...or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson......

Patrick Henry would have run to another country!

Won't it?

Not you or the other detractors.

Poll: Most think Edward Snowden should stand trial in U.S.

Most Americans – 61 percent - think Snowden should have to stand trial in the United States for his actions. Far fewer – 23 percent - think he should be granted amnesty. Republicans, Democrats, and independents all agree on this as well.


Meanwhile, 31 percent approve of Snowden’s actions, while most, 54 percent, disapprove. Majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents disapprove.

Americans are divided as to the impact on the country from making the NSA program public. While 40 percent think the disclosure has been good for the country, 46 percent think it has been bad.

When asked to come up with a word that describes Edward Snowden, nearly a quarter volunteer either traitor or a similar word that questions his loyalty to his country, while 8 percent say he is “brave” or “courageous” or “a hero”. Just 2 percent volunteered that he is a patriot or patriotic, and another 2 percent say “terrorist”.

First of all, all three of them were deeply involved in creating and governing the country. All three represented their neighbors and were chosen by them.

Snowden, on the other hand, accepted a job where he swore an oath to not disclose anything -- instead he INDISCRIMINATELY stole whatever he could -- and has counted on others to release just the things that should be released. ie he depended on their agenda being infallible. I believe the various people in government when they say that this has harmed the country diplomatically. I believe it because of stories like Germany still having an uncomfortable relationship that started then with Obama.

Benedict Arnold might be a better choice - he too though he was doing the right thing in giving information to the British. (and being angry that he did not get the credit he thought he deserved.)

You have to to get a clearance.

There is no dispute about this.

Some things can be foregone for democracy, but oaths? Security clearance?

If people stop toeing the line this whole Military-Industrial-Surveillance Complex will crumble!

I apologize for the misapplication.

But it raised an issue that we were pretty well ignorant and placed it in the national discussion where it belonged. If he feels that that was worthwhile than there you go - and presumably he does.

Bryant

There were major debates in the Senate and Dodd wanted to filibuster a bill to make FISA legal retroactively. There were major campaigns to try to stop the bill here and on Daily Kos. Far more than has happened since Snowden.

Mentioning that history is to point out that the NSA phone data that was the thing that most disturbed people with Snowden's leaks was explained in complete data - what it was, how it could be processed and how it could be used. It was also a big media story -- starting in 2005 with the Risen article on FISA that the NYT held back in 2004 for fear of raising it right before the election.

Snowden leaked other things -- including US spying on other countries and results of other countries' spying that the US was given. These are NOT the things that most people were concerned with, but they are what hurt the US.

I can live with that.

Frankly, given the shift in Obama's foreign policy, much of which was explained today, I would think you would not want the US/Obama reputation damaged in such a way that it makes diplomacy harder.

Arming Syrian rebels, a threefold increase military operations in Africa and sending mercenaries to Afghanistan to prolong our occupation directly contradicts what Obama says he intends to do.

not just their country. Some people go to jail after blowing the whistle.

If you look at it as what's in it for them, no of course it doesn't make sense. The idea is that they are doing it for a cause greater than themselves.

Apparently, they seem to think that what he revealed is a terrible threat to all the wonderful and humanitarian acts they perform. Not to mention they can bludgeon congress into giving them and their bosses more money to "protect" us.

I have a lot of difficulty with Snowden and his motives and what he has/has not done. For someone so invested in "transparency," it seems to me that there is a lot of murky going on. At some levels, he has drawn attention to the flaws of the Patriot Act. On other levels, he does not come across as trustworthy to me. I realize my reaction is a gut reaction but it is a reaction that has kept me out of difficulties during my life. If this is not about the messenger, as some so vehemently insist, then I would like those people to stop insisting that everyone line up and call him a hero. I don't know how he could have not caused as many problems as he is purported to have addressed. It is counterintuitive to believe that such a scattershot approach could be controlled. I just don't think he is a knight on a white horse. I don't understand his motives nor his methods. And that's pretty much my thoughts on the matter. I have yet to see an argument that can put me to ease with the man.

And if I ever form an opinion, I will likely not express it on DU, since that opinion, no matter how nuanced or uncertain, would make me either a Snowden-loving libertarian or an Authoritarian. There is sadly not any room for shades of gray.

Hell, I don't even want to ask questions to get a clearer picture!

Snowden threads. I think that there is more than enough that no one out here knows with certainty and I don't think the triune of Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange are totally forthcoming. The ground keeps shifting as does the information.

They could kick him out any time they want.

Snowden may or may not be a double agent, patsy, or manchurian candidate, but he's definitely somebody's operative and when you add in the exquisite timing of the "leaks" you have a rather impressive organization. Whose, I'd love to know.

Many may have known or strongly suspected this long before but a "Flash/Bang" was required to bring the whole mess out of the shadows.
I may not agree with the planning,timing or possible even the motive but sooner or later somebody had to do it.

but nobody seemed to notice. Personally I think that was the objective, or one of them.

Or is it just me that isn't happy with this every phone conversation, every keystroke stuff?

That is still a huge amount of information and if analyzed for an individual will provide a huge amount of information --- most importantly identifying "networks" this individual is in. (That it is saved allows the government to look back to see what a newly identified threat is doing. NOTE they need to go to the FISA court to get the records.)

I really do not get why some people worried about personal freedom have decided that Putin's Russia is good.

