Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency 573
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, writes at Slate that if Edward Snowden's stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the domestic surveillance by the NSA, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing. But Snowden did much more than that. 'Snowden's documents have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA's interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan's northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what's going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls 'worldwide,' an effort that 'allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.' Kaplan says the NYT editorial calling on President Obama to grant Snowden 'some form of clemency' paints an incomplete picture when it claims that Snowden 'stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency's voraciousness.' In fact, as Snowden himself told the South China Morning Post, he took his job as an NSA contractor, with Booz Allen Hamilton, because he knew that his position would grant him 'to lists of machines all over the world [that] the NSA hacked.' Snowden got himself placed at the NSA's signals intelligence center in Hawaii says Kaplan for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents. 'It may be telling that Snowden did not release mdash; or at least the recipients of his cache haven't yet published — any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China,' concludes Kaplan. 'If it turned out that Snowden did give information to the Russians or Chinese (or if intelligence assessments show that the leaks did substantial damage to national security, something that hasn't been proved in public), then I'd say all talk of a deal is off — and I assume the Times editorial page would agree.'"
Re:What's good for the goose (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Chinese or Russian Operations? (Score:4, Funny)
You're either speculating or you're a traitor for leaking that the NSA has plenty of material about foreign intelligence services.
That's like when somebody posts that there are animals in the Zoo, you call it speculation.
Re:Shooting down a hurricane? (Score:4, Funny)
"Wait, the U.S. military shot down a hurricane that was about to attack U.S. citizens? Or it fought the hurricane, and drove it back into the sea, after it dared to attack U.S. soil?"
If the USAF hadn't intervened and shot down the flying sharks it would have been a sharknado.
Re: What's good for the goose - Al Qaeda -- USA (Score:0, Funny)
Citations? Please.