Rolling Stone: How two alienated, angry geeks broke the story of the year

[ronnie624]

62. They didn't just release "anything and everything".

According to this article and others I've read, all of the documents are meticulously archived, and strictly vetted and redacted. Snowden has maintained all along, that his goal was to provide transparency, while making certain that no one but he was implicated in the theft of the documents, and that no legitimate intelligence sources were jeopardized. The only place I hear the claim that he released documents willy-nilly, is from his most strident detractors, and they can never produce evidence that anyone was physically harmed by their release.

A lot of people have made a seriously flawed cost/benefit analysis, in trading a portion of their liberty, in exchange for perceived security. Most terrorism experts, the world over, say that the Global War on Terror actually decreases security, by increasing the probability of a successful terrorist attacks. It also sets a bad example to other countries, who might now believe that they too, have a right to act unilaterally and preemptively in attacking others, in clear violation of international law. It also provokes greater distrust among countries who might be skeptical of the motives of the US, thereby increasing the general level of tension and hostility in the world, right at the very moment when we, more than at any other time, need to be cooperating to secure the long-term future of our civilization and even our species.

And that is on top of the fact that the threat from terrorism is minuscule, to begin with. There is NO WAY, that the actual physical threat from terrorism, merits the tremendous amount of resources and energy devoted to a Global War on Terror. You are tens of thousands of times more likely to die from heart disease or cancer or from a plane crash that doesn't involve terrorism.

The resources wasted on the GWOT would be better served developing alternative sources of energy that wont destroy our biosphere.