By the way, Snowden had no sources. He is the source of what we now know, though his detractors claim to have "known already" what everyone knows these claimants could never have accessed proof of.
There were programmers of surveillance programs, staff-line personnel at the NSA who supervised surveillance whom he never named. There were subordinates who colluded to surveil our allies whom he didn't name. Just how do you know he "revealed sources." Link proof or take it back. The only "source" Snowden revealed is the NSA.
When you reveal to your own people the breaking of constitutional laws by your government against you, and you prove -- naming programs, methods and corporate recipients of industrial espionage, another "service" the NSA provides, yes, for-profit espionage for our Wall St. boys that goes on against companies doing business for our allies -- that thereby, an ongoing governmental lawbreaking is taking place against you, and against your allies in your name, you are a whistleblower, not a traitor.
We Americans have never been safer because our Constitutional rights to privacy are being criminally stolen, our surveillance rubber stamped by a secret FISA court, and access to our Androids and Samsungs chipped in by the NSA's warehouses at point of import. We were the people Snowden was looking out for.
Obama's actions admitted as such. Obama knew we haven't been safer because Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and subjected civilians to military trials. We've learned we weren't safer when Franklin Roosevelt approved the internment of Japanese-Americans. Even President Obama's own Attorney General, Eric Holder, has refused to call what Snowden did a crime. We're not safer by demanding he be treated like a criminal.
And do you really think we're safer when President Obama—who has already endorsed the worst of George W. Bush's civil-liberties violations, the the indefinite suspension of habeas corpus and the indefinite jailing of suspects without trial -- calls Snowden a "traitor"? Or when Congress labels our homeland a legal "battleground," yet only one foreign enemy has been convicted? Or when we're told to strip out at airports? Honestly?
The official label of "traitor" only comes from the Espionage Act. But the real problem occurs not in its words but in how sloppy McCarthy types apply the word. Of the 1,500 arrests made under the law during President Wilson's war, when it was drafted, only 10 involved actual sabotage.
Richard Nixon tried use the law to retaliate against Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, who from the beginning has called Edward Snowden a whistleblower. Who should be the expert on defining whistleblowing. Have you noticed him take back his words lately?
And now all this cyber war intrigue that implicates Snowden is speculative crap meant to be some cheap populist case building by people desperate to "get" any enemy they can scapegoat with a story. We own the trans-oceanic cables to every continent. We could shut down networks if the NSA told its contractors to do so. We know how to build firewalls right and left, because my son works for a Silicon Valley company that does just that.
Our history of labeling people traitors is shameful. I'm sick of all this traitor talk.
People need to go after the 26 CEO's who are traitorously destroying American soil and water in the Dakotas. I know their names if there are any lawyers around who want to join the legal teams that should press the Justice Department, governors and AG's of the Dakotas.
= new reply since forum marked as read
