re: #8 lawhawk

What else have we learned about the NSA from the Snowden documents? That the NSA is following federal law and that there are checks and balances to their actions, including the collection of data and metadata. This is hardly an agency run amok as Snowden and Greenwald have repeatedly claimed, but that’s besides the point they’re trying to make. They want to see the NSA’s data collection systems eliminated - and that ignores real-world threats and national security along the way.

This, for me, is what sets my teeth grinding when Ars Technica or This Week in Tech start hailing Snowden as a hero.* As Charles and others have pointed out, even Glenn Fucking Greenwald reports that warrants and other checks and balances are in place.

What’s also angering is how the Snowden worshipers completely ignore the fact that it wasn’t just the NSA docs he stole, and then essentially turned over to Russian and China. Shit, if it was just the NSA stuff, I might be on his side.

*Not an exaggeration in TWiT’s case.