Don't let Snowden's long, strange trip take NSA off the hook.

[Bill USA]

[font size="3"]"...an honest debate isn't possible when top officials, who hold all the cards, continue to muddle facts and dodge direct answers."[/font]



http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/07/02/edward-snowden-nsa-phone-metadata-records-editorials-debates/2484925/

When Edward Snowden alerted the public last month to secret government programs that threaten to trample Americans' privacy, he cast himself as a heroic, self-sacrificing whistle-blower. His leaks were selective, the recipients were responsible news organizations.

But since fleeing the United States for Hong Kong, getting stuck in a drab no man's land in the Moscow airport and casting about the world for asylum, Snowden has looked more like a desperate man bent on revenge against his native country.

Facing charges of espionage, he has allied himself with the publish-anything WikiLeaks website, and he has spilled additional beans — about U.S. hacking into Chinese computers and spying on its European allies — that do more to embarrass the United States than to protect its citizens' civil liberties.

Snowden's self-destructive mystery tour does more than tarnish his image. It threatens to short-circuit the useful debate sparked by his original revelations. The government can use the flawed messenger to divert attention from his alarming message about two National Security Agency programs, one that targets the contents of foreign e-mails, at times sweeping in messages from Americans, and another that vacuums up domestic phone records by the billions.
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