After a whole lot of thought and some mind blowung revelations about he underheaded nature of the NSA domestic ‘data gathering’ have convinced me that someone needed to blow the whistle.
The Data collection program needed to be exposed and Snowden should be pardoned and allowed to return.
Some of my other assertions about Snowde though, may still be valid. For example I pointed out he had top sexret clearance with an underachivers resume and seemed too young and inexperienced for the sort of security clearance he had. Its fortunate he decided to use this access to do good rather than personally enrich himelf. He lost everything when he exposed the program. He seems to have been convinced it was important Americans knew what their gvernement was doing, which was essentially spying on everyone all the time. Its actually quite patriotic. While thats cool it does show he was a bad hire for it, as bad as Chelsea Manning.
I had speculated the Russians may have thrown a hot chic at him or otherwise tried to manpulate him. That also still may be true, but he I really dont think he should be viewed as an enemy agent. Putin certainly enjoyed the complte embarrassment the Snowden leak caused the United States.
In the end though its much like the Pentagon Papers, we needed to know and were actually being harmed every moment we spent in the dark while the government digitally profiled us.
So while its still cool with most everyone that you would tap a criminals phone, the idea there needs to be a legal procedure that justifies it with a warrant and some sort of date in the next couple of years to become public information is now seen as the minmum standard.
So to the man who shares my birthday I say- I’m sorry and Thanks.
