tsai3904
06-12-2013, 05:54 PM
Why I Don't Care About Edward Snowden
Hero or traitor? The White House would love to distract us from its actions.
Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? I don't care. You read right: I don't give a whit about the man who exposed two sweeping U.S. online surveillance programs, nor do I worry much about his verdict in the court of public opinion.
Why? Because it is the wrong question. The Snowden narrative matters mostly to White House officials trying to deflect attention from government overreach and deception, and to media executives in search of an easy storyline to serve a celebrity-obsessed audience.
For the rest of us, the questions seem to be:
Are the two programs revealed by Snowden legal and constitutional?
Are the programs effective? The government says yes, but most Americans don't trust government. The Obama administration claims National Security Agency spying helped foil a plot in New York, but that claim has been convincingly disputed.
What else is the government doing to invade our privacy? Until a few days ago, paranoids were people who claimed Washington had cast a vast electronic net over our communications. Who isn't a bit paranoid now?
Why did the U.S. government for years debunk what they called a myth about the National Security Agency seizing electronic data from millions of Americans?
Why did the leader of the U.S. intelligence community mislead Congress in March by answering a question about the program in the "least untruthful manner" -- a phrase that would make George Orwell cringe.
More:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-i-don-t-care-about-edward-snowden-20130612
Hero or traitor? The White House would love to distract us from its actions.
Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? I don't care. You read right: I don't give a whit about the man who exposed two sweeping U.S. online surveillance programs, nor do I worry much about his verdict in the court of public opinion.
Why? Because it is the wrong question. The Snowden narrative matters mostly to White House officials trying to deflect attention from government overreach and deception, and to media executives in search of an easy storyline to serve a celebrity-obsessed audience.
For the rest of us, the questions seem to be:
Are the two programs revealed by Snowden legal and constitutional?
Are the programs effective? The government says yes, but most Americans don't trust government. The Obama administration claims National Security Agency spying helped foil a plot in New York, but that claim has been convincingly disputed.
What else is the government doing to invade our privacy? Until a few days ago, paranoids were people who claimed Washington had cast a vast electronic net over our communications. Who isn't a bit paranoid now?
Why did the U.S. government for years debunk what they called a myth about the National Security Agency seizing electronic data from millions of Americans?
Why did the leader of the U.S. intelligence community mislead Congress in March by answering a question about the program in the "least untruthful manner" -- a phrase that would make George Orwell cringe.
More:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/why-i-don-t-care-about-edward-snowden-20130612