Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
The thing is.. as good as his intentions were, I think his deeds in the long run would only practically benefit the extremists of all kinds. Surely enough, Showden ruined a couple of careers of his superiors (and some of his fellows) and that is driving some of those powerful guys insane, so his immediate contribution is heroic. (I mean, it's always a healthy thing to let those in power down once in a while, just for the sake of it, maybe even causing them to be replaced despite the well-known fact that the new ones who'd come to replace the old 'evil ones' will be in no way better and maybe even worse, but merely more cautious this time). How much of a whistle-blower is he.. is a good question. Well, I think he probably is a honest whistle-blower. However, unlike the Hollywood movies where a person could win a struggle against an evil system by exposing its ways to the public, the real world works slightly differently. As much as I personally respect Snowden as well as I admire his intellectual abilities, I think he is yet to mature.
"I think his deeds in the long run would only practically benefit the extremists of all kinds." - Huh?

It doesn't really matter what it does to 'his superiors.' I don't really think it should matter if he's selling secrets or if he's a hero or a traitor or maybe he's a puppet of his superiors who want the public to recognize that they are slaves to their Governments who want to send a message that they're under public scrutiny - that is, that they have no privacy or control. What is important here, imho, is that people are talking about this, that they are comparing society to *1984* - that this isn't some fictional story but real life. You have the sheeple saying 'we knew this', 'who cares, whatever' or they are content in being spied on. That's fine. Most people have their heads in the sand but when things progress and get worse, at least, people saw it coming.

Perhaps, the Government wants everyone to be stupid and complacent and not mind having everything being scrutinized and being under constant surveillance. After all, what fun is it for those running the show if people only have a limited sense of what is going on.