Snowden is a Patriot to the Citizens, But an Enemy to the Government
Real change, or rather the chance for real change, will come from those who are willing to lay down their lives to do what it takes to resist and fight against tyranny in America. Most of us here know what needs to be done, but we also know that if we say it clearly and honestly without using good encryption such as TOR with no-scripts activated, then we can expect our front door to be kicked in by the communist loving alphabet agency goons. - Seer, The Common Sense Show, May 26, 2014
Voltaire famously said, ‘ You know who your Masters are by whom you are not allowed to criticize.”
George Orwell once said, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
Am I going to believe a proven chronic liar or Ed Snowden, who gave up his freedom and homeland to bring the truth of government tyranny to the people!
Snowden, an American hero, is trying to tell the Americans, who are sheep controlled by the criminals in DC, about the illegal actions the government is hammering us with every day. Thank you Snowden and all whistle blowers. If not for you DC would have an agent in every home before long. When a government is corrupted like ours, they are above the law. They ARE above the law because they are the law. I'm for anybody who can help get rid of DC criminals and help us win our country back. - David
The NSA has already forfeited the right to be believed on anything. They have consistently lied to the American people and described Snowden as a traitor for revealing their criminal activity to the enemy - us! Snowden should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom and given a heroes welcome before the feds assassinate him for exposing their lies.- TrailR
"Now we know why Congress has had to wait for years for Obama and company to find the info that Congress needs to conduct inquiries into the governments improprieties or Snowden is lying on national television about something that can easily be confirmed. But, then again, this is the same NSA that stood up on national TV and denied any spying on American citizens, that same spying that was declared - illegal - by a court of law. So I guess the question is - who is the real liar ? Someone who has lost everything to try and bring out the truth (which has been verified) or a bunch of pinko commies that have been found guilty at every turn. - justyntoo, Yahoo!, May 29, 2014
"Why hasn't anyone been prosecuted for lying to Congress. James Clapper and that Admiral and general sure lied flat out. Yet they still have their passports and walk around as free men, still have access to their bank accounts. What about the violations to all the civil liberties of all AMERICANS. Have our people really forgotten the value of our 4th and 14th amendments? Have the people of America forgotten how mad Congress and the Senate got when they thought they were being spied on, yet they feel it's OK for the American people to be spied on. Why should it not be OK for them but be OK for us? Is my privacy less important than theirs? Hey, I'm not the one having affairs with my aids (gay or otherwise), buying drugs outside DC restaurants, taking bribes, or committing any other crimes. No wonder they got upset they were being spied on." - Commenter
"I remember reading in several news sources over the last many months that NSA personnel said they should have been able to predict his leaking of NSA activity due to the fact that he kept a copy of the Constitution (I'm not sure if all or just the Bill of Rights). They all said something to the effect of, "Looking back, we should have known someone with a Constitution document would be a high risk NSA employee". That says ALOT." - Doug
"If those in power cannot be trusted to tell the truth to us or protect our Constitutional rights, I am thankful for the courage Snowden showed to reveal these criminal wrongdoings." - Richard
"I believe the man who exposed the spying over the ones who are actively engaged in spying.Who do you trust?" - Victor
It is against the Constitution stupid!!! It is illegal search and seizure stupid!!! It's called privacy, and the government, our government, used the excuse of 9/11 as an excuse to question any U.S. citizen without due process and without a warrant in order to obtain information. How did this work before 9/11 when the terrorists were here? - D
The truth is that people who oppose this believe in democracy and are against the idea of a government giving itself power not granted to it by its people. And they understand knowledge is power. If you know every little secret about someone, you can make them do whatever you want. In this case, they can make anyone in the country do anything, even elected politicians and members of the military. Also, there is something called a law. Some people think the NSA and the government itself is not above the law. The Constitution means something you know - the part about search and seizure of personal property. It kinda sucks why the government just goes, "Screw that, we will violate that right on hundreds of millions of Americans." Are you the type of person that would have supported the Nazis because they were they government, and they were just trying to protect us, lol.- michaelg
Let's get real, the people who aren't upset about the NSA's actions are those who slept through the classes covering the history of the 1900s and the rise of totalitarian governments, or they are people who are diehard Statists who worship government as God and who will wholeheartedly support the rise of a totalitarian government here in the US. - Nathan
