Meh - it may have started out as being way more banal. After all, the late 90’s were the period when the internet (as such) began to garner any interest from government in general. They were still trying to get a grip on how it could be used OR abused, since it sprang from DOD operations and wasn’t given the far wider context it was beginning to gain as the general public jumped on board. And yes - it would have been irresponsible for the government NOT to take a good hard look at what it all meant to the nation.
BUT. What they did in using 9/11 as an excuse for what we see now? You damned right, that’s a conspiracy theorist’s dream-come-true! It wasn’t done to benefit you or me or the country. It was done for profit, pure and simple. And then horridly expanded continually in order to keep expanding those profits. It’s only that they just now finally got caught out.
And I, for one, will salute Edward Snowden any old time as a national hero for outing them! Because THAT is a true patriot, as brave and conscientious as any member of our military putting our interests before their personal safety or concerns! (There might have been some better way - but if anybody around here is that smart, then why did’t they do it themselves? Ahem.)
It’s probably true that it started out that way, but it developed into something much different. I didn’t understand the point that poster was trying to make about how what Snowden did was wrong. Or what specifically he released that was wrong, and so on, but I’ve given up at this point. And looking back, with 20/20 vision, I put nothing past the politicians, cronies and lobbyists seeking new ways to get even more rich, even if something is in its infancy, so to speak. Look at the cottage industry of private education. First, cause great alarm that everything is wrong with a situation, step two, start your own program, skewing the benefits or not telling the entire story, step 3, hoodwink the public into buying it, but by calling it private education, it takes away their say, and presto, you are filthy rich without having to answer to the little asshole guy.
Congress did pass some laws that authorized some of the NSA’s programs. However, you cannot hold them solely responsible; Keith Alexander lied multiple times to Congress about his interpretation of these laws, and the FISA court found multiple times that the NSA was in violation of these laws.
Then I guess the test is whether Alexander sold out our national security interests to outside parties. By the information we’ve been seeing, looks like it got sold out to a bunch of corporations first, and then sold out (through exchanges of favors) with foreign governments.
If we apply the same test used with Bradley Manning? Then, yeah. Hang him in the public square. Except that, Manning couldn’t be shown to have jeopardized ANY national security concerns other than this huge desire for secrecy. And so, he ‘only’ got what? 35 years of his life ripped off? Using a grease for the goose measure, then we could reverse that logic and get Alexander with a per-page penalty rated against Manning’s sentence, but based on his proven lies and subterfuges before Congress.
Does that work for you? Or does it just try to negate one horrible injustice by creating another? Because, it would be really easy to get caught in that kind of thinking. And, as much as I’d like to smack him like the nasty byotch he is, it wouldn’t likely produce the open and honest society we all think we want, would it? Why not just drop him off somewhere in the Middle East and let him work it out with his ‘intelligence partners’?
