For those who think Snowden’s a hero…
…here’s what your hero has been up to lately.
With more to come from that team of modest, self-effacing patriots, Snowden and Glenn Greenwald; and their mouthpiece of choice, the leftist Guardian; who only have our very best interests in mind.
For those who might want a refresher course in my opinion on the subject, see this and this.
[ADDENDUM: From Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:
All nations collect intelligence on as wide a selection of allies and enemies as possible ”” and everyone knows it. Once it gets out into the open, though, each government has to express its outrage so as to keep their own citizens from asking tough questions, such as how their nation wasn’t smart enough to encrypt their own fax machines rather than buy off-the-shelf encryption.
As for Snowden, this puts a different spin on his actions. Instead of being a freedom fighter against Big Brother, this looks more like animus against the US, and a revelation that serves no other real purpose than embarrassment.
Actually, I disagree with Morrissey in one respect: this revelation doesn’t put a “different spin” on his actions. From the very start, it was clear he was going to reveal sensitive information about US non-domestic spying operations on other countries, both enemies and friends. The only thing different is that this information was published, and the information he gave to enemies has been privately tendered. But Snowden’s motives have been clear for quite some time, and they are not good. And it is my opinion that on balance, what he has done will do more harm than good.]
[ADDENDUM II: The heroics continue, as Snowden plays a cat and mouse game with Putin.
Oh, by the way, Snowden’s the mouse. My contempt for this man knows no bounds. What did he think would happen?]
The German Green blowhard, Jurgen Trittin, has suggested that Snowden be offered asylum in Europe for revealing the EU and German spying. This is the kind of thing that can be used within countries to win votes. And I doubt that Snowden even realizes that there is a Green party in Germany, much less whether they are friendly to the US. I do know that Germany broke up a radical group including 2 Tunisians after the revelations. They didn’t have any concrete terrorist plans, but I suspect the Germans might have continued watching them to see how far their networks reached and what plans they were working on before moving on them. The NSA revelations may have made that too risky.
Snowden doesn’t seem to remember that Atta and crew worked out of Hamburg. Cooperation between intelligence agencies is very important. The idiot made this more difficult.
expat:
I am not at all sure that Snowden is so very ignorant of the potential consequences of his actions. I believe he is both full of himself and motivated by anger at the US and a desire to damage it.
That latter is speculation on my part, but that speculation is based on what my gut is telling me about this man. My gut has been very very consistent on this from the first. We may never really know, but I believe that actions speak louder than words. One must posit a very VERY high degree of naivete to believe he had no idea that revealing US programs vis a vis foreign governments would not damage us. I find it hard to believe Snowden is that naive and that stupid.
I also think he wants to damage us, but I just don’t think he understands the many ways in which that can occur. Now Putin is offering him asylum if he stops damaging his friend the US. He is naive for beliving that other countries are more pure than we are. I’d still like to see him in Camp 14.
It’s beyond dispute that Snowden is, at least to some extent, harming US efforts at interdiction of electronic communications of foreign entities. On balance, it’s certainly possible that Snowden is doing more harm than good but the argument also exists that in fact, overall the opposite is true.
That Snowden is ‘full of himself’ and that, that is his primary motivation is certainly a possibility, perhaps even a probability. But a probability is not a certainty. Nor even if true, do selfish, narcissistic personal motives and even animosity toward the US necessarily confirm that prioritizing domestic concerns above foreign concerns is invalid?
It is also a possibility, though not a probability, that Snowden’s assessment of the materials in his possession have led him to conclude that the rot within the administration and agencies under it’s control is so pervasive and deep that only full disclosure, incrementally released, has any chance at stopping this administration’s perversion of needed programs.
In support of that possibility I offer:
The Federal Data Services Hub
Think NSA Spying Is Bad? Here Comes ObamaCare Hub
ObamaCare passed on March 23, 2010. After more than three YEARS, that Rep. Black’s questions remain unanswered HAS to be intentional.
