Snowden: Vladimir Putin must be called to account on surveillance just like Obama

[Blue_Tires]

56. This was an immense PR coup by Putin, and there's no other way to look at it

Not only does he get to validate and justify his own increasingly invasive surveillance operations (while getting in a jab at the USA in the process), he just got the implicit seal of approval on national TV from the world's most famous fighter of surveillance abuses...

At least when Obama says it, the media in this country will check it out...If you're thinking that Russian journalists en masse are going to be inspired all of a sudden to investigate the FSB, it doesn't work that way since investigative journalists typically get imprisoned/kidnapped/shot...Some citizens might be saying "bullshit", but Putin has long been spinning the narrative into "Hey, at least we're nowhere near as bad as the USA..." and he's made it stick...

If Snowden really wanted to "own" Putin, he would have had chapter and verse of recent surveillance abuses (Fun fact: Unlike the U.S., Russia doesn't have anywhere near the number of laws or oversight of their intelligence agencies)...Instead, he set up a softball question on a tee and Putin hit it a country mile...As far as Snowden saying with a straight face that there hasn't been much public discussion (lol) of what's been going on in Russia; well that just means Snowden doesn't read any news at all...

Snowden was a pawn in this, plain and simple; either as a willing participant or a naïve, useful idoit...There is NO way to properly spin, excuse or defend this stunt aside from the metaphorical 'gun to the head' scenario, but Snowden has gone down the "I meant to do that" -route of damage control instead...God help him....