Be very afraid of this man. Or not.
I am not a big fan of the lionization of Edward Snowden on Kos and in other commentary circles. Yes, there is knee-jerk reaction from mainstream media outlets on his being a spy, and certainly some of that's orchestrated with help from the close-knit cabal of Washington, D.C. insiders that swap in and out of public/private roles. But it seems as if equally rose-tinted glasses have been donned on this side of the media fence lately when it comes to assessing Snowden's motives.
Case in point: as revealed today by the South China Morning Post, Snowden's leaking of (legal, albeit creepy) NSA covert surveillance actions was not the act of an employee of Booz Allen who all of a sudden got a shot of freedom-loving conscience but rather the work of someone who joined that firm with the specific intent to locate and expose information regarding these programs.
Add in Snowden's following the Julian Assange playbook of self-justification and hiding out in unextraditable spots, and one wonders just who prompted this otherwise innocuous person to take these actions. If I think back to Daniel Ellsberg's revealing of the "Pentagon Papers" secret history of the Vietnam War via The New York Times, there was a person who faced the music and served from hard time for the privilege of bringing truth to democratic processes. Cowards like Assange and Snowdon do nothing of the sort - they'd rather make a lot of self-serving statements that give them a sense of ability to threaten powerful people.
To me that seems more like an ego trip than a moral and principled course of action, more similar to the motivations of an out-an-out spy like former FBI agent Robert Hanssen than any Ellsbergian act of freedom-fighting. Especially with far more egregious acts of government surveillance in nations like China who use their massive monitoring capabilities to stifle free speech and any questioning of authority, one has to wonder why someone like Snowdon would make it such a point to reveal this information just as senior Chinese government officials were visiting President Obama.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and certainly the post-9/11 world of virtually unimpeded U.S. government power to monitor who it pleases is due for a review. But given that there are real bad people who are stopped from doing real bad things as the result of these NSA surveillance programs, and not any noticeable impact on everyday loudmouths such as ourselves, it seems that too many folks on Kos are aiming at an easy target when there are some far less first-world abuses of government power that deserve our attention. I hope that your loved ones aren't the next ones to be greased by some nutto with some C4 and nails tucked into a backpack.