I am amused, while at the same time frightened, about the level of lawlessness that is advocated by Greenwald, Poitras, Snowden & Co.

The NSA is acting under the laws of the United States; the others are acting out of their own sense of self-importance, fame, money, whatever. When we don’t like a law, there is a process we take in changing it or overturning it. We don’t commit a criminal act to draw attention to ourselves. We’ve suspected and known to some degree for years, since the passage of The Patriot Act, that there was some overreach in what the govt was doing in collecting information in order to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11. We simply did not know the extent of it, how it was collected, or how it affected the average person, and we really still don’t, in spite of the dribbling of documents by GPS & Co.

I still ask: If these people didn’t really understand that what they are doing is criminal (although I think they did), then why do they remain in and reside in foreign countries? I think they understand exactly what they have done. They’re simply trying to frame the entire debate and sway an uninformed public through social media. Yes, the internet. This could not have happened 20 yrs ago, or maybe even 10. It is a prime example of how the internet can be used to frame and push a cause clbre. The problem lies in the fact that the majority of people know very little about the NSA, so it’s a very easy thing to obscure facts and color the debate.

At some point, GPS & Co’s excuse that it’s all about “constitutional rights” and the rest of it is going to wear thin, and they won’t have a defense for their actions.