Out of Pod Experience

You're a suspect

AND You're a suspect

EVERYONE'S A SUSPECT!!!!

'merika, land of the free*

*void where prohibited**

**Prohibited in the United States of America

Please forgive me. I didn't mean to leave out these important Anglosphere nations, especially as one day I'd like to live in one of them .

This guy had access to an absolutely enormous amount of material. If he wanted to do a Bradley Manning, he could have done it by one or two orders of magnitude.

That doesn't mean he isn't a douche.

US intelligence services do have a far more colorful history of being naughty and paranoid than their European counterparts, and in general European companies and politicians have kept a stronger stance on protecting and respecting the privacy of their citizens than across the pond... but regardless of cultural and legal differences, it all comes down to us flawed humans, no matter where we come from.

About a decade ago, I used to work for an Internet European multinational: regardless of all the stringent European laws protecting the private data of our users, and regardless of all the privacy legal statements decorating our website, one day when the company was going through a rough financial situation, one of the top managers personally came down to the engineering department and asked us point-blank to provide him with a full database dump of our users' private data, in an easy to use format, so he could sell it off to spammers or whatevers.

Every day, bad decisions are taken, no matter if it's on a school yard, a corporate office, or a government, no matter the country, the culture, or the political affiliation. It's all the same, it's just the wrapping and the magnitude of the consequences that varies: we are only flawed humans, and we never left behind the school-yard dynamics.




As an aside, and speaking of conspiracies, an interesting aspect I find in all these hoopla, is how it illustrates how those worldwide all-encompassing conspiracies the Alex Jones cultists are so in love with, could never work: here we have, the NSA / CIA themselves, entrusting access to their "super-secret" government spying program to some high school dropout working for some external contractor, with a personal record of giving money to the campaign of none other than Mr. I-Hate-Big-Federal-Government Ron Paul...

Alex Jones & co keep forgetting that, on one hand human stupidity is boundless. And on the other hand, that in order to be able to pull off the sort of vast conspiracies bent on decimating the human race they keeping spouting about, it would require the countless humans involved, all around the world, never making a mistake, never letting their tongues loose on the wrong sort of ears, never having qualms or second-thoughts on this whole let's-enslave-and-decimate-the-human-race business.

he keeps referring to the rest of his life as if it's a definite time frame

also, according to this article he wants to work for CCP

well if everybody is so paranoid about the NSA monitoring you internet habits then This may be the software for you

The fact is given what his position was and what he knows, sending a letter to a congressman or lobbying would have placed him in a very bad situation.

Besides, before the specifics of what he revealed there were already tons of people writing, protesting, and lobbying against stuff just like the things he delivered hard proof on. The difference being those people didn't have proof or direct knowledge. Which is a 'your word against mine (the govt)' when the former knows nothing concrete.

Was he supposed to be extremely vague in his letters and lobbying? Vaguer than the know-nothings? Because saying the same thing as the people who had no proof or direct knowledge places him in the same situation he's in now, as an ex-CIA employee, ex-NSA contractor with direct knowledge.

In other words, he doesn't become a target of investigation, lose his job, career potential, get blacklisted, charged, arrested etc. because he's said anything different than what many others have said thousands of times, but because he said it while happening to know certain specific facts.

Right or wrong, him going about it the way he did was likely the only practical method that would have been effective.

Heard Russia is now considering offering him political asylum should he request it. Its somewhat ironic to see the positions turned, with the US the paranoid surveillance state and Russia offering asylum in a political game. What are the odds of him being pardoned at the end of Obamas term or as part of a Republican manifesto?

The appetite for power and control is bottomless. The more you give the more they want.
If the only foundation of "checks & balances" is to blindly trust them , it's not working anymore.

Lot of people in Europe still remember what is it to live in a dictatorship. So they are more sensitive to governmental lies.
And they lie a lot, everywhere.
I guess US has to make its own experience with it. The winter is coming ... ;-)