Snowden lied about his salary...

[ljm2002]

105. Oddly enough, though...

...we have no evidence belying his revelations about the scope of NSA spying. In fact, judging by the reactions of government officials including President Obama, it seems the revelations are simply true.

Some here argue that they are not "revelations", that we've known about this all along. Well, yes and no. Lots of people have told us about the level of surveillance being done, but mostly it was anecdotal. We have concrete information now.

Now one may quibble about what the NSA is doing. Is it spying on US citizens if you are merely combing metadata records to see patterns, and are only targeting those that are connected with terrorists in some way? If your answer to this question is no, it's not spying on US citizens, then here's the next question: do you trust your government -- under this or any following administration -- to actually limit their surveillance to terrorists?

The fact is, the NSA is combing our phone records. They are not listening to our calls directly (**), but they do have access to any call they decide to investigate further. So if they seed their search with a known terrorist's phone number, then they may be able to flag any calls to or from that number, and get a FISA court to approve getting access to the actual phone calls. But if someone at the NSA decides to use a broad definition of the term "terrorist", that can be a very wide net. OWS was labeled terrorist by some; so are some peaceful antiwar groups, and environmental groups, etc., etc.

I don't give a rat's ass how much $$ Mr. Snowden made. I have no need to put him on a pedestal either. Like most of us he is a complex human being and we will never know all of his motives for doing what he did. Be that as it may, I am glad to have some light shed on this topic in a way that engages the press, and therefore the public, in a way we have not seen previously. Oh, and it should go without saying, I know it started under Bush and I agree it is reprehensible that he got a free ride on this stuff while Obama does not. But all that means is that Bush should not have got a free ride -- it does not mean that Bush got a free ride, therefore Obama should get a free ride.

(**) after all, how many people whould you have to hire to do that? hey wait a minute... we have a serious unemployment problem in this country... maybe the NSA should promote this as a jobs program...