edward snowden
Original image found at ABC News

I am in support of Edward Snowden. And for pretty much one reason.

Things like the Patriot Act and the far-reaching snooping and spying tactics that the NSA employs are weak and lazy ways of catching the bad guy. It’s based solely on the principal of “guilty until proven innocent” and it needs to be stopped.

If you are after 10 people or 100 people or 1000 people, then I have nothing against the CIA or NSA to go through the proper methods (court obtained warrants, for example) to use covert operations on people of interest.

People of interest should never include all 320+ million citizens of a country. Capturing every single phone record and other data from those who are not of interest should not be happening in this country (or any country for that matter, but that’s besides the point).

The Obama administration needs to stop defending this lazy ass way of finding terrorists. President Obama is out of line here with his defense of these far-reaching efforts. Is this how and his team found Bin Laden and tracked him down? I certainly hope not. I hope there was much more intelligence used for that operation. I can’t imagine that some phone record from a middle-aged factory worker in Ohio talking on his Verizon smartphone helped find the world’s most wanted terrorist.

While I am not versed in how to do security or smart enough to tell the CIA or NSA how to do their job, I most certainly know that overreaching and broad stroke brushing over the entire citizenship of this country is something that I don’t agree with and it needs to stop before more people like Edward Snowden leak other bits of information that show the insane levels of invasion that are going on (and have been).

If the NSA and CIA are worried about these leaks causing damage to their covert operations, then this should be a wake up call for them to change, not double down on defending these tactics and prosecuting each Manning, Assange, DeChristopher and Snowden that comes forth and blows the whistle.

Links

  • Chicago Tribune: Editorial: The NSA leaks and national security
  • The Guardian: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
  • Washington Post: Obama defends sweeping surveillance efforts