[adrenalinelol]

Leaking classified material was sacrilege in Washington... Until someone of privilege (HRC) did it... Now the the obvious hypocrisy has been exposed, we can stop pretending there were intractable operational risks created be Edward Snowden and pardon him. Before the leaks, anyone who claimed we were turning into a police state was branded a conspiracy theorist, now it's part of the public record. Had it remained in the shadows it'd be a far scarier monstrosity than we have today.

[jonknee]

> Leaking classified material was sacrilege in Washington

Umm, more like it was standard operating procedure. How else do you think all the anonymously sourced articles in the NYT/WaPo/WSJ happen?

[adrenalinelol]

When related to the NSA/CIA collecting nearly every once of data a citizen dispense online? No, that wasn't standard procedure.

[jonknee]

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts Dec 16, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-...

> Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

[adrenalinelol]

# articles related to it prior vs. after Snowden, after Snowden would be an order of magnitude more per capita.