Is Snowden buying asylum by fanning the flames of anti-Americanism?

[JDPriestly]

68. We will make it illegal. The NSA is just courting a huge scandal.

I was in central Europe when Poland and other countries were struggling to get rid of the very primitive amount of surveillance that harassed them.

We Americans like to feel we are free. We have the right to privacy in our papers and things. The NSA surveillance especially the metadata collection, sorting and analysis is a huge violation of our right to privacy. Either it will end or our Constitution will end. That's our choice. We cannot have a working democracy with the government collecting our metadata. According to the New York Times yesterday, they have 35,000 employees sorting through and translating and analyzing all the junk mail they collect. At approximately $100,000 for each employee (workplace, equipment, insurance, security, pay, pension, etc. costs) that's over 3 billion dollars. For what? To satisfy the obsessive-compulsive neuroses of a few at the top of the government?

Please. There is no excuse for this. $3 billion could pay for a lot of head start teachers, create a lot of useful jobs maybe even cure some disease, many other useful things. And that $3 billion minimum is per year. The cost is not justified.

Nor is the absurd invasion of our privacy and that of certain others overseas who don't deserve this kind of surveillance.

Placing criminals, including terrorists and drug-dealers? Fine. But the rest of us? Totally excessive and unneeded.

A few generals and other bureaucrats indulging their obsessive-compulsive neuroses at public expense. That's all it is.