Snowden's latest leak is about our spying on Russia. Is he trying to start WW3?

[marions ghost]

70. No not saying that

because that would be unrealistic as there's a huge investment in spying of all sorts. But I don't think
the extent of it is justified, either here or in other countries.

Since today everything is global, the allegiances to corporate entities can trump what's good for the country. So we need to know who the spying is really for. Most international spying is not done "to keep us safe." It is for economic and political reasons that have little to do with our safety. Monitoring of groups that might be harmful to us is only a fraction of it, but it's been used to justify the most massive electronic surveillance system imaginable. This international e-spying is intertwined with our domestic systems, and it's going to take a lot of political willpower to have any real separation between the two. Should we be collecting the Facebook data of citizens in Holland? I think not.

I'm saying this kind of simply because I'm trying to keep the big picture and not get mired in details. Because really this is a question of what we want our country to be, and what we want our place in the world to be. It's a critical question that Snowden has suddenly drawn our attention to.

We should have control over what the govt does in our name internationally, I'm sure you'd agree, & supposedly that is through Congress. But obviously congress is complicit in "over-reach" or is otherwise negligent in this. They operate as though they have the will of the people, but the majority of Americans have no idea how the system works--technically or legally--or why they should be worried about it. (All they hear is "9-11", and the govt can do anything). Snowden wants people to know the truth about what their tax dollars are funding. To a large extent the PTB have taken advantage of the average person's ignorance in the electronic revolution. They exploit us in every other way--do you trust them not to exploit us in this way?

This is how I see it:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/why-we-spy

"...terrorism simply isn't the kind of danger that could merit the level of response America devotes to it. Unless terrorists get nuclear weapons, he says, they really can't do much damage in America:

Conventional terrorism—even of the sort suffered on 9/11—is not a serious threat to the U.S. economy, the American way of life, or even the personal security of the overwhelming majority of Americans, because al Qaeda and its cousins are neither powerful nor skillful enough to do as much damage as they might like.

He adds that "post-9/11 terrorist plots have been mostly lame and inept, and Americans are at far greater risk from car accidents, bathtub mishaps, and a host of other undramatic dangers than they are from 'jihadi terrorism.'" He uses the Boston bombing in April as a case in point, describing it as tragic but less lethal than the factory explosion that took place that same week down in Texas.

Mr Yglesias and Mr Walt are right: conventional terrorism poses no major threat to America or to its citizens. But that's not really what it aims to do. Terrorism is basically a political communications strategy. The chief threat it poses is not to the lives of American citizens but to the direction of American policy and the electoral prospects of American politicians. A major strike in America by a jihadist terrorist group in 2012 would have done little damage to America, but it could have posed a serious problem for Barack Obama's re-election campaign. For the president the war on terror is what the Vietnam War was to Lyndon Johnson: a vast, tragic distraction in which he must be seen to be winning, lest the domestic agenda he really cares about (health-care, financial reform, climate-change mitigation, immigration reform, gun control, inequality) be derailed. It's no surprise that he has given the surveillance state whatever it says it needs to prevent a major terrorist attack.

In a perfect world, as Mr Walt argues, we in the public wouldn't let terrorist strikes dictate our politics. But we're not likely to get calmer about terrorism, because too many people are trying to keep us frantic. At least three parties stand to gain from exaggerating, rather than minimizing, our reactions to terrorist strikes. The first is the media, which wins viewership by whipping up anxiety over terrorist strikes. The second is politicians seeking partisan advantage, since panic over foreign-backed terrorism tends to increase voter turnout. (In Israel terrorism shifts voter support to the right. In America throughout the early 2000s, anxiety over terrorism increased support for president George W. Bush, but by 2008 an attack would have increased support for Mr Obama. Similarly, Spanish voters punished the conservative government for the Madrid train bombings in 2004 because 80% of the public had opposed the government's participation in the invasion of Iraq. Either way, when terrorists attack, one party or the other is going to make political hay out of it." (more at link)