If you think that Snowden ought to have gone through channels, consider this.

[ancianita]

91. No one assumes as much as you seem to. I said: what evidence we do have "points to" the existence of

industrial espionage that you so adamantly claim doesn't objectively exist just because people here might not have access to it. The NSA's partnerships with techs and telecoms at least point to the existence of industrial espionage, that much people here are making a fair point about.

Even our trading partners complain about the NSA's second tier countries with whom it works on specific surveillance projects while also spying on them. We pay them, sure, but they don't trust us. Snowden revealed that at the 2012 SigDev conference, the Communications Services Establishment Canada boasted about targeting the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy, showing documents about spying posts there set up for surveillance of target trading partners. Industrial espionage using our complicit industry services.

At home, FB's Zuckerberg, not one to defend privacy anyway, complained that the this administration's denials of spying on Americans still jeopardized the interests of international Internet companies, saying, "Wonderful, that's really helpful for companies trying to work with people around the world. Thanks for going out there and being clear. I think that was really bad."

Without reference to you personally, I'd say your argument of "show me the evidence" remains the more unfair. It's technological espionage that I've been mostly referring to. Tech industries -- Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. -- who continue to be in league with the NSA worldwide, have much more at stake about citizens' not knowing their activities as we citizens have about privacy invasion.

Assumptions were before Snowden. Now people are talking about historical non-military corporate behavior, current civilian-NSA partnerships and probability.