General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We can applaud media's greater NSA scrutiny AND think that Snowden's resume/timing/motives [View all]stupidicus
(2,570 posts)given who won the "Lie of the Year" award recently, and who also went to great lengths to cover up what we now know to be the truth in this matter.
The only diff between the Snowden bashers around here, and say the Gore bashers on the right, is the fact that they don't think Gore is describing reality, whereas some of you do appear to think otherwise in the case of Snowden -- after initially denying it just as avidly as the common flat earther did and continue to do with the work of Gore. Gore's likely heard or read about every slam regarding his doing it for personal fame and/or fortune too as opposed to it being possibly no more complicated that doing the "right thing". Snowden isn't getting bashed to the extent that he is because he's an occasional liar like the rest of us, it's due almost in its entirety over whose face the egg landed on.
The simple fact of the matter is, if you accept the fact that most of the NSA spying is done to protect the monied masters, then he and Gore are on the same team.
And based on what did you assert that he shoulda acted sooner? As far as I can tell, he likely couldn't have in terms of attacking Bush with the same info.
Snowden has said that in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate. He has stated he had been planning to make disclosures about NSA surveillance programs at the time, but he decided to wait because he "believed in Obama's promises". He was later disappointed that Obama "continued with the policies of his predecessor".[54] For the 2012 election, political donation records indicate that he contributed to the primary campaign of Republican candidate Ron Paul.[55][56]
Snowden resigned from the CIA in February 2009[61] and began work for Dell, a private contractor, inside an NSA facility on a US military base in Japan.[29] Snowden remained on the Dell payroll until early 2013.[75] He was one of around 1,000 NSA "sysadmins" allowed to look at many parts of the system without leaving an electronic trace and able to argue for the use of thumb drives in a secure environment.[61] Persons familiar with the 2013 government investigation into Snowden's history said that Snowden had downloaded sensitive NSA material in April 2012.[76] NSA Director Keith Alexander told the U.S. House Intelligence Committee that Snowden "moved into the Booz Allen position in March [2013], but he had worked in an information technology position for the 12 months preceding that at NSA Hawaii. So he'd actually been there 15 months. He had moved from one contract to another."[77][78] In those contractor positions, Snowden held top secret Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances.[79] Snowden took a six-day Certified Ethical Hacker training course in 2010 in India.[80][81][82][83] USIS completed a background check on Snowden in 2011.[84] On January 23, 2014, the US Department of Justice filed fraud charges against the USIS for routinely failing to properly investigate individuals.[85][86] The company is accused of falsifying 665,000 background checks on government employees.[87]
It looks like he got the bulk of the damning material after Bush was gone. WHether he does or doesn't have some less than noble goals doesn't matter any more than it would if Gore's efforts the monied masters hate so much involve things like personal gain too. That kinda BS in both cases whether coming from flat earthers or Snowden bashers is nothing more than a respite from the impotence they find when they try to rebut their respective work products in an effort to shield themselves and their idols from the shame/shaming they deserve.
And Snowden must not be very bright if he thought he was gonna exploit his efforts monetarily in sufficient enough measure to warrant the price he's paying as a man with no country.
but by all means, scrutinize and bash away.