| >Correct me if I'm wrong You are and it would take a lot to correct that statement. I'd start at the timeline:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/timeline-ed... Most of what Snowden revealed did not relate to domestic spying overreach. Hell, he wasn't even in China for a week before he revealed NSA programs that spy on the Chinese. Snowden has done more damage to his cause than the government ever could, and it's not for lack of trying. His credibility as a whistleblower has been fatally harmed by choosing to leave the country: not only did he leave, but he went to China and then to Russia, taking an encrypted hardrive with him! You'd have to be really stupid to think the Chinese and Russians have not copied every single piece of information he had, even the information that The Guardian has decided not publish yet because of the damage it could cause. At this point, he is a spy from every angle you look at it. Between revealing foreign collection activities, giving China and Russia loads of classified information, and fleeing from the U.S. to China and then Russia, there's no case to be made for him being a whistleblower. He blew the whistle on a few domestic programs and that's a very good thing. But that is such a small part of everything that Snowden did. Still, in total disregard of the facts, some will consider him a whistleblower and a hero. He is every bit as much of a hero as Edward Lee Howard and I have little doubt he will meet the same fate. |
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