Given that ObamaCare is intentionally designed to be a transition step to nationalized, single-payer (Feds) health care, The Federal Data Services Hub is obviously intended to someday apply to every US citizen. And the first prerequisite to implementing Big Brother is a database containing all relevant information on everyone.
If this doesn’t give one pause and awaken thoughts of ‘Big Brother’ like intrusion by the State, then I guess only political detention and reeducation camps will. I do know that, with just what we do know now, one has to consider that stopping the domestic surveillance supersedes concerns for our national security. Especially as, other nations assume we all spy on each other because they cannot afford to not make that assumption.
Whether intentionally purposed or not, these domestic surveillance and data gathering programs have the potential to be used as the precursor to implementing Big Brother and the concerns over revealing foreign surveillance, while valid, are acting as a distraction from determining the full extent and use of the domestic programs.
Compared to all of this, focusing upon Snowden’s probable lack of integrity is also a distraction.
I find GB’s reasoning very sound. I am not interested in Snowden the person nor in his primary motivations, confusion, naivete, whatever.
I am concerned about harm to USA operatives and programs in other lands, as I am about the tens of thousands of Afghanis that will come to grievous harm thanks to Baraq Hussein Obama. As I was after the Bay of Pigs, thanks to the Kennedys. Etc.
State actors do not seem to generate the same animus as a “little” Snowden, though they cause and have caused way more harm to way more people. OK, Snowden is a traitor; granted. What does that make Obama? Just an omelet-maker?
Don Carlos,
My concern with Snowden is that he shouldn’t be made a hero. Of course, Obama is far worse.
Geoffrey,
I agree that the degree of data collection under Obamacare is truly frightening. I worry that necessary security data collection is being used now to distract us from that.
Lest we forget, it was prior to Adolf Hitler that Weimar Germany grabbed private weapons. No doubt the 1923 putsch attempt was fresh in voters minds.
The result was that sane Germany was usurped by a syphilitic….
As the Founders could tell you: over concentration of power does in the rights of man.
At this time, we are in a functioning dictatorship… albeit a soft one… for the moment.
Barry does not enforce laws he doesn’t like.
Barry won’t prosecute villains he likes. (Corzine, et. al.)
Barry creates new law by the stroke of his pen: mandates, regulations…
Barry has suborned the USSC… Thus Roberts wrote both sides of the Obamacare ruling. (!)
Barry has the ‘goods’ on Congress — Chicago style.
Hence, the Senate is now his rubber stamp. It does not get his phone calls. They go to his sith minions — his boy-czars.
(To be a czar is to be naive and young.)
Barry has the Federal Reserve Bank printing money out of thin air — hyperinflating the money — to ‘cover’ a despotic spending tempo of Weimar proportions: 45%. (!!!!!!!)
This last detail must crush the currency — and take the government under the waves.
Mugabe on the Potomac.
What a guy!
Evil wouldn’t be evil if it didn’t do evil things.
Snowden’s motivations are a murky mud puddle. We can not know what motivates him without more information. Is he a hero? No, of course not. However, I agree that focusing on Snowden is a distraction. So is wringing hands over allies and enemies ‘suddenly realizing’ NSA spies on them. Of course the NSA and the CIA spy on them as do all the armed service intelligence agencies. And they in turn spy on us. Same as it ever was.
“Whether intentionally purposed or not, these domestic surveillance and data gathering programs have the potential to be used as the precursor to implementing Big Brother and the concerns over revealing foreign surveillance, while valid, are acting as a distraction from determining the full extent and use of the domestic programs.”
I find it difficult to believe these programs are anything other than a bid to control every aspect of our lives and punish all who may resist. Presently, trusting the intentions of DC is impossible for me. I wish it was otherwise, but that is what my gut tells me.
“Mugabe on the Potomac.”
