Snowden is paranoid on top of everything else
Edward Snowden, you know, the fellow who tried to tell us all that he was a special forces soldier, until we found out that he never even graduated basic training thinks that he’s being targeted by James Bond or John Clarke or some other fictional character from literature, says Reuters;
“There are significant threats but I sleep very well,” he said before referring to a report on a U.S. website that he said quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying his life was in danger.
“These people, and they are government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket and then watch me die in the shower,” Snowden said.
Yeah, well, since he has nothing else to release to the media, I seriously doubt that anyone wants to punish him with some dramatic made-for-Hollywood execution. It makes no sense. If he needed to be killed it was before he released US secrets, certainly not now.
I’ll tell you what, you may appreciate what Snowden has done by exposing NSA spying on US citizens, but he’s a gigantic pussy. And honestly, who among you didn’t think that the NSA was spying on us? I certainly wasn’t surprised.
Now I’m torn between deciding who the bigger douche is in this story – the folks who are spying on us or the guy who exposed them. Actually, I’m leaning towards Snowden. I think I want to beat Snowden using Breanna Manning as a club.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
Speaking as someone who has been a SIGINTer for over 25 years, I can tell you all that NSA does NOT collect against Americans. After the craziness of the 60s, it is pounded into our heads with annual training that doing that is strictly off limits. NOT collecting against our fellow citizens is a bedrock principle of our business. I’ve been involved in situations where that has happened and we were rigorous in reporting it and purging the info.
If there are rogues out there who are collecting on Americans, they should and will be hammered for that.
I know the Admiral who is being nominated as the next DIRNSA. Mike Rogers would never support anything remotely resembling collection against Americans. NEVER.
Now, if an American decides they want to go to the “dark side,” then all bets are off. But a process will be followed before they would be targeted. A rigorous process.
Snowden is a clueless dope who, when he was hired at NSA Hawaii, had already made up his mind that NSA was corrupt and spying on Americans, so he went in to steal whatever he could to support that idea.
I’ve read where Snowden related how upset he was, when he was in basic, how the DI’s talked about killing “ragheads.” Oh, my God! How horrible!
I’m telling you, Snowden may be smart, but he is ultimately a fucking dumbass.
Snowden may be smart, but he is ultimately a fucking dumbass.
To borrow an analogy we made up years ago: “Intelligence is recognizing that it’s raining and being able to tell you about the meteorological conditions that cause it. Wisdom is getting out of the rain.”
I personally wish that Snowden would indeed “disappear” – permanently. I would shed no tears whatsoever when I heard that news.
Sadly, while he’s in Russia I’d guess we (the US) have neither the will nor the means to make that happen.
@3: Oh, I’m sure we have the means but that’s about it.
Meh–letting him prattle on about conspiracy theories, etc., like the Ron Paul nutter he is with nothing happening to him pretty much exposes him for the crank he is.
And if you think the NSA is good at spying on you, try those grocery store cards, etc. Any more information and they’ll just have your cart filled up when you hit the parking lot. There’s so much information about us in the public domain the NSA is pretty much unnecessary.
Criminals are paranoid for a good reason.
Remember those regular ‘news releases’ about Hassan and his facial hair? And breeannamanning, with the uglybroad pix?
That was all done to get attention and nothing else.
Snowden no longer has access to any classified info. He’s living in Russia or some place, and who cares? It’s cold everywhere in the northern hemisphere. I’ll bet the TV there is reruns of Petticoat Junction, Family Ties and the Smurfs. He is of no use to the Russians now, except as an annoyance to the USofA, so he’s allowed to say whatever silly things he wants to say to get attention from the media.
Geez, we’re all in more danger of being tracked and whacked by psul the uncool than Snowden is by some imaginary assassin. We’ve all read, printed, copied to Word and screen capped psul’s threats.
Snowden just wishes he’d get that lucky.
Well, he *is* a traitor after all. But maybe he should have thought about that before he committed premeditated treason. At any rate, I don’t think anybody considers Snowden to be worth the hassle of killing him. I also think he knows this, and that being the pathetic narcissistic turd that he is, his ego just can’t take the pain of knowing that he’s still insignificant. So he dreams up this fantasy about how multiple satellites are tasked on tracking him and him alone and some superninja CIA assassins could be lurking in his underwear drawer poised to strike. But somewhere deep down, he knows that he ain’t worth the cost of a bullet, and it pains him to no end.
Maybe not so paranoid…
Now, they don’t name names of course, but mention of those threats came from media interviews, Snowden didn’t make them up:
“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”
http://www.drudge.com/news/175713/us-spies-want-snowden-dead
I have no problem with Snowden bringing the mass data collection by the Feds to the attention of the American people, but I do have a problem with him leaking classified documents to the world that may endanger our troops or others abroad. That is treason.
