Demonizing Edward Snowden: Which Side Are You On?

[kpete]

JUNE 24, 2013
DEMONIZING EDWARD SNOWDEN: WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
POSTED BY JOHN CASSIDY
From John Cassidy at the New Yorker (quoting Thomas Drake who gets it exactly right)

"To get a different perspective on Snowden and his disclosures, here’s a portion of an interview that ABC—the Australian Broadcasting Company, not the Disney subsidiary—did today with Thomas Drake, another former N.S.A. employee, who, in 2010, was charged with espionage for revealing details about an electronic-eavesdropping project called Trailblazer, a precursor to Operation Prism, one of the programs that Snowden documented. (The felony cases against Drake, as my colleague Jane Mayer has written, eventually collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.)

INTERVIEWER: Not everybody thinks Edward Snowden did the right thing. I presume you do…

DRAKE: I consider Edward Snowden as a whistle-blower. I know some have called him a hero, some have called him a traitor. I focus on what he disclosed. I don’t focus on him as a person. He had a belief that what he was exposed to—U.S. actions in secret—were violating human rights and privacy on a very, very large scale, far beyond anything that had been admitted to date by the government. In the public interest, he made that available.

INTERVIEWER: What do you say to the argument, advanced by those with the opposite viewpoint to you, especially in the U.S. Congress and the White House, that Edward Snowden is a traitor who made a narcissistic decision that he personally had a right to decide what public information should be in the public domain?

DRAKE: That’s a government meme, a government cover—that’s a government story. The government is desperate to not deal with the actual exposures, the content of the disclosures. Because they do reveal a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal with terrorism—far beyond." http://nyr.kr/1a9fHeQ



.....

the rest:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/demonizing-edward-snowden-which-side-are-you-on.html#entry-more

[99th_Monkey]

1. Given Daniel Ellsberg, Watergate, and the Church Committee Hearings

You'd think with all that relatively recent history out there in the public domain,
for reference, that Drake's observations would register deeply and widely with
the general populous. Small wonder the Neo-cons hate education so much.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. Keeping people ignorant though the destruction of public education is surely a plot by the right.

Not to mention their well-financed advertising campaign to convince millions of Americans that they are against what they, in fact, are for and vice-versa. Polls repeatedly show that if you don't call them "liberal," liberal ideas and policies are favored above those of the right, but with so much of the news being owned by right wingers, the public is expertly manipulated.

[Coccydynia]

3. President Obama's Race to the Bottom

with Arne Duncekin isn't anything to brag about. Their embracing of the Sharter School Scam is an embarrassment as well.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

4. Oh, for a sec I thought someone named Sharter had done something! Charter school, right?

Yeah, 99% of the time just a money-making scheme. Arne Duncan--such a poor choice for a Democratic president to have made.

[Coccydynia]

6. That was my bathroom humor coming through.

I don't know if you are familiar with the term shart. But I find it appropriate here.

[JackRiddler]

5. Drake is the man!

[ucrdem]

7. DUPE THREAD

Duplicate thread, already posted by catherina in GD, link here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3086038

[Liberty Belle]

8. I agree 100% with Benjamin Franklin:

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty NOR safety," Franklin said.

Snowden is a hero and a whistleblower who should be praised, not prosecuted.

Moreover as a journalist I am deeply concerned over spying on journalists in particular. Associated Press has reported that it is already finding a chilling effect among sources afraid to speak to their reporters since disclsoures of the spying on phone and Internet records of their reporters.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech. Franklin also warned against efforts to silence the media and the people:

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech."

[snot]

10. Snowden, because he's on my side.