Sunday, January 11, 2014
Today was one of those days in which I dropped everything to lose myself in a truly amazing, unbelievable story, a story we all know but I haven't really taken the time to learn the details of until today, when I read Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide, Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State.
Wow. I could not put this book down. From morning till night, I read it, absorbing the full impact of what Edward Snowden had done and why. I remember thinking how odd it was back in June, 2013 that a story of such magnitude about abuse of power from an American government agency had come from The Guardian. Now I know why. The book reads like an over-the-top political thriller. I haven't seen CitizenFour yet, but will, now that I'm fully engaged with all the ramifications of Snowden's whistleblowing and one of our largest, most secretive government agency's egregious abuse of power in the name of terrorist protection. The NSA plan was complete control of all electronic data on the planet...all of it! And with no reasonable way to expose this nefarious breach of our constitutional rights, Snowden sought a journalist he could trust. Two, actually, the film maker Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. He chose well. His life is forever changed. It will be interesting to see if he remains a traitor in my lifetime, or eventually is seen as a savior of our freedom from government intrusion. I'm not one of those radical paranoid anti-government ideologues. Far from it. But I do know abuse of power when I see it, and the NSA programs represent something as close to Big Brother as anything any government has devised. I hate when our own officials come up with evil ideas and use them against us. I hate that. Evidently, Snowden hated that, too. One brave soul, he is. I'm with Greenwald on this one. And those Evil Genes who allowed this to happen at the NSA. They are the real villains that I can't imagine our founding fathers would feel any kind of patriotic affinity toward.
Today was one of those days in which I dropped everything to lose myself in a truly amazing, unbelievable story, a story we all know but I haven't really taken the time to learn the details of until today, when I read Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide, Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State.
Wow. I could not put this book down. From morning till night, I read it, absorbing the full impact of what Edward Snowden had done and why. I remember thinking how odd it was back in June, 2013 that a story of such magnitude about abuse of power from an American government agency had come from The Guardian. Now I know why. The book reads like an over-the-top political thriller. I haven't seen CitizenFour yet, but will, now that I'm fully engaged with all the ramifications of Snowden's whistleblowing and one of our largest, most secretive government agency's egregious abuse of power in the name of terrorist protection. The NSA plan was complete control of all electronic data on the planet...all of it! And with no reasonable way to expose this nefarious breach of our constitutional rights, Snowden sought a journalist he could trust. Two, actually, the film maker Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. He chose well. His life is forever changed. It will be interesting to see if he remains a traitor in my lifetime, or eventually is seen as a savior of our freedom from government intrusion. I'm not one of those radical paranoid anti-government ideologues. Far from it. But I do know abuse of power when I see it, and the NSA programs represent something as close to Big Brother as anything any government has devised. I hate when our own officials come up with evil ideas and use them against us. I hate that. Evidently, Snowden hated that, too. One brave soul, he is. I'm with Greenwald on this one. And those Evil Genes who allowed this to happen at the NSA. They are the real villains that I can't imagine our founding fathers would feel any kind of patriotic affinity toward.
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