re: #38 abolitionist
Some decent coverage by Steve Gibson:
SecurityNow #408: The State of Surveillance
He’s been mostly out of the news loop in recent weeks, concentrating on a project. Toots his own horn a bit (entitled to, perhaps), and mostly sticks to the tech issues involved.Bruce Schneier has been covering the story too, but isn’t avoiding political/social aspects; calls Snowden a hero.
Gibson can be a little on the whacky side. He once accused Microsoft of putting a backdoor into a security bug (the WMF metadata issue, IIRC).