"If you want to see beyond Snowden's revelations into the depths of the NSA's corruption, look up NSA whistleblower Russel Tice. He was one of the main sources for revealing Bush's warrantless wiretapping and has real credibility on the subject. In interviews last summer he revealed that the NSA spies on our press, courts, lawyers and law firms, Hollywood, our military's leadership, Congress, the Supreme Court, and even Obama when he was a Senate Candidate in 2004. Watch his interviews on PBS, Democracy Now, RT, and Sibel Edmonds "Boiling Frogs" whistleblower website; judge the man's own words for yourself. Then look up William Binney, Mark Kline, Thomas Drake, and Sibel Edmonds herself - you'll have your eyes wide opened then. Sibel's "Boiling Frogs" website is a great place for getting information directly from Government whistleblowers, and she has an organization dedicated to helping them. The NSA exists for political blackmail, industrial espionage/financial fraud, and to obstruct justice - their "national security" role for the consumption of compartmentalized minions and to justify their existence to the general public. The NSA is J. Edgar Hoover restructured, minus any morals, restraint, or a soul. They record EVERY electronic communication in the country with programs like MYSTIC and the prior ECHELON agreements. What do you think gigantic facilities like the Utah Data Collection Center and the Fort Meade complex are for? - AMERICAN1975
"We as Americans gave up our rights to privacy when the Patriot Act was passed, so don't blame the Government Security agency folks for taking advantage of the system. Blame your Congressmen and women who voted for this as a kneejerk reaction to 9/11. Snowden brought to the public how this information was being collected and the breath of the data collected by the NSA and other government agencies! If we want our privacy back, we as citizens need to put pressure on Congress to amend or remove in totality the Patriot Act!" - Bill
"Let's take a look at this as if it were a criminal trial. If one party gets busted lying, then anything that person says loses credibility. So why should we believe anything the NSA says? They lied about everything and now they say they want us to believe anything else they tell us? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. As far as what the media is saying about Snowden, well we know that the media hasn't been reporting the real news for a long time and is a propaganda machine for the government. Whether or not Snowden's motivations were pure, his choice to inform all of us about what was going on benefited all of us. It makes you wonder how many politicians on Capitol Hill are being blackmailed by the government into doing what TPTB (the powers that be) want. All the president has to do is say, "We have emails and phone calls and text messages between you and your gay lover, mistress, drug dealer, child porn provider.....etc." I found it ironic that Boehner was going pretty hard against the president and shortly afterward the Snowden files were released. Boehner did a complete 180. It makes you wonder what kind of dirt they have on him. After all, the files did say that politicians were being spied on regularly for political purposes." - Trip
"The only thing more dangerous to our freedom than the Government is citizens burying their heads in the sand and cowardly pretending nothing is happening." - Happy
"Snowden always wanted to come back. He hasn't had a "change of heart." He was stopped in Russia by the US government, which revoked his Visa in order to trap him in Russia where they thought he would be handed over. Of course, Obama, being such an utter dolt, miscalculated how much he was being played by Putin, and Russia now has Snowden, and we don't." - Pootananga
"Ultimately the NSA will be proven pretty much as bad as Snowden's portrayed them in the info he has and what he knows about how they really do things. No matter how necessary the need to protect the lives of Americans, accumulating vast powers and, in reality, having little real oversight on how that power is used will result in an out-of-control security state apparatus running outside of a recognized institutional framework as a rogue agency looking out for its own agenda. Once you let that genie out of the bottle, good luck ever controlling it again." - John
"Amazing how many government #$%$ there are on this topic and most without so much as a grain of common sense. Like how does a low level guy get this much attention, how does a lone traitor cause the NSA and President to change policy, outrage lawmakers, and get half the government up in arms. Snowden is a hero in every possible measure. He gave everything for his country, and he knew his country, at least those running it, would do their best to ruin him and imprison him for life. The guy lost everything and got nothing. This is not the act of some low life traitor. This is an act of the ultimate patriot and someone who really believes in our system. We are hearing this latest government noise at full volume because Greenwald is about to release the names of Americans the NSA targeted and illegally spied on, and my guess is this is scaring the hell out of the administration. Can't wait until that comes out." - WildBill
"Previous to Snowden, one NSA employee was sent to prison and one committed suicide after they tried to change the program internally. Three others, including the original programmer, had their lives ruined. There is a lot more to this story than you currently know. Go watch Frontline online. It changed my mind." - mark kram
By Ron Paul standards John Kerry, the current White House Administration, Congress and the NSA view American citizens as the enemy. "My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the US Government views you and me as the enemy." - Ron Paul
NSA is nothing but a criminal organization run by a bunch of thugs on power trip.
