General Correction: Snowden did not choose to be in Russia.

[stevenleser]

124. Some level of domestic spying was known, was it not? I take it you knew about FISA before this?

EFF has a timeline of events regarding surveillance going back years. https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline

Even if we take Snowden's information as true and verified, and I don't concede that, but if for arguments sake we do, it's not as if none of us thought there was anything at all going on with regard to surveillance.

In fact, two weeks before Snowden's leaks, President Obama gave this speech: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-obamas-may-23-speech-on-national-security-as-prepared-for-delivery/2013/05/23/02c35e30-c3b8-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html which included items like:

Meanwhile, we strengthened our defenses, hardening targets, tightening transportation security, giving law enforcement new tools to prevent terror. Most of these changes were sound. Some caused inconvenience. But some, like expanded surveillance, raised difficult questions about the balance that we strike between our interests in security and our values of privacy. And in some cases, I believe we compromised our basic values -- by using torture to interrogate our enemies, and detaining individuals in a way that ran counter to the rule of law.

So after I took office, we stepped up the war against al-Qaida, but we also sought to change its course.
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From our use of drones to the detention of terrorist suspects, the decisions we are making will define the type of nation and world that we leave to our children.

So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us. We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Neither I nor any president can promise the total defeat of terror. We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings nor stamp out every danger to our open society. But what we can do, what we must do, is dismantle networks that pose a direct danger to us and make it less likely for new groups to gain a foothold, all the while maintaining the freedoms and ideals that we defend. And to define that strategy, we must make decisions based not on fear but on hard- earned wisdom. And that begins with understanding the current threat that we face.

so to claim that no conversations and no actions were occurring without Snowden just isnt true.

For Snowden's actions to be justified, three things must be true.

1. Everything he released must be true and correct. We don't know that one way or the other yet.

2. We must be convinced that not enough action and conversation about surveillance was happening without him. I disagree on that point but it is subjective.

3. Assuming #1 above, we must think that there was no legitimate way to raise the issues he had. I know for a fact this is not correct. There were multiple ways to go about this. This is not subjective.

So, it's pretty clear his actions were not justified and those unjustified actions were compounded by bad decisions about what to do once the information was released. Bad choices upon bad choices. Bad decisions upon bad decisions.