🙁
Just as the ‘best’ way to lie is to tell a partial truth, while skillfully omitting any aspects of the truth that hinder the impression desired, so too, the ‘best’ way to implement a seditious plan is to use legal and necessary activities, that possess the potential to be leveraged in a manner that covertly advances one’s agenda.
As the activity is covert and necessarily categorized as classified, once the highest positions of supervision are infiltrated, no legal means exists for exposure.
No one can legally declassify or legally expose misuse of a classified program or activity below the status that the President has determined is sufficient. We may be assured that any domestic surveillance activities have been classified at the highest level.
By doing this, any criticism that emerges can always be deflected by pointing to the needed good the activity is purported to achieve, while minimizing and dismissing as unfounded, the possibility that other, unethical or even illegal goals may be being achieved through the activity.
The most direct evidence of a covert activity is the ‘inexplicable’ obstruction of overseer’s (legal but outside the normal chain of command) requests for ‘targeted’ information.
Knowing this however, does nothing to limit the continuance of the activity.
There is no substitute for an honest, patriotic President and administration.
Absent that honesty and loyalty, the primary limit upon the machinations and harm such a President may accomplish is determined by their and, their accomplices imagination.
I left a comment yesterday on the last Snowden thread, but it was late in the thread and I don’t know how many people saw it.
I don’t care all that much about Snowden himself. I think there may be more to this than meets the eye, and that “more” could turn out to be far worse than what Snowden did.
I think most of us here suspect that Obama is really a puppet of…somebody. He did not get where he is by his own exertions, and it is remarkable how doors have been opened for him and roadblocks removed at every point of his life.
I agree with those who think the “traitor or hero?” debate is irrelevant. I’d be more concerned with Snowden’s possible betrayal of the US government if I thought for one moment that the US government retained legitimacy with respect to the American people. It doesn’t, though–and that is a disconnect that gives the rest of it a totally different meaning.
rickl,
Obama is the tip of the sword, the nose of the camel. He is the face and the voice. There is something dark and devious that has punched his ticket to the top. Who or what is the question.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. But who are my enemies? Do I have any friends?
My President called me a bitter clinger, and he and his ilk seem to dislike me more than our foreign adversaries. They are funding the Syrian rebels who just killed a Catholic priest. I skim Atlas Shrugged daily, and I think the Islamic terrorists are my enemies, but aren’t they the same people we are assisting now?
The President’s policies will end up getting more of our military killed than anything Snowden has done. Do I think him a hero? No, but he has accomplished much good in blowing open the spying secrets that ‘everybody already knew about’.
Recall the statement in Orwell’s 1984 in that you knew that they weren’t always listening, but you never knew when they would be. But that alone was enough to keep you in line.
So let me loosen my fingers from my guns, and pick up a Bible and pray instead.
This is brilliant!
Snowden a hero? Look, these days Bostonians who hid inside their houses for a week are called “heroes”. The word has no meaning anymore. Quibbling over whether it applies to Snowden makes no sense. Your outrage is puzzling.
Snowden has done the entire world a great service. It is absolutely outstanding now that he has involved Putin and Obama in a showdown – two rotten tyrants can only harm each other.
Obama is the worst thing that ever happened to America. I am cheering for Putin on this one.
America will recover from the Russians. It will recover from what is really a joke of a spying scandal worldwide. I mean really. America may not recover from Obama. The weaker he is, the better, long term, for America and the whole world.
Of course, as I have said many time, Obama is not even the real problem. He is the symptom. The real problem is the people who voted for Obama. They are like rogue or renegade Americans. No, they are like anti-Americans (as in anti-matter). No, even better, they are like 3rd generation Rockefeller kids. They thought money just came with the universe. They’ve spent it all and are spoiled rotten. They’ve lived off the fortune (not real money but the freedom and spirit if America that made America – once – the greatest country ever) and now it is gone. They have no “substance” to them. They are truly Elliot’s Hollow Men and Women. They are, in the most literal sense, a disgrace to humanity.