Trust me, I wont. Like all other news services RT should be considered as only one data point.
In this case RT was handy. Would it have been more trust worthy if it was MSNBC?
Should CBS be trusted as the only data point?

Were I to take the stand point that the audio of every phone conversation and every key stroke was recorded and could point to a White-paper showing how it could be done, would that prove that it is being done?

Like I said, RT was handy.

"I really do not get why some people worried about personal freedom have decided that Putin's Russia is good."

...more of them don't appear to be as concerned about corporations such as Google being able to track people online as they are with the government.

But hay if were going to bring up everything that's wrong with our new surveillance state this OP would turn into a rather large book.
Did I mention License plate scanners?
Speaking of license plates, last year I bought a car.
My E-mail and snail mail abounds with car sail adds, insurance flyers, maintenance offers.
Did I mention Cell Phones and GPS tracking?
And then there is those gosh darned......................

Oh well must be that theres a little bit of Tea Bagger in me.
Shoot first, aim latter and the gubberment just got in the way.

Whoops, just got a reminder. Forgot to mention tracking cookies.

I am of the opinion that news ain't news anymore. It's opinion.
There, that's news.

You need to look at more than one source on almost any topic if for nothing else than to take out the 'coloration'.
Heck, on some topics even local news can take on political bias.

A given story if reported by...
Fox will almost always be slanted fabrication.
XYZ either overblown, puffed up or under reported.
CNN will likely be wrong.

The more complex the topic, the more it may be distorted.

Sorry if I see it my way but RT is just one data point and must be verified by other sources.

RT is state television and so is rightfully viewed with suspicion.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Where do uncaptured mouse clicks go?[/center][/font][hr]

RT can occasionally offer an alternate "opinion" of news, to be kind call it viewpoint.
Frequently the same can be said of our beloved corporate media.

Re. Uncaptured mouse clicks. They go to the same place un-recovered printed pages and orphaned segments go.
Digital Valhalla.

because Obama

but it was the Dem house and Senate that wrote the bills in 2009. So Obama doesn't get all the credit; most of it goes to the US electorate that elected him and other Dems in Nov. 2008.

and nobody cares. That's the payoff.
















For the impaired.

many steerage class passengers actually didn't make for the the lifeboats as they apparently presumed that access to the lifeboats was part of the more expensive fares. The crew didn't bother to enlighten them, as it made things more orderly.

It's funny how people will not claim their own basic rights because they assume that they do not own them.

of Americans that were spied upon, which obviously tells the lie that they aren't spying on Americans. Additionally, once we know the names, we will know whether they are doing this to "keep us safe from terrorists" or if there is another motive.

I look forward to the list. I think it will be the fireworks.

It's what he disclosed to foreign countries that makes some of us uncomfortable.
And the timing of those disclosures.
And the implicit assumption on the part of his boosters that every act of spying by the US on foreign countries is immoral, an attitude that certainly was NOT shared by, say, Patrick Henry. George Washington was our first spymaster, and he considered spying to be extremely important. There's a statue by City Hall in NYC to Nathan Hale, who was a spy for the US in the Revolutionary War. Nathan Hale would certainly not have approved of Snowden.
There is a very deliberate conflation of what he revealed about domestic spying with what he revealed about our foreign intelligence and its capabilities, as if they are the same issue and as if both are unconstitutional. This betrays a bottomless ignorance or, more likely, a deliberate intention to disable the US's spying capabilities by people who think everything the US does is wrong. There is no question that what Snowden has done has accomplished the latter. He ran because he KNOWS that what he did was completely illegal and would land him in jail, and he is depending on people not being able to distinguish the one from the other.
The way the debate is framed in the tech world especially, which is infested with libertarians, is that everything the NSA is doing is wrong. This is plainly ridiculous. We would never have won WWII in the time it took without the ability to crack both German and Japanese codes. That's signals intelligence. That's what the NSA does. Distinguishing that from code-cracking to hack domestic transmissions over the Internet doesn't take a big intellectual effort, but it certainly takes a little more than that displayed by those who indiscriminately give Snowden and everything he has revealed a big fat endorsement.
I have said before and will say again: his domestic disclosures are a deliberate distraction from what he revealed about the US's foreign spying. The former are a cover for the latter, which was always the real point of what he did, and the reason he is now in Russia as a "guest" of the FSB.
He's a defector, pure and simple. If he is returned to the US it will be in handcuffs, and he will never spend another day of his life in freedom if he does. He knows it, and he knows why, and he knows it has precisely nothing to do with the NSA's domestic spying or its constitutionality.

Your ruminations are plainly ridiculous.

Feel free to ignore them. Doesn't make them go away.

/ignore list.

if you think clearly about what has happened in the last 12 months, it is clear who has benefited from snowden's betrayal of america

he is not a whistle blower, he is a man who gave security secrets to a dangerous enemy, and putin has gone fairly power mad as a result

as far as snowden's motives, it's well documented that he's a classic libertarian/racist/obama hater and those guys will cut off nose to spite face every time

I would love to hear an interviewer ask him why he said that.
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IMHO the media wants a good spy story to sell in a crashing news industry & this apparently trumps good common sense

as for DU i have no idea why any progressive would support this dude, snowden wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire

country "of his choice", before he released the information is not too bright

does NOT have an extradition treaty with the U.S. before releasing the information.

he appears to have ended up precisely where he could do the most harm to american interests

i don't think we need to pretend to believe this was a wild coincidence