I am getting the odd sense that some don't like Snowden because he made the establishment look bad [View all]

[The Straight Story]

Not because of what he did but because of how it makes our leaders look.

I remember Wikileaks and the cables from Yemen where they agreed to cover up US drone strikes that killed innocent people (by claiming they themselves did it via air strikes). Pretty serious stuff - especially considering the only answers we get are "Trust us, we can't tell you more, national security is at stake" etc.

That story got little traction. Now we have blatant examples of data mining US citizens (for their own good mind you) for no real reason and people are up in arms - and then being told they shouldn't be because it is all ok and really, it's legal.

Our government wants us to be transparent while they lock down more things using national security as a reason. They hound websites like Public Intelligence for releasing data they found on the web and continually say they need to operate in secret and above the law.

The thing is...they don't trust us. None of us. But they want us to trust them.

They want privacy - from their calls to emails. Remember the closed door meetings over health care? Don't tell me that was covered under national security. They don't want to be subject to the same scrutiny and laws they have for us.

When you have one party that has power that wants to be as secret as possible on the one hand and wants full access to you and your information on the other...well that sounds a little troublesome to me.

I'd love to know what big corp execs hammered out in meetings with our leaders. Nope. If I tried to listen in or find that information through a back door I would be sent to gitmo. You can't tell me that the bankers talking to our leaders should be secret information. Where's the transcripts and call logs?

Mom always said: If it's good for the goose it's good for the gander.