So now Snowden's acknowledged that his main goal at Booz Allen was espionage.

[mike_c]

13. so?-- it's all part and parcel of the surveillance state mentality, and WE are the "enemy..."

...they're trying to keep their secrets from. I'm sick to death of government secrecy. The consent of the governed is meaningless in a culture of obsessive secrecy.

And no, I do not accept the argument that we should spy on others because they must surely be spying on us. To paraphrase an argument I've heard here a lot lately, if we've nothing to hide, then we've nothing to worry about. It's the culture of secrecy itself that maintains the need for spying. It is so obsessive that as soon as the technology becomes available to turn the eye of Sauron onto our own citizens, the secret agencies get secret approval from secret courts under secret laws and begin secret monitoring programs to insure that, in the end, no one else has any secrets from them.

If what Snowden did is "espionage," then the beneficiaries are everyone else in the world, for whom a window on the cult of secrecy has been opened. And I say we need LOTS more espionage.

Justice Brandeis said it best: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."