Your thoughts on Snowden

[MTZehvor]

Mr Khan said:

sales2099 said:

I think this guys is a traitor to the US. The program is meant to spy on terrorists, and the general public has nothing to worry about. The gov't isnt interested in monitoring for petty crimes.....they listen to people that can possibly threaten national security.

So the average guy who bootlegs music online.......the government doesn't give two shits (pardon me) about them. So this guy took a program that is said to have stopped 50+ terror plots, and made it so the general public is outraged over something that doesn't effect them and actually protects them.

Its easy to criticize these things....until the next 911 happens. The government can only do so much sometimes.

The last time the government let one slip bast the goalies, there was a clear, legal source of information (ironically, in light of the current tiff, the Russian FSB) telling them that these Chechen immigrants had radical connections and likely terroristic intentions.

Now the government claims to have stopped dozens of plots with PRISM, but my point is that *the* 9/11 could have been stopped without all this warrantless spying (just requiring GW Bush and his team to pay more attention to the memo from August 2001), and the most recent incident, also, could have been stopped through using information obtained through more accountable processes.

This. So much this.

And yes, personal privacy and the fourth amendment certainly are a "sacred cow." There's a reason for that as well. It's one of the essential liberties that the nation was founded on.