If they could ever recover their dignity; if they could ever remember who they are supposed to be…we might have a chance.
But now they are lower than the lowest of the low. They, each and every one of them, are the worst people there has ever been in America, bar none. They are not just bad Americans. They are as bad as it is possible to be.
I stand with the great Allen West. “Obama said he would fundamentally transform America. The time draws near to teach this usurper and charlatan the lesson our forefathers taught King George III. We will not be ruled by arrogance and edict.”
We need more people speaking out more often like this. The straight truth, plainly and defiantly spoken by a true blue American.
May he and all like him thrive and prosper!
betsybounds Says:
July 1st, 2013 at 9:21 pm
Exactly. The US government is no longer legitimate, and that is the real story.
“The real problem is the people who voted for Obama. …they are lower than the lowest of the low. They, each and every one of them, are the worst people there has ever been in America, bar none. They are not just bad Americans. They are as bad as it is possible to be.” Mike
Well. Perhaps some perspective is needed? Otherwise, pedophiles and serial killers will be gratified to learn that they’ve moved up on the socially acceptable scale, with 65+million Americans now more despicable than they.
I’m confident that many of us know many liberals, who, other than being fully indoctrinated and manipulated into the left’s false narratives are, personally as decent a person, as any conservative.
Perhaps that reality is a bit too complex?
Remember, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
People whose motivations and intentions are good, as far as they are able to understand it… cannot, by definition be, “as bad as it is possible to be”.
GB at 10:46
Yes, 90% of the dem voters are not evil (bad). They suckle on the MSM teat and that is the problem. Its Hotel California + The Chicago Way writ large.
parker,
Yes, the MSM is, more than any other factor, the greatest obstacle we face and without a doubt, the source of the left’s power.
Dispute among patriots over Snowden somewhat echoes the question of just how malignant the Obama administration is. If not for the signs shown shown us by his support for the Muslim Brotherhood, sponsorship of the profoundly anti-American Samantha Power, his IRS targeting patriot groups for adverse treatment, etc, many of us would have been less elated by Obama’s emissaries being told to pound sand.
How much an instrument of evil has the executive branch of our federal government become? To what extent should its power be thwarted? Who has actually done more damage: Snowden or Obama? How long does it take me to weigh the facts and conclude that Obama’s reelection was far more catastrophic than anything Snowden has done?
Less than half a nanosecond.
Snowden is utterly irrelevant. He is a shiny object, a squirrel.
What is important is that he revealed a massive totalitarian project cutting across both Republican and Democrat parties to collect, store and search every single bit (pun intended) of your electronic activity for your entire lifetime. That’s where the outrage should be focused.
So far nothing has been done to curtail this project. That is where the outrage should be focused.
I don’t consider the majority of the Left’s membership (way at the bottom) to hold free will. It’s constitutionally invalid given how much brainwashing and cult indoctrination they have undergone. They are merely tools. But what that means is that good or evil can use them, that the tools themselves are not to blame.
But the tools also can’t be convinced using logic either. If the slaves are not freed, they will do as they are told. If this is somehow threatening or negative to some faction’s goals here in America, then they will either destroy the slaves (tools) or convert them by freeing them and de-brainwashing them. There are benefits and detriments to either method.
I like Glenn Reynold’s new USA Today column titled “Don’t fear the leaker:”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/07/01/glenn-harlan-reynolds-on-snowden/2477569/
Germany won’t give him asylum. Also, it appears that the Germans knew quite a bit about our data collection.
I wonder if Snowden’s applications are a form of disinformation. To not allow his enemies to predict where he wants to move by pretending to want to move to all these countries. The real one may or may not be in the list so to speak.
For a Brit you are quite dense. Wow.
Now that you mention it, who would you say was the worse person? The committed Nazi supporter of Adolfo Hitler, or the town perv or criminal?