Like It or Not, Glenn Greenwald Is Now the Face of the 1st Amendment

[MADem]

207. They BOTH are cleared to access most if not all of the information ES possessed.

There is a thing called "closed session." There are hearings We, The People never see.

The point is, he did not even TRY.

He took a bunch of stuff, and ran to China. Then he ran to the Russian Consulate, and next thing you know, he is in Russia, travelling on a letter out of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London where Assange is holed up. Then he's paired with Assange's ex-lover while he farts around in Russia, trying to do a hop-skip-jump through Havana (only they refuse to play ball-how interesting). For months. And his father said that Assange and Company were making a bad situation worse.

There's more to this than meets the eye. What that is, I've no idea, but I do not believe Snowden's "I had a moment of clarity and felt compelled to speak out" story is the whole tale, here.

We're not the only crew busy at this sort of thing, either. We've got the French press saying that France does the same damn thing. We know that the Brits do it better than we do--they can be quite ruthless, and of course we know the Russians are pros that make us look like pikers at this kind of thing. The Chinese are coming along quite nicely, too. Brazil has admitted that they spy as well. The Germans, too. So it's really down to the question who IS NOT spying?

What surprises me is that people are so naive as to believe that nations don't spy, and that governments will eschew this kind of conduct because it's "ungentlemanly" or something on those lines. The bottom line is, they do spy and they always have--and, like it or not, they always will. Even if they say "Oh, we won't do THAT anymore" it would be foolish to believe them. And by "them" I mean every nation on this earth. The leadership, if they have to answer to the people (and in places like Russia and China that's not a problem) will just sign some sort of "lettre de cachet" (like a National Security letter) that serves as cover. If anyone becomes aware of it and it wends its way through the courts, well, as the old military saying goes "Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission."

And then it's lather-rinse-repeat, all over again. If you don't want to be spied upon, you have to limit your exposure. That IS--like it, and most won't, or not--the new reality we live in. No shooting the messenger. It is what it is.