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Former Bush Official Lawrence Wilkerson Says Snowden Has Done a 'Service' (salon.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on Salon: Lawrence "Larry" Wilkerson, former Bush official finds the revelations made by Edward Snowden a service. In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former contractor with NSA, worked with journalists to reveal a number of mass surveillance programs. In a recent interview, Wilkerson said, "I think Snowden has done a service. I wouldn't have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it. There's a logic to what he has done that is impressive. He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security -- regardless of what people say. He has been circumspect about what he's released, how he's released it, who he's released it to."
“Don’t ever count us out, because we are the Greeks on Milos. We have the power, and we will do it.”
He added, “To hell with international law, to hell with human rights, to hell with human dignity.”
We live in a World that's falling apart now - some of it is even our fault (all those decades meddling in the Middle East over oil). China is now the largest economy in the World and with economic power, military power follows.
We have a very crowded World now and things are going to get worse as global warming takes its toll.
I'm afraid the human race will be going backwards in the sense that we'll be having more territorial and resource (fresh water, fishing rights, even arable land) wars. And we'll be dealing with more immigration from the poor countries who want a piece of our pie; which isn't growing fast enough to accommodate the great masses.
We're not headed for Star Trek type of future but a Mad Max one. And he who has the guns is going fare better.
" I wouldn't have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it."
maybe?
Pity it's only people who are part of administrations long out of power say things like this.
Edward Snowden blew the whistle on a serious abuse by government. I believe Edward Snowden is a hero for it. Government should not be spying on people. People should not fear their government, their government should fear them.
The truth lies in the middle. Harm was done. Good was done. It just is what it is.
It sounds like Ted Cruz has had his whistle blown by at least five women not named, "Heidi".
http://www.conservativeoutfitt...
http://www.thepoliticalinsider...
http://www.nationalenquirer.co...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Slashdot doesn't even get summaries anymore? Now we just have quotes from somewhere else?
Do you believe he could have prevented the U.S. government from knowing his name? Because if they knew who did it, and we the people didn't, Snowden's fate would be much, much worse than his current predicament.
Damage control for the damage control.
A feeble attempt to placate a few people who are catching on to propaganda tactics.
What are we supposed to think? "Some people in the federal government think that mass surveillance is bad so there isn't really much cause for concern or action"?
Recent stories:
NSA Wants To Dump the Phone Records It Gathered Over 14 Years"
"Whistleblower: NSA Is So Overwhelmed With Data, It's No Longer Effective"
These conspicuously attempt to dodge the simple fact that the federal government regularly operates criminally by trying to portray global mass surveillance as ineffective and in need of more funding. To say they operate criminally is an great understatement. The summation of their criminal activity is the threat of the complete destruction of freedom itself.
Snowden wasn't at all circumspect. He took a huge data dump containing data dangerous to US national security
This is the quickest way to get everything. He didn't have the time to decide which pieces he needed. Moreover, the vastness is one of the things he was whistleblowing about. Without a ton of data it would have been hard to prove.
and handed it off to a foreign national.
Do you have proof of this? My understanding is it has mostly been very select reporters who have had access and the stuff that has been release has been screened prior to release.
And he did it all because he's an attention whore. If he had done it the right way, we wouldn't even know his name.
No, he did it because he was paranoid. He was scared that if noone knew his name then it would be easy for him to just disappear. It's not like the government wasn't going to figure out who the mole was. This way, everyone else knows who the mole is too so it's much harder for him to be eliminated. Also, having a name to face makes it more believable versus the standard tin-foil hat crowd that says "our sources" and rightfully noone believes them.
If Snowden had stayed anonymous, the same bootlickers who are calling him an "attention whore" would instead being saying he was a coward for not making his name known.
He did give the data to a foreign national, largely because he knew that if he only gave it to US reporters it could be too easily hushed.
No, he did it because he was paranoid. He was scared that if noone knew his name then it would be easy for him to just disappear
I would not call it paranoya. I wod call lit very logical reasoning.
He did give the data to a foreign national, largely because he knew that if he only gave it to US reporters it could be too easily hushed.
He gave it to foreign reporters of one of our closest allies. Using "foreign national" although technically true is propaganda that makes it sound like he gave it to the military commander of one of our enemies as many people don't even know what "foreign national" even means. Why not use the truth and say that he gave "limited access to British Reporters"? Because that doesn't sound near as scary as "he gave top secret documents to foreign nationals" does.
If you look at it in a neutral way, Snowden did indeed do a service. But then he got on a plane and handed classified documentation to China and Russia.
So he started as a "hero" who exposed the violations of this administration, and days later he actually transformed himself into a traitor and a coward.