Edward Snowden interview

[Professor]

[exploited]

...you're serious?

These guys were persecuted, fired and forced out of the government for trying to go through those channels. About the exact same program. For the same reasons.

And you are comparing them to... Wife killers?

[Professor]

[exploited]

You should probably start by reading the link I already provided. More information:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/12/befor ... as-william

In 2002 - long before the revelations of Edward Snowden rocked the world - Binney and several former colleagues went to Congress and the Department of Defense, asking that the NSA be investigated. Not only was the super-secretive agency wasting taxpayer dollars on ineffective programs, they argued, it was broadly violating constitutional guarantees to privacy and due process.

The government didn't just turn a blind eye to the agency's activities; it later accused the whistleblowers of leaking state secrets. A federal investigation of Binney - including an FBI search and seizure of his home and office computers that destroyed his consulting business - exonerated him on all charges.

"We are a clear example that [going through] the proper channels doesn't work," says Binney, who approves of Edward Snowden's strategy of going straight to the media. At the same time, Binney criticizes Snowden's leaking of documents not directly related to the NSA's surveillance of American citizens and violation of constitutional rights. Binney believes that the NSA is vital to national security but has been become unmoored due to technological advances that vastly extend its capabilities and leadership that has no use for limits on government power. "They took that program designed [to prevent terrorist attacks] and used it to spy on American citizens and everyone else in the world," flatly declares Binney (33:30).

[uebermann]

Hah yeah and if you think Booz Allen Hamilton would risk their fat government contracts over something like this, you are nuts. They would have just transferred Snowden if not flat out fired him and would have never uttered a word of it.

[Professor]

[Bauce]

I understand the concern over a fair trial at this point but he would and should be convicted anyway assuming the trial is completely fair.

[gla22]

I think it is pretty obvious that Snowden broke the law, and even under a "fair trial" he would be convicted. The issue is that the U.S. government internally has no system for stopping the type of abuses that are going on at the NSA and it took someone breaking the law to expose it. The issue is that the U.S. government is not functioning correctly as a government and the U.S. system isn't as flexible to change as it should be.

[Professor]

[exploited]