Considering the quality of life that Snowden can look forward to?
He would have been better off not fleeing.
If he felt that his whistleblowing was Ellsbergian?
That it carried such weight and merit that the good of the nation was at stake?
He needed to step up and accept whatever came his way. It’s called principle.
He felt he could do so-- and dictate the revelatory terms.
I’ve not ever seen where this magical thinking could work-- outside of action/adventure flics.
Snowden’s fate is of his own choosing.
And he’s made poor decisions at every juncture.
An obtuse comparison-- but has some relativity:
As one oppressed by government, Rodney King was a martyred character for a time.
And over time?
He simply reverted to being Rodney King.
Just Rodney King. Ordinary.
Which is the absolute best that Edward Snowden can hope for.
This^ If Snowden had just leaked information on the questionable domestic stuff that would have been one thing, but he also leaked information on overseas operations that are what the agencies involved are suppose to be doing and that is where he went a step to far.
And I find your justification to be specious for two simple reasons: Americans have not given consent to this “capability”; and it is too simply abused.
The NSA needs to cut back its activities and be accountable for its searches. Otherwise, we surrender our freedom to communicate.
The domestic information he released isn’t the subject of this article, the foreign intelligence efforts he leaked information on are and they are what Doremus is talking about.
I also think there is a much larger issue here: The militarization of our “Homeland”.
The expanded NSA activities are accompanied by the mission creep of the DHS and TSA. And the money being poured into state and local police departments for guns, tanks, etc. could be spent better for jobs outside of our arms and defense industries.
But politically powerful forces want more and more surveillance of Americans and further militarization of American society. We need to ask: WHY?
The Social Democrats switched its position after joining the coalition government last winter. Until that moment they supported asylum for Snowden, and now they defy the clear preference of their party members out of deference to US pressure. If it were not for party discipline (which is essential in parliamentary democracies) there would be a large majority in the Federal Parliament in favor of asylum.
It is unlikely that “only Glen Greenwald knows how these things should be done”. But he seems to be better informed about German politics (on a simple factual level) than Steve from NC.
Believe me: whatever information the US might have received from spying on Germany has been offset many times over by the almost complete destruction of trust and public support for other US policies. There is still government support for the US , but the general public is a different story. And even the pro-US Foreign Minister Steinmeier has switched from using words like “partnership” and “friendship” to the word “relationship”; something which sounds small, but was well noted in all diplomatic circles.
The first casualty will probably be TTIP (or TAFTA; if you prefer), and there will be others to follow.
Weighing in from an IT perspective-- the technical description and variables above are spot-on accurate.
While my company maintains it’s own data- and mailserver center on-site at our Houston HQ-- our webserver is located in Toronto.
That there are a few email accounts setup on the webserver to handle delivery of contact and/or comment input from website form posts-- that forward those results to our on-site mailserver for routing internally-- makes the likelihood that all of our email traffic is subject to sifting as the standards are currently configured.
The oversimplification of the issue for public/media consumption and ginning-up outrage-- is one that Greenwald has managed well-- and to his advantage.
Yes again. The Special Committee wanted to start their first session after the summer break with questioning Greenwald, who had agreed to that procedure previously, but now has rescinded his agreement.
Obviously, there is no way for a German parliamentary committee to subpoena an American living in Brazil, so that will be the end of it.
My pleasure. Unfortunately, thorough reports on non-US countries are not among the forte of American media, and that includes even the New York Times and CNN… Unless there is an election, a war, or in the case of Germany some Neo-Nazi thuggery it is pretty hard to make the cut for any mainstream US media.
LOL, yeah, you have a point. At least there is PBS, and, honestly, the NYT is not that shabby on US politics. And, obviously, I like getting some information from this site as well.
Truth be told, European coverage of US politics leaves much to be desired as well. The quantity is significant, but the understanding behind the sheer quantity is sometimes cringeworthy.
