.... on the Snowden/NSA thing over the last few months on NPR. For the most part, they were relatively balanced.
To this report I say "so fucking what?". The government/NSA will claim that the "small" collateral damage caused by their activities is "justified" by the benefits thereof.
I say the same applies here, and also that if the NSA hadn't told wholesale lies and violated the constitution recklessly, none of this would have happened. If they would have treated previous whistleblowers with a modicum of respect instead of destroying their lives and careers, none of this would have happened.
And lastly, there is no evidence that any amount of surveillance by the NSA will ever stop a single terror plot. It didn't stop Boston, and they had not only their dragnet data but TWO SEPARATE WARNINGS FROM ANOTHER GOVERNMENT.
The fact is, they already have more shotgunned data than they could ever hope to analyze effectively. They are off the rails and Snowden did the right thing.