{"id":10417,"date":"2013-06-11T02:27:29","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T09:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10417"},"modified":"2013-06-11T02:27:29","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T09:27:29","slug":"if-snowden-then-who-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/11\/if-snowden-then-who-else\/","title":{"rendered":"If Snowden, Then Who Else?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican politicians and wonks have been telling us the the leaker(s), of the Version and PRISM scandals had to be someone high in the NSA, possibly with close links to Obama himself, as they attempt to conflate these issues with their non-issue sandals of Benghazi and the IRS.  That the leaker was an IT tech, now working for a government contractor, no less, raises far greater concerns than what he actually leaked.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"11Snowden\"The man who some U.S. officials say caused enormous national security damage by leaking details of top-secret surveillance programs hid Monday in plain sight, waiting out his fate in a Hong Kong hotel room as Justice Department officials began what is likely to become a criminal investigation.<\/p>\n

Edward Snowden, 29, acknowledged in an interview published Sunday by the Guardian newspaper<\/a> that he was the source of leaks detailing U.S. surveillance programs that collect records on domestic telephone calls and overseas Internet activity in the global hunt for terrorists and criminals.<\/p>\n

The former CIA employee who most recently worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton — working with the National Security Agency — said he did it to end what he sees as an excessively intrusive surveillance system, the Guardian reported.<\/p>\n

"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to<\/strong>," he told the paper\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <CNN<\/a>><\/p>\n

Karen Finney and her panel explored Snowden’s acts and intent.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s certainly a tangled web, isn’t it. There can be no doubt that Snowden broke the law. He probably has no defense as a whistleblower, because he did not reveal anything that is illegal. Nevertheless, he has done a valuable public service by bringing to public attention activities that should be illegal. He apparently took care not to reveal anything that would endanger intelligence operatives or foreign sources. Therefore, I think we can take his assertions about his intent at face value. He has pointed out the need for a public debate about how to protect our security and provide us safety, without sacrificing our core values that make our security worth defending.<\/font><\/p>\n

What concerns me more than what Snowden revealed is this.   A low level IT technician for a government contractor has access to <\/font>the level of information that Snowden could have revealed, but didn’t<\/a><\/font>. Snowden may have been motivated by conscience to reveal the things he did, but how many other low level functionaries with that level of access might be motivated by greed to reveal such secrets that truly threaten our national security to enemies? I can hardly justify sacrificing privacy for a program that leaves our safety and security so vulnerable.<\/font><\/p>\n

After writing this, I saw that Rachel Maddow has the same take on it that I do.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican politicians and wonks have been telling us the the leaker(s), of the Version and PRISM scandals had to be someone high in the NSA, possibly with close links to Obama himself, as they attempt to conflate these issues with their non-issue sandals of Benghazi and the IRS.  That the leaker was an IT tech, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}