I know it's too early to say I've been "vindicated"

[MADem]

59. No, I don't. I refuse to allow people to CHANGE the subject, and that can be frustrating, I know.

That's what caused you to make that unnecessary personal comment. Don't blame me for your attitude--you're in control of that, not me.

You give me YOUR interpretation of what Snowden did, and I respond with MINE.

You're upset that I refuse to give YOUR interpretation more credence than my own, because my interpretation takes into consideration a previous trip to Hong Kong that he made from Japan (the Russians have agents in both places, and they don't sit on their hands), the fact that he went to ground quickly, the view that he may not have been actually staying at the MIRA at all, but instead was a guest of the Russian Consulate from the SECOND he landed at Chek Lap Kok, and that "interview" with the Chinese "journalist" may well have been an opportunity to transfer material to enable him to go on his merry way and somehow cause the Chinese customs and immigration authorities to let him go on a "technicality," (Ewwwww....the middle initial was wrong, so we ignored your request for a hold, USA... how silly of us!) so that he could ultimately carry out the deal that he made with Vladimir's pals.

You don't have to spy "for" someone to sell material to the highest bidder. It's entirely possible--in fact, it is LIKELY--that Snowden, the former ball-shooting patriot, knew that his ten year security review would reveal him to be a massive, no diploma/no degree fraud in the education department (a lie not easily forgiven--you get FIRED for that kind of thing) and he'd be out on his ass without a clearance and no hope for any job more significant than working as the junior associate at the Best Buy Help Desk, after years of living large and having more money than he knew what to do with. The "indoor cat" made the best deal he could manage.

It wasn't as good as he wanted, but he was so obtuse that he thought we were still in an adversarial relationship with Iceland and he could hide out there, and then he thought that he could have a soft landing in South America, but alas, those guys like selling us their fruit and flowers and petroleum products more than they care for Edward....for such a supposedly smart guy, he would have done well to have a look at the trade statistics in recent years. It's not impossible to speculate that he may have gotten much of his world view from Paulbot forums, because it sure seemed that he was looking at the world through Kook-Libertarian lenses.

It is likely that Snowden overstated the robustness of the encryption on the documents he transferred. Was this dumb naivete, or supreme overconfidence...or something else? Time will sort that out, too. The Chinese are not pikers at this game, neither are the Russians. They've militarized their "NSA"--none of these wild and crazy creative punks listening in on sexy calls and giggling over naked phone pictures; they put their hackers in uniform, subject them to military rules and regulations, pay them well and promote them, but they keep a big thumb on them. Because we don't have a draft, we don't do that, and can't.

That said, if anyone had done a proper vetting of Snowden's SF86 when he first hit the intelligence community, he NEVER would have been in a position to steal all that shit. Our security apparatus is as much to blame as anyone else--it's got horrible holes in it, and vetting was a big problem in his case. The question remains, will we get fooled again, or have we learned our lesson? That's a "time will tell" query, too.