Funny when the story first broke they did damage control and said it wasn't true. They said Snowden was a lowly employee with no way he could have access to top secret documents. Now there trying to defend themselves with an email says they he only got one, Hmmm. I could get a dozen and only claim to have one also. So who would you believe the whistleblower or the NSA who illegally spied on 212 million people cell phones with only 1 million warrants. What ever happened also to the Whistleblower Protection Act? This administration is more into prosecuting the whistleblower than the actual illegal activities. Oh that's right, cannot prosecute yourself - Eric Holder, the one who actually got the 1 million warrants but used them in mass illegal data collection of over 212 million people. Who cares about the illegal activities, they're saying; he told on us is the issue, they say. He let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. And they are more angry about that, more than anything. Obama can't say he knows nothing about it because then who is driving; he cannot claim he is in the backseat. - David
Flashback: The NSA Is Firing Back At Edward Snowden Over One Of His Key Claims
"I believe we and mainly you have an incredible opportunity to lead in shaping a new world order for the twenty-first century in a way consistent with American interests and common interests,” - Vice Pres. Biden said to the 995 members of the class of 2014, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported this week.May 29, 2014
Business Insider - The National Security Agency has tried to cut a huge hole in one of the
claims self-described whistleblower Edward Snowden made in a lengthy interview this week by releasing one of his old emails from his time at the U.S. intelligence agency.
On Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence posted
on its website what it described as Snowden's only correspondence with
NSA's Office of General Counsel. The email does not refer to any
concerns about NSA surveillance programs. In the email, Snowden asks
about a training session and whether presidential executive orders
supersede federal laws.
The email was sent on April 5, 2013, at least three months after he first contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and four months
after he contacted journalist Glenn Greenwald. Rick Ledgett, the NSA's
deputy director who is leading the internal investigation of Snowden's
leaks, told Vanity Fair that he first illegally downloaded documents in the summer of 2012.
"The NSA has records. They have
copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their
oversight and compliance folks, from me raising concerns about the
NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities," Snowden said.
"NSA has now explained that
they have found one e-mail inquiry by Edward Snowden to the Office of
General Counsel asking for an explanation of some material that was in a
training course he had just completed," an NSA spokeswoman said in an
email.
During NBC's one-hour airing of
the interview on Wednesday, Williams said NBC had confirmed Snowden
sent at least one email to the NSA's Office of General Counsel. Snowden
also suggested that, aside from his email correspondences, he raised
unofficial complaints to colleagues and supervisors. He said he was told
by some of his colleagues to "stop asking questions."
The email is below:
More Comments:
Have none of you read the Washington Times article from yesterday, Wed May 28, 2014 entitled, "Inside the Ring: Memo outlines Obama's plan to use the military against citizens"? Simply put, in 2010 when the Dems had super majority in Congress they implemented the Pentagon directive, which Obama officially endorsed, allowing for the killing of US citizens on American soil in times of civil unrest or vast discontent among the population against the federal government. Google the article if you don't believe this is true and read it for yourself. Yet on Tuesday had anyone said this to you people you have have called them insane, judging by the comments on this thread. My point in bringing this up is that if our government is willing to enact this, why in the world would any of you think they are simply there to "protect us"? Are you all really that simple minded?
The fact is Snowden gave up an enormous amount to shed light on what he did and received nothing but grief and his life turned upside down for it. And many of the people for whom he did this in an effort to help them have nothing but contempt for the man. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. I could care a less how many people dislike this post. You can dislike the facts all you want, but it doesn't change them from being fact.
I, for one, thank Snowden for shedding light on these matters. I just wish more of you did the same. But no wonder it is so easy for our government to do the things they do. You people simply turn a blind eye and stick your heads in the sand. Shameful.