I know what it is like to be underestimated. I don't have a degree from an Ivy league school. I don't have lots of money. I do have an IQ of 181 and a solid grasp of how things work. Put me in any situation and I can do great good or great harm depending on my mood. Snowden may be a lot like me. If that is the case, the US may be in lots of trouble. Much is being made about Snowden's past and reluctance to release more data. There may be a very good reason why he is not doing that.
Take his past. Snowden has no high school degree and there is some air of uncertainty as to if he got his GED later or not, but I find impossible to believe in this day and age any high security job would demand at the lvery least a high school diploma. But let us assume that maybe he is gifted and that the degree is worthless in this scenario. I'd rather go with that instead of thinking our government is being run by dorks who will hire literally anybody off the streets. Anybody can get through high school. If you can't, good luck with the rest of your life because you are going to need it.
He joins the Army, breaks both legs in a training accident, discharged and then goes to work for various intelligence agencies. While there he discovers how things really are (suggesting a mindblowing level of naivety) and decides to steal thousands of pages of documents because, well he can. Does anyone else have a problem letting low level drones have access to information that they could use for personal gain? The probability of this happening again is near 100%. This is the true scandal. It's not that they are snooping through our data. They have been since Project Echelon in the mid-90's started, and revealed in 2000, about the government collecting data on us. Telecommunication companies have been keeping that information for decades as well. The problem isn't the fact it is being collected. It's the fact that they apparently keep all that info in an unlocked safe.
If Snowden is as smart as he says he is, and his past would suggest, maybe he started to see things like I would: that this was a dangerous operation with great potential for massive harm to be done. He sees injustice everywhere, from bankers being set up and used for information by the CIA, to information being passed around like party favors. He finally decides to be a hero, steal a bunch of info and release it to the public. Here is him explaining why:
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things," Snowden said. "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under. ... I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
He wisely took the information, fled to a country where extradition may be harder than some, and leaked it to a British newspaper, knowing full well that the American Press is known for handing sensitive information directly back to the government with no analysis of it beforehand. CBS was caught twice doing just that resulting in jail time for an investigator in the TWA 800 case and the death of a tobacco whistleblower. Never trust the American press to cover you in today's corporate run news. Foreign press, particularly British or Irish news, are the best and that is exactly what Snowden did. So far, so good.
He leaks a bit of the information to the press, wisely goes into hiding, but not before saying this:There is much more coming. Some have made hay over this as to why not release all the information. The explanation is simple: it's his insurance policy. Some of the info is perhaps being held by a third party, perhaps the girlfriend he left behind who has been dragged into this whole sordid mess, more likely some other untraceable sort, like I would do. I know plenty of people the government would have an impossible time connecting me too and I would leave that information with them with instructions to release it should anything happen to me. And why would he fear for his life? Because he is not that stupid anymore and knows the government could disappear him at any time.
According to the laws as they stand, Snowden could be classified as an "enemy combatant," and be sentenced to death with no trial, no verdict, no proof. Worse, he could be kidnapped by mercs, and held in a black prison for the rest of his life. That is where we stand today. Do something the government doesn't like and you could die or be imprisoned forever. Does that sound like an America you want to live in?
Snowden is an American citizen. He did not do this for money. He did not do this for a political or religious cause. He did it because he says it was the right thing to do, which it was. The chance for misuse from this information is staggering. And the worst part is it doesn't actually work for the reasons they suggest.
Serial liar James Clapper has been caught twice stretching the truth. Once, before Congress when he was asked if such a program existed like PRISM and he said "No," and again by saying to the press the program helped stop two terrorist attacks in the past which recent evidence says is totally false. This program was tried before under the Project Trailblazer banner and was stopped after two years because it wasted five billion dollars of tax payer and did not produce one piece of useful information in all that time. They then slapped a new name on it, and voila, welcome Project PRISM. This information is all about control and all this talk about security is bullshit.
President Obama hit the nail on the head the other day when he said, "If you people don't trust us, we are going to be in a lot of trouble." Exactly, Mr. President. We don't trust you. Or Congress. Or the Supreme Court. OR just about anything anymore and this latest scandal is not helping. The world needs a raise. And all I hear from all areas of government is that they are more interested in knowing our deepest secrets. And now that Snowden has shined that light into the darkness in which our entire government operates, they scurry like cockroaches.
Snowden has said there more explosive documents that he could release but won't. This may be the only thing that keeps him alive. And if our government has stopped to that level, we are all really screwed.
0 comments:
Post a Comment