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Count me as a Snowden skeptic. The guy is completely full of himself, and rarely if ever has anything truly insightful to say. I have a friend in the Navy who w

Count me as a Snowden skeptic. The guy is completely full of himself, and rarely if ever has anything truly insightful to say. I have a friend in the Navy who worked with him at the NSA facility on Oahu when he made the leaks, and we've talked about this extensively. It's not like he was some lone wolf who happened to get ahold of some unique information. They were all dealing with it, and they all took an oath to protect the United States and defend its' secrets. He's a traitor, plain and simple. But he parlayed that treachery into a highly lucrative position, where he occasionally comments and gets paid to speak on some obvious points about whatever is in the news, and is now seen as some kind of guru when he never really did anything of note. He's not a computer scientist. He's not a security expert. He's a cause célèbre for certain factions of people who would like to see the US knocked down a peg.

HideousKojima 5y ago
Regardless of Snowden's personal character, the simple facts of the matter are: 1) The NSA was illegally and unconstitutionally spying on US citizens without warrants. 2) The NSA and other intelligence agencies explicitly lied about this to congress and other elected/appointed bodies responsible for overseeing the activities of these agencies. See, in particular, James Clapper perjuring himself before congress. 3) Without Snowden or someone similar leaking this information to the public, we never would have found out about these blatant illegal and unconstitional acts, since everyone with the power to do anything about it was either complicit or ignorant (see point 2).
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I wasn't going to downvote you because I strongly disagree with your dismissive smearing of someone who had the guts to call out his government for doing illegal things, but then you said this: > He's not a security expert. Which is such an incredibly vacuous statement that you deserve a downvote for saying provably incorrect things.
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >Which is such an incredibly vacuous statement that you deserve a downvote for saying provably incorrect things. Where's the research? Where's the white papers? Where's the detailed technical blogs of some security related issues he's handling? The guy is an impostor. He's been an impostor his entire life. He's just highly intelligent and really good at it.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    He's not a security researcher. Not every doctor of medicine has actively done research either.
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boring_twenties 5y ago
I would characterize your friend as the traitor, rather than Snowden. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the oath they took to defend the US Constitution, against all threats, foreign and domestic? Snowden literally fulfilled that oath at great personal cost. Your friend, on the other hand, is an accessory to enormous (and ongoing) crimes against every man, woman and child in America.

HideousKojima 5y ago

Regardless of Snowden's personal character, the simple facts of the matter are: 1) The NSA was illegally and unconstitutionally spying on US citizens without warrants. 2) The NSA and other intelligence agencies explicitly lied about this to congress and other elected/appointed bodies responsible for overseeing the activities of these agencies. See, in particular, James Clapper perjuring himself before congress. 3) Without Snowden or someone similar leaking this information to the public, we never would have found out about these blatant illegal and unconstitional acts, since everyone with the power to do anything about it was either complicit or ignorant (see point 2).

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I wasn't going to downvote you because I strongly disagree with your dismissive smearing of someone who had the guts to call out his government for doing illegal things, but then you said this: > He's not a security expert. Which is such an incredibly vacuous statement that you deserve a downvote for saying provably incorrect things.

ramesh31 5y ago
>Which is such an incredibly vacuous statement that you deserve a downvote for saying provably incorrect things. Where's the research? Where's the white papers? Where's the detailed technical blogs of some security related issues he's handling? The guy is an impostor. He's been an impostor his entire life. He's just highly intelligent and really good at it.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  He's not a security researcher. Not every doctor of medicine has actively done research either.

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boring_twenties 5y ago

I would characterize your friend as the traitor, rather than Snowden. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the oath they took to defend the US Constitution, against all threats, foreign and domestic? Snowden literally fulfilled that oath at great personal cost. Your friend, on the other hand, is an accessory to enormous (and ongoing) crimes against every man, woman and child in America.