On this first one year anniversary of the Edward Snowden revelations about the NSA spying on us I have to say that he is guilty of ruining my state of blissful ignorance. before Snowden I didn’t know that the NSA was tracking every phone call I make and tracking every place I go. And what’s really terrible about Snowden is that no one is saying that the stuff he revealed isn’t true. Just that he wasn’t supposed to say it. So Snowden – thanks for ruining my state of blissful ignorance and the state of blissful ignorance of the American people! Now we have to be concerned about things that no one otherwise knew was happening. It’s your fault Snowden that my illusion of freedom and the
rule of law has been ruined. Who are you to assume that we want to know the Truth in a nation where the right to believe whatever we want is our most cherished and most often exercised right?
Are you serious?
Did you actually think that major governments and their agencies were benevolent?
I thought most people who frequent DU leaned towards the conspiracy (eyes open?) side of things.
I found the Snowden leaks to be a confirmation of suspicions first, and a surprise at how thorough the agencies were operating second.
I will admit to being shocked at the amount of spying going on.
🙂
Maybe I was just paranoid but I figured out years ago the ABC’s and telecom’s were tracking and listening. Most people would roll their eyes at me when brought up in a discussion. Ha, oh wait. Ah, (with John Banner voice) I know nothing. I know nothing!
Ain’t that the truth? I’d always ‘assumed’ but then in 1994 when a roomate and I moved into a residence we’d notice the phone go, with a very truncated ring, ‘..da..di’.. twice a day at the same time every day.
Ring cancellor; That is, an inverse 88 volt signal is applied to cancel the ringer because a ringing phone is connected, a listening device, even though it was ‘on the hook’.
Well, needless to say, many were freaked out and amused at the same time as we’d sit around and wait for the ‘da di’ before engaging in the most colorful of smack-talk. I’d say i’ve demoralized my share of big-eared asshats… sux to be them.
At what point did you think ANY government was doing anything good?
Yes! Snowden opened our collective eyes and I don’t think I can thank him enough for it. I’m just not so sure I liked the way he did it nor the fact that he broke the law in order to expose the political cockroaches that we all knew where there. Now, this whole mess will have to be cleaned up which means more work for someone — someone who will probably want to be paid! But did you really think Snowden could have done it any other way other than becoming something of a modern day Billy the Kid? American’s just love a good under dog crime story. Your only objection seems to be over the size of the cockroaches involved.
Or could it be that you are so blissfully ignorant that you prefer to believe in even more fictitious characters like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy?! Because it might explain why you choose to live among all those high-tech weirdos running around northern California and places like Redmond Washington. Living with con men who make obscene amounts of money for flipping bits that produce damn little towards the betterment of mankind could explain why you’d care to keep dreaming of someday receiving your own enormous monetary windfall under your own giant pillow. (At least it’s not that nightmare called Wall Street!)
So maybe if you GREW UP and did something PRODUCTIVE this kind of scandal never happens again. Maybe if you paid attention to founding documents like the Constitution of the United States could you some day find the world in a much better condition than it is. Maybe if we all had more honorable VALUES other than to just make boat loads of money or scam it from others would anything resembling the NSA ever even become necessary. But I’m not holding my breath that any of you over paid silly-con valley “byte-offs” will ever do anything other than continue to dream in that most blissful state of denial otherwise known as, the state of California. Money and it’s bitch power, does that to a person — it corrupts!
That’s mean. It’s not like he works for UbiSoft.
Sarcasm. I get it.
Still, seems out of place a bit, and I wonder why? Not biting enough? Calling Snowden “guilty” actually a piling on of the gubments proclaimed position of finding him guilty and only wanting their hands on him to throw him in jail with or without a kangaroo court to make an example of him?
And the upshot? We the people do nothing and the NSA rolls on its development of total surveillance, publicly obviously lying to Congress and the Public with hardly even a comment against it.
The sarcasm is just too weak up against the issues at play.
Of conflicting note: I could even buy off on the total surveillance “if” it were the will of public and not that of the cabal willing to lie about what it exactly is. There is no Freedom when the gubment keeps secrets and lies to its citizens. In a “known” total surveillance society Freedom is still afoot as each individual makes knowing choices. Thats the nature of Sartrean Existentialism: “We were never more free than during the German Occupation.” Should ring bells.
I wasn’t particularly surprised at what Snowden brought to the open. Perhaps a bit on the scale of it. But, hey, I read 1984 back in the 1970s.
Actually, the huge extent of the spying somewhat explains where a ton of the money that the federal government takes in goes to. Those $600 toilet seats? They really are special, but they are $200 toilet seats with $400 redirected for all the secret stuff.
No, I didn’t have my blissful ignorance ruined by Snowden. He confirmed things that I had long expected to be the case.
But what really, really, really got me down is that the majority of the American People either don’t seem to care or feel that the surveillance is constitutional, justified or even necessary! That’s the really scary part.
quit yer’ bitchin’ the schewlbuss rans on time.
The bad actors that need to go
Are still there running the show