The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.
At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.
“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
Seemingly not kidding, the spokesman went on to discuss another charge against Mr. Snowden—the theft of government documents: “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
9 Comments
It sounds just like a conversation I would have here with some of your readers and get ripped on. It would be funny if it weren’t so true. I’m waiting for Cheney to come out defending Obama and then watch Carney do the “no, it’s not the same thing” dance around.
Is this The Onion article?
Mr. Borowitz has a sly sense of humor.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/06/22/edward_snowden_is_eighth_person_obama_has_pursued_under_espionage_act.html
More irony: the state department is now refusing to discuss claims that it has revoked Snowden’s passport… so as to protect Snowden’s privacy.
Even more irony in that both China and Russia seem to be telling the US they are wrong for hunting Snowden. However, when either of them has a dissadent or whistle blower they lock them away never to be heard from again.
This Snowden controversey is a complicated issue with the latest theory being he took the job for the purpose of exposing the NSA.
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-hero-unraveled-edward-snowden-took.html?showComment=1372110233015
Now if true it leads to a whole lot of other questions including the efficacy of our background checks, capabilities of the FBI and hiring practices for these types of ultra securety positions.
If you read the article and believe it’s content this individual joined that program with the intent of finding and disclosing the USA’s intelligence gathering infrastructure at least from an IT standpoint. Again, if true then that puts a twist on the whole case and it becomes a not so clear particularly if he did take the data straight to the Chinese. I believe I’d have more sympathy if he was stricly trying to protect US citizens 4th amendment rights, but protecting other nations from our intelligence gathering? If true, I think that crosses the line into treason. I’ll need time for more of the story to come out before passing judgement.
Reading that article you link to just made me LOL. So he is smearing Snowden, but if Snowden really was a spy for China why would he go public? Makes no sense at all.
Even worse, if it is THAT EASY for someone to get access to all that information at the NSA, then obviously the NSA is riddled with spies from every country in the world (not to mention from nefarious organizations of all kinds). That would just be more evidence that secret spying is a really really bad idea.
Yeah, I was trying to find the info from another source or at least something more verifiable. Thats why I took care to not use it as fact.
Your absolutely correct on the really bad idea part. If you can’t keep your secret information secret then you probably shouldn’t produce any.
Ooohh, the conspiracy theories that will come out of this could provide entertainment for generations to come.
Here’s an interesting take on the whole Snowden mess: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/opinion/snowden-through-the-eyes-of-a-spy-novelist.html