Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Edward Snowden Says His Mission Is Accomplished

Six months after exposing the NSA's secret surveillance program, Edward Snowden sat down with a Washington Post reporter, and over meals of burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastries, explained that his personal mission has already been accomplished, reports Gawker.
“I already won," he told the Post's Barton Gellman, one of the reporters he initially approached with the leak. "As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
It also appears that Snowden is not anti-NSA, just bulk data collections. From Gawker:
Snowden says this blind bulk data collecting is his biggest problem — he believes that individual targeting based on probable cause would be more appropriate.
“I don’t care whether you’re the pope or Osama bin Laden... As long as there’s an individualized, articulable, probable cause for targeting these people as legitimate foreign intelligence, that’s fine. I don’t think it’s imposing a ridiculous burden by asking for probable cause. Because, you have to understand, when you have access to the tools the NSA does, probable cause falls out of trees.”
Allowing individuate targeting is, in my book, just as bad. That will be stretched and stretched---as all government operations are.

9 comments:

  1. People don't wake up all at once. Eventually he may come to realize that any power will be abused and expanded. For now it's good enough that he and people like him are offended enough by what is going on to do what it takes to get the mainstream to no longer be able to dismiss it as "conspiracy theory".

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    1. "People don't wake up all at once". Excellent point.

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    2. Good grief, he sounds like he's looking to appease the neocons:

      "As long as there’s an individualized, articulable, probable cause for targeting these people as legitimate foreign intelligence, that’s fine...when you have access to the tools the NSA does, probable cause falls out of trees."

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  2. I'm not sure what to make of Snowden's acts and the spying he has revealed. I don't like the goobermint spying on everyone without cause, but I suspect it might help find criminals and terrorists. As far as terrorism goes, if they'd just not allow any middle easterners or Africans or Muslims into the US for ANY reason (not even to visit), then the goobermint might not NEED to spy on us as much. BUT as long as we are stupid enough to let people from groups who are known to hate our guts and want to kill us into the country, we may NEED the goobermint to spy on every one of us. Life is hard; it's a lot harder if you're stupid. And right now those running the nation are world champions at being stupid.

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    1. Dear Anonymous @4:09 AM,
      If you're not sure what to make of Snowden's acts and the spying he has revealed, and you think we may NEED the goobermint to spy on every one of us, all the while thinking those running the nation are world champions at being stupid, rather than conniving s.o.b.'s. You have got a looong ways to go towards waking the heck Up.

      See also:
      http://thedailybell.com/news-analysis/34857/Reuters-Makes-the-Rational-Case-for-a-Surveillance-State/

      http://thedailybell.com/news-analysis/34804/Reuters-Why-Modern-Society-Must-Do-Away-With-Privacy-ASAP/

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  3. In reality, only about 1% of the information Snowdon captured has been released to the public. I don't understand why he would say he had "won", or that his "mission was accomplished", since we, the public, still have NO information about the NSA's tentacles into the money, banking, credit and financial systems.
    After all, it is likely that Aunt Sally's phone conversations are less interesting to them than knowing about where and how the MONEY is flowing.
    Sibel Edmonds has raised some valid, but highly unpopular, critical thinking questions...and is waiting to see if Snowdon rails against the manner in which Greenwald, et al are treating the information... and the 'pro-corporatist' trajectory his 'leak' seems to be headed towards.
    Here is a Roundtable Discussion on Corbett Report worth considering:
    http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-798-what-is-greenwald-covering-up-bfproundtable-02/

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  4. OOPS... I hadn't yet read your next post.... Sorry to be redundant.
    PS... I, too, have no problem with "checkbook" journalism, but am upset at the very SLOW leakage...

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  5. He should know better. Whatever, he's still a hero.

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  6. May I be lucky enough to see Snowden sitting on the Treason trial of all of the Federal politicians that called Snowden a traitor.
    AND their respective MSM mouthpieces.

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