Tag Archives: Edward Snowden

Peter King, Fox News, Lies — Anybody Surprised?

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) said on Fox News that the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted as well as Edward Snowden.  He accused Greenwald of threatening to reveal the names of CIA agents, something Greenwald vigorously denies.

But most Fox viewers are going to hear only King’s wild accusation and not Greenwald’s vehement (and as far as I can tell, accurate) denial.  This is a prime example of how Fox skews perceptions and polarizes this country.  There’s enough here to debate and dissect without accusing Greenwald of stuff he hasn’t done.

As for King’s anti-terror bona fides, let’s not forget his support for the Irish Republican Army.

 

Who Is This Guy?

So Michael Moore and Glenn Beck, who probably wouldn’t agree that today is Monday, are both calling Edward Snowden a hero, while Donald Trump says he’s a bad guy.

Over at the White House petition site, tens of thousands have signed a petition asking that Snowden be given a full pardon.  But only five of the 41 slides in the PRISM PowerPoint Snowden wanted released have been made public.  Would these people feel the same way if they saw the rest of the slides?  Apparently neither the Washington Post nor the Guardian believed that publishing those slides was a wise thing to do.

Just as it’s impossible to figure out the merits of our current surveillance programs without more information, I feel the same about judging Snowden.  I know I don’t feel comfortable signing that White House petition, but I wouldn’t sign one calling him a traitor either.

A couple of things jump out at me.  First, that he went to Hong Kong.  Hong Kong may be China with benefits, but it’s still, you know, China.  Second, that he didn’t finish high school.  Look, if you want to drop out of Harvard and start a company, go for it.  I just feel bad for the poor schmuck on the waiting list who would have appreciated your slot.  But finishing high school is kind of a minimum attainment in our society.  Even if you’re some brilliant computer geek, you sit there and get your credits and finish.  That unwillingness to finish high school tells me he sees himself as different, as superior, as not subject to the same rules as the rest of us.  Perhaps someone who should not have had a security clearance in the first place.   Working in anti-terrorism requires creativity, but it also requires a degree of conformity that Snowden clearly lacks.

I Doubt We’re Up to This Moment

This feels like a big moment to me, these Edward Snowden leaks, a moment when we have to make decisions that aren’t based, for either Dems or Republicans, on how we feel about President Obama.  I don’t feel that we are up to it.  After 9/11, I believe that members of both parties in Congress acted in good faith, really just wanting to do the right thing so that we wouldn’t get attacked again.  You can say they went too far with the Patriot Act, but if they did, I believe their motives were honest, maybe based too much on raw emotion, but not based on partisan politics.

I believe our current Congress has a lot more crazy people in it than the Congress sitting in the fall of 2001.  I have much less confidence in them to even try to act out of principle, much less reach the right result.

I worry that we can’t have a real debate because some Dems will rally uncritically around the President simply because he is so hated by the other side and so under siege on the IRS, Benghazi, Obamacare, AP/James Rosen, immigration, etc.     I worry that the libertarian wing of the GOP, the Rand Paul types, will use this as an excuse to make some of their more outlandish theories and beliefs part of the mainstream.

This is a moment ripe for a shift in thinking and policy one way or the other, either to accept and ratify all this post-9/11 stuff for the foreseeable future or to say, “Whoa, this tradeoff doesn’t make sense” and roll some of it back.  I just hope that the wrong people don’t control the outcome of that shift.

Leaker Reveals Himself

The person who leaked the NSA surveillance info to the Guardian and the Washington Post is 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a former CIA employer who has also done contract work for the NSA and currently works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

Snowden is currently in Hong Kong, from which he could be extradited to the U. S.  He said he is seeking asylum in a country that believes in free speech.