real issue is what is the NSA doing and who gave them permission to do that.

Oh, and by the way, Snowden was a network guy. Network guys need to have access to just about everything to do their jobs. Network guys make sure traffic is flowing and that applications are accessible. Over the years, I have had access to lots of stuff like P/R data, and criminal records. I just didn’t look for anything, but I needed access to the application to make sure it was working. If Snowden had been an application programmer he would have had access to a lot less data. There are people who are saying that the data should have been encrypted. That would have solved the Snowden problem, but probably would have caused a lot of different problems.

Basically, when sane and truthful people believe in conspiracy theories, the theories are more likely to be true. When liars, drug addicts, and people who believe in any con imaginable, trust in conspiracy theories, that is a warning sign.

One thing I don’t know and which I’m curious about: Have any of Snowden’s superiors at the NSA or the contractor been punished, demoted, or fired? You’d think that heads would be rolling everywhere for allowing him to get loose with all that information.

Which brings me to my last point: Given that the Obama administration has been doing everything conceivable to damage America, it is possible that he was indeed “allowed” to get loose?

It sounds like tinfoil hattery, but I had to mention it.

No, I haven’t fallen into any trap by the government.

Nor was I especially influenced by the Eichenwald piece. I found it after I had come to my own conclusions about the Snowden matter. And if you’ve followed the trajectory of all my pieces on Snowden, you will find that my position has been consistent from the first. All the facts as I have read them—including the ones most favorable to Snowden, those published in the leftist Guardian at the outset, in the Greenwald articles—have led me to consider Snowden a naive (at best), mendacious, dangerous man.

That does not change the fact that I don’t trust the government not to abuse the NSA programs. The two things are not mutually exclusive. But I have never swallowed any memes about Snowden. From the start I’ve done my own research and used my own reasoning, and so far, interestingly enough, I have not been proven wrong.

For example, at the outset, using just the timeline Snowden provided about his job history at Booz, plus the one Greenwald provided about when Snowden first contacted him, it was obvious to me that Snowden only got the Booz job in order to steal the information and reveal it. And just a few days ago Snowden himself admitted that was the case. If you want to see how I regarded Snowden from the start, just use the search function on the blog and read my early pieces, for example this one. Or my very first piece on the subject.

Snowden’s travel plans ever since his leak have been highly suspect as well.

Then today, we learn the US has bugged the chambers of the EU. They are outraged and justifiably so. We also find that Congress is asking question about if the NSA is creating a gun registry from registry data. That is a function explicitly outlawed by legislation. There are also now concerns the FISA court is league with the government and rubber stamping whatever they want. Congress is concerned the NSA has gone far beyond what the Patriot Act and the FISA act.envisioned.

This all must be sorted out and without Snowden it would still be shrouded in secrecy and mystery. You, Neo, have fallen into the trap the government wants you to fall into. This is not about Snowden being a hero or a traitor. It is about the domestic spying by the NSA on US citizens. Questions have been asked, but not answered, and it looks as if the NSA is compiling data on Legislator and staff and on the Executive branch. Nothing is off limits to them. Is that what we want? If it is, then we need to take definite steps to allow that. If it is not, then we have to take steps to prevent it. But, this unrestricted collection of data on all US citizens will not end well. That is where you should be paying attention and not to “Snowden: hero or traitor”. It is not about Snowden. It is about us.

Thanks for tipping us off that the NSA was collecting all our phone metadata from the carriers. You should have left it at that, providing intelligence information to our enemies? I think that would be, shall we say? drone worthy.

But I’m not the CIC, so…