Today’s Buzzfeed
has an article titled, America’s Spies
Want Snowden Dead. The article is packed with inflammatory comments like,
“I’d love to put a bullet in his head,” from a Pentagon official, and “Most everyone I talk to says
he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him,” from a
defense contractor. What’s problematic about the article is that the quotes all
come from “Unnamed sources.” On the one hand it makes sense. Spooks can’t be
spooks if they hand out business cards. But in today’s world of manipulated
media, it raises suspicions about the authenticity of the quotes.
If these
sentiments are accurate, however, the article reveals that many people employed
by the surveillance state live in an impenetrable bubble of self-importance.
Despite the fact that during the past ten years only one or two terrorist plots
have been exposed as the result of mass electronic surveillance, they deem
Snowden a traitor who has seriously damaged their efforts to stop the bad guys.
The fact is that the NSA has very little to show for its
intrusive and costly intelligence gathering operations. Even setting aside the
many constitutional issues involved here, there simply hasn’t been much return
on the taxpayers’ investment of billions of dollars. Snowden’s revelations have
less to do with disrupting America’s spying capabilities and more to do with
pulling back the curtain on the ineffective and unconstitutional NSA/CIA
programs.
Obama is making a speech today regarding proposed NSA
reforms. Many believe it will be too little too late, and will not sufficiently
reign in the intrusive spying tactics already in place. Regardless, if it
weren’t for Snowden, we wouldn’t even be having this debate, as we’d still be
in the dark about who was listening to our phone calls and reading our texts. If
accurate, the ugly quotes about killing Snowden demonstrate an attitude among
security officials that lawlessness in the pursuit of one’s objectives is
acceptable. Not much of a surprise there.
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