What pundits think of Edward Snowden
I'm a pundit, so I'll go first. I admire Edward Snowden, because the information he has provided will allow Americans to actually and meaningfully discuss domestic spying. Many politicians out there are saying, "Sure, let's discuss this issue of the scope of the U.S. surveillance state." The problem, however, is that they want these discussions to be barren of real world facts. They want to discuss, in the abstract, whether we should make ourselves vulnerable to "terrorism" to placate civil libertarians. To be clearer, American have had very little information about what kinds of things an NSA spy can learn about an American. Based on Edward Snowden, U.S. government spies have far too much power to look into emails, phone calls and internet usage. Based on this real information, maybe we could actually have a conversation, but not until we had this information which, according to the U.S. government, was illegally gotten. Classic Catch 22. I have to wonder how often it happens that a CIA or NSA (or contractor) spy snoops on an American and steals credit card information or other information for the purpose of identity theft. Of course, it would be impossible to have this conversation, because this information is secret. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, many court challenges to domestic spying have been quashed by the courts because the information is secret. Once again, how was it that Americans were supposed to have meaningful conversations given the lack of information? Now, for the article on what pundits think of Edward Snowden. The article is from FAIR, and it covers many perspectives.