Apparently he is neither a good spy nor a good systems admin! But he appears to be a good liar so I guess there is THAT!

I don't have access to the emails I sent as the systems guy for the company I used to work for either. That doesn't mean that I was bad at my job back when I worked for them. And I couldn't tell you exactly when any of my email exchanges a year or so ago took place either. Can you? Do you remember every single email exchange you've done in the last couple of years, and exactly when they took place?

But again, who really cares? Focus on the messenger when you can't disprove the message.

You NEVER get rid of those especially those of this import. Even low level IT people KNOW that...IT work necessitates CYA...

The first thing he should have downloaded was evidence that he tried other methods....

And we have seen over and over....the man is a liar..

I guess he was too busy grabbing off the '1.7 million documents' the government said he got to grab off his emails. Or else they went through a system that was more heavily audited, such that he would have had to leave traces behind if he started grabbing off all of his emails.

But again, I don't actually care if he's a liar. If he's delusional, if he's psychotic, if he's a libertarian. Because the story isn't Snowden. It's all the government information he's releasing, not anything he says personally that matters.

A whistleblower?

GMAFB....anyone with half a brain in IT knows you ALWAYS maintain a papertrail....you NEVER get rid of the emails! He claims he could get access to every conversation you have ever had...BUT he didn't have access to his own emails? Not a Snowdenball chance in hell!

You claim not to care about him....yet here you are....defending him in a thread that IS about him!

that I don't care if he stays in Russia, goes to Cuba, comes back to the US, is exonerated, is thrown in jail.

I care about him in the sense that a lot of people who LIKE having the NSA free to spy on absolutely everything I and my fellow citizens do, spend a lot of time attacking him.

So I don't care about 'him', I care about keeping pushing to dismantle 'Big Brother'.

Obviously you DO care if anyone says anything to besmirch him or you wouldn't be here defending him now would you?

Who want to shut down the entire conversation by focusing on him.

Bad.....

What's your excuse for defending him now?

That I don't care what happens to him, but want to keep the focus on what matters, the Big Brother police state that's been building up over the last half century.

And that I think you're just fine with that police state, and that's why you keep wanting to turn it around to 'smear the messenger' in an attempt to discredit the message.

Doing JUST that....


He had the wherewithall to steal govt docs....but forgot to steal the emails that would exonerate him? Pretty fucking stupid or an outright liar.

Your only argument is that you don't believe I'm telling you the truth about my own motives, so you keep repeating 'then why are you here?' And no matter how many times I tell you exactly what I care about, you don't believe me. You might as well start saying 'I'm rubber and you're glue!'

And btw, I notice you haven't denied that you're engaging in 'smear the messenger' or that you don't agree with the police state buildup that allows the government to monitor everything you do online or by phone...

Yet in any thread that is talking about HIM there you are defending him...."but but but...its not about him"

Playground huh? My feelings are soooo hurt...

Now get off my teeter totter!

Have I stated 'he shouldn't go to jail!' Have I said 'He committed no crime!'

No, I haven't. I've said that he's smart to not to WANT to go to trial or to jail. Why should any sane individual want to get stuffed in a cage for decades? I've said he was probably capable of much of what he said he was as long as the data was collected in the first place, a good systems/DB type would certainly know how to run whatever queries they wanted to, without going through a GUI that would limit what he was after. (I don't know how tight the auditing and permissions were on the DBs, but they obviously weren't that good, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation.) And I've said that the truly important things are what he's revealed, and those need to be the national conversation.

None of those are a defense of 'Snowden' the man.

This was a thread ABOUT Snowden NOT the NSA. I happen to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time!