@1. I have no doubt that what you say is true but activities of the type you describe are not likely to make it to the office bulletin borad or training. The IRS prohibits targeting groups b/c of the groups’ politics but we all know how that went. We now have The Emperor threatening to expand law by fiat, by executive order. This, too, is antithetical to our Constitution and the separation of powers doctrine but it’s happening. Then there’s that BS airship crap, ostensibly to detect attack aircraft and missiles heading for DC. All in all, I’d say we are facing a situation in this country that would have been deemed incredible a decade or more ago.
Even the worst scum can accidently do something good on the odd occasion, and the baddest of the bad often cares deeply about someone or something. Doesn’t alter the simple fact that they are scum or bad and should be treated as such.
Anyone who elects to commit treason should not whine when caught being a traitor. The worthiness of the cause is quite irrelevant.
Meanwhile, back to the NSA – certainly, there are and have been plenty of folks who did not abuse their positions and acted honorably with the information they collected. The problem many of us have is that whatever information is being collected with the best of intentions today can and will be abused by someone one day. It’s not a matter of if but when.
He’s becoming irrelevant, he’s just trying to get a little more attention before he’s forgotten…
What I really want is for Snowden to be brought back, tried and convicted.
Why do I want that?
Because I want Snowden to become Breanna Manning’s prison bitch.
Years from now when he’s all but forgotten they’ll pick him up when he makes a mistake. They managed to get Roman Polanski eventually….
He was in a catch-22 with no good way out. If the details of what we now know to be illegal domestic spying were shrouded in the impenetrable excuses of “national security”, what other way was there to expose this illegal, unconstitutional activity? Snowden strikes me as a highly moral person, he sifted thru thousands of documents and did his best to release only information about the illegal activity itself and nothing that would jeopardize individuals, and took a huge personal risk doing so. Compare that to Manning’s shotgun release of all kinds of info. No, Snowden needs to work out a deal with the DOJ, get a symbolic slap on the wrist, and get back to his life. There is no doubt that he will be looked on as a hero by future generations.
So . . . Snowden’s posturing?
pour encourager les autres
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pour%20encourager%20les%20autres
I haven’t heard any other ideas on how to stop a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional program targeting American citizens and permanently hidden from sight behind bogus national security claims. Tuawk amongst yourselves……
@17 Hyperbole at its finest.
Press on.
Hey, it looks like Glorious Rock-Climbing Hero of Socialist Republic of Progressastan came back!
If you’re that worried about a slimy, turncoat bastard like Snowden, “Joe” – why don’t you just go to Russia yourself and give him some support? I’ll kick in some $$$ to help pay for for your one-way ticket.
Of course, I’ll also want to see documentation that you’ve renounced your US citizenship.
I worked in the same building as Snowden. He lived around the corner from me. I may not have known him directly, but I have friends who did. He misrepresented his own life. More than just his service in the Army. He made it sound like BAH paid him $200k, they didn’t. He made it seem like he owned his house here, he didn’t. Ask yourself what’s stopping him from misrepresenting the info he stole from the NSA? Let’s just say, he worked for NSA for 4 weeks, 4, as an “analyst”. He had no clue what he was seeing.
Most of NSAs workforce is military (you can work us around the clock and not have to pay us a dime more, but civilians you have to pay a differential). We go thru TONS of training, yearly, on protecting rights (funny how Snowden doesn’t mention that). If you don’t trust the agency, trust it’s workforce. I can’t tell you how many times I, or someone else, has voiced concerns, and those concerns were taken seriously. From what I hear, Snowden just bitched. He brought up nothing to actually respond to. He is the bigger douche. Make no mistake about it. NSA employees are good Americans who follow the law.
I admit to being twixt and tween on the matter of snowden. Some people I admire call him a hero and some I despise call him every name in the book. I like my stories black and white. Perhaps my view would be clearer IF he had shown some spine and not run like a punk. I mean, if it’s principle that motivates, then you stand up, say so, and remain standing. At least that’s the way I was raised and the way I think about it. I just don’t know what’s what with this story. I like bad guys wearing black hats and good guys wearing white ones. His appears pink. I just don’t know.
Don’t hold your breath Hondo…..on second thought, do hold your breath.
I can’t hold my breath that long, fella. And I’ve got better sense than to try.
So why don’t you just go climb another rock, Joe.
And to answer your implied question in comment 17: if you’re an employee (direct or contract) and run across such illegal activity, one way is to take it to the appropriate internal investigations department. Within the Federal government, that’s generally called an “Inspector General”. They have both the authority to investigate such and the leverage to make senior leadership take notice of the situation.
What you don’t do is load up a bunch of highly classified internal documents, smuggle them out of your workplace, and then run to a nation that’s a current rival of your own. Snowden did exactly that.
Even a fool like you should have been able to figure that out on your own.
“Snowden strikes me as a highly moral person, he sifted thru thousands of documents”? Really, you know that how? How can you know that he sifted through two documents, much less “thousands”? Maybe he just downloaded whatever he got his hands on, regardless of what it was.
Meanwhile, he did steal items of intelligence value, otherwise Putin would probably have booted his skinny ass out about a day after he arrived.