Heh. In all fairness, it's arguable the UK does even more spying that the US. But your point is well taken. The US is supposed to be a model for a free society. Mass surveillance could be imagined as "un-American". But the president thinks it's an acceptable practice. Obama followers: You've been had.
Update: Apparently Jagger's jab drew boos. I suspect there were a lot of people in the room who are deeply invested in the politics that were being mocked from the stage.
I agree Snowden or Greenwald or whoever has the classified stuff needs to tell a compelling story, with a chronology.
Mr. Lee is absolutely spot on when he reminds us that the media and the White House are stealing the narrative. We're now totally focused on a random sysadmin trying to guess what makes him tick. Who cares? What about the criminal activity by the US government he's laid bare for all to see?
I kept hearing all this talk of "free speech" and the 1st Amendment today (thanks Carney), as it is supposed to exist in other countries, even when they lack anything like a US Constitution... good luck with that, and that Snowden's choice of destination is somehow symbolic of his motives. Maybe he's just trying to stay out of jail. Is that so hard to understand?
So I guess we're forgetting all about the 4th Amendment, which is the whole reason he's putting his life on the line in the first place. We need more details from those classified docs, we need a narrative and we need to bring the focus back to mass scale pen registers and warrantless searches. Snowden's case is boring. He's guilty. He committed a felony by disseminating redacted classified material to expose illegality on a much larger scale. Most Americans would be too frightened to do this. He's not the usual. Get over it.
On the other hand, the case of the US government, their conduct and whether it breaks US laws or the spirit of US law, is far more interesting.
Stop worrying about the rights of people in other countries and start worrying about the rights of Americans, who are extremely lucky to have an amazing Constitution, which used to be a model and the envy of the world.
What about more use of one-time or ephemeral email addresses? The info we have so far seems to suggest NSA likes to track email addresses. Compare tracking an email address that was only used to send or receive one or a few messages with one that has a long history of use.
