Thread: Edward Snowden and his stay in Russia

Originally Posted by Doomer

And the US is the old lady?

Could be, lol!

Originally Posted by Hanna

Apparently Russia's stated that it "never extradites anyone". Good!
Haha, he's been reading that at the airport? Stylish choice. With the amount of time he's had there by now, he should have been able to make it through quite a few of the Russian classics. Hope he realises that he'd better get on with the language studies!

Yeah, he's safe if he stays in Russia. But I think he wants to keep leaking so he may go to South America someday.
His lawyer, Kucherena, brought him some books to read and that one was so perfect, lol! I think he has Nikolai Karamzin's history books and some books by Anton Chekhov too. He will have lots to read!

Originally Posted by DrBaldhead

Btw Raskolnikov went to the prison willingly

Noooo! Please don't tell me what happens! I started reading it yesterday and I've only read the first 2 chapters. But it's a really cool book! And I like history too so I'm going to look for the Karamzin, Russian States books too. I've studied a lot of Russian history this summer already but there's still more I want to know.
But yeah, if anything happens to Snowden, he won't be going to any prison willingly.
Btw, I like Dostoevsky's writing style. He was kinda heavy on the dialogue but he had an awesome way of pulling the reader into the book with his scenery and narratives. And he was good at building suspense.

Letter from Edward Snowden's father Lon to President Obama...

Bruce Fein & Associates, Inc.
722 12th Street, N.W., 4th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: 703-963-4968
bruce@thelichfieldgroup.com
July 26, 2013

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution

Dear Mr. President:
You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders. A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.

Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution. We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government.

Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it."

Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act. From the commencement of your administration, your secrecy of the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance programs had frustrated a national conversation over their legality, necessity, or morality. That secrecy (combined with congressional nonfeasance) provoked Edward’s disclosures, which sparked a national conversation which you have belatedly and cynically embraced. Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate to curtail or terminate the NSA’s programs, and the American people are being educated to the public policy choices at hand.

A commanding majority now voice concerns over the dragnet surveillance of Americans that Edward exposed and you concealed. It seems mystifying to us that you are prosecuting Edward for accomplishing what you have said urgently needed to be done! The right to be left alone from government snooping--the most cherished right among civilized people—is the cornerstone of liberty.

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg. He came to learn of the dy namics of the Third Reich that crushed a free society, and which have lessons for the United States today. Writing in Brinegar v. United States, Justice Jackson elaborated: The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police.

We thus find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible. We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward.

On June 27, 2013, Mr. Fein wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that Edward’s father was substantially convinced that he would return to the United States to confront the charges that have been lodged against him if three cornerstones of due process were guaranteed. The letter was not an ultimatum, but an invitation to discuss fair trial imperatives. The Attorney General has sneered at the overture with studied silence. We thus suspect your administration wishes to avoid a trial because of constitutional doubts about application of the Espionage Act in these circumstances, and obligations to disclose to the public potentially embarrassing classified information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial. Neither does your refusal to remind the American people and prominent Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate like House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and Senator Dianne Feinstein that Edward enjoys a presumption of innocence. He should not be convicted before trial. Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a “traitor.” Ms. Pelosi has pontificated that Edward “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.” Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, “This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor.” And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of “treason,” which is defined in Article III of the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, “or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

You have let those quadruple affronts to due process pass unrebuked, while you have disparaged Edward as a “hacker” to cast aspersion on his motivations and talents. Have you forgotten the Supreme Court’s gospel in Berger v. United States that the interests of the government “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done?”

We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage. Classified details of your predator drone protocols, for instance, were shared with the New York Times with impunity to bolster your national security credentials. Justice Jackson observed in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.”

In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed. Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.

Sincerely,
Bruce Fein
Counsel for Lon Snowden
Lon Snowden

Thanks for posting the letter. I didn't have time to look that up today.

Here's what Snowden's dad is saying now.

The elder Snowden said he thinks Russia is probably the best place to seek asylum because it is most likely to withstand U.S. pressure. Edward Snowden applied for temporary asylum in Russia last week.
Lon Snowden, a Coast Guard veteran who has worked on national security issues in his career, said he has tremendous faith in the American people and in the Constitution. He said that in a more subdued environment he feels confident that his son could get a fair trial, and the leak would be considered in context of his son’s desire to expose a surveillance program that he and others believe exceeds constitutional bounds.

But he said the Justice Department’s efforts to pressure other countries to turn over Snowden, coupled with silence from President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in the face of denunciations leveled by members of Congress who have labeled Snowden a traitor, have eroded his hope for a fair trial.
On NBC’s “Today” show today, Lon Snowden said there’s been a concerted effort by some members of Congress to “demonize” his son.

Lon Snowden and his lawyer, Bruce Fein, released a letter asking Obama to dismiss the criminal charges against Edward Snowden and to support legislation “to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed.”
The elder Snowden and Fein said they were disgusted by Holder’s letter to Russian officials promising that Snowden would not face the death penalty if he were extradited. They said it reflects a mindset that Snowden is presumed guilty and that a sentence of 30 years or life would be a reasonable punishment.

Edward Snowden's father, of Lehigh County, says son better off in Russia | lehighvalleylive.com

He sent the letter to President Obama and now they still want to arrest him. That proves that Obama didn't agree with the letter. And I just know that the offer for a civilian trial with a lawyer is just a lie to try and get him back.
Like his dad said, he's lucky to be in Russia.

Deleted. L.

There are a number of countries that don't pursue any economic goals, let their people die from starvation while their wisest governments can justify their being in the office - pump the nations with ideological scum, especially the one about how bad the U.S. and "imperialism" are; the brightest examples of such countries are North Korea and Venezuela; why doesn't that dude seek asylum in one of those?

It's lucky that Russia is an industrialised country with a good defense.

Otherwise the DRONES would probably be zooming in on Sheremeteyvo airport right now, and anyone blown up as they neutralised Snowden would be collateral damage, just as is happening in Pakistan and Yemen.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Otherwise the DRONES would probably be zooming in on Sheremeteyvo airport right now, and anyone blown up as they neutralised Snowden would be collateral damage, just as is happening in Pakistan and Yemen.

That's a little bit too much of the black paint
How many unarmed US citizens did the US killed willingly?

Originally Posted by Hanna

By taking Snowden in, Russia proves it's not a puppet state and it's not in bed with the agenda of the USA and NATO.

That's one of the most important reasons. When I see the UK it just looks like America with different buildings and a different flag. But when I see Russia, I see a totally different country. It's awesome!
Western Europe does almost anything that America tells it to do. But not Russia because Russia isn't a loser.
If I went to a football game and the other team said "Well, we are going to lose today because the other team told us to.", I wouldn't pay to watch that game.

Originally Posted by Doomer

CPUs of many computers in the world are made in the USA
China doesn't have much of technology to produce competitive stuff on their own

Globalism can be a good thing but don't sell Russia short.
Russian Chip Gurus ARM Intel Rivals With Secret Weapon | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

And who has been keeping the International Space Station manned? Russia.
America sent 5 expedition crews to the station from 2001-2002. Russia has sent 32 expedition crews to the station. And Expedition Crew 37 will be going there aboard a Soyuz TMA-09M in September.
Crews and Expeditions | NASA

That's one of the most important reasons that I want to live in Russia. They have the most epic space program on the whole planet. And yeah, Explorers 1 and 2, Cassini-Solstice, Kepler, and Curiosity are really cool too but those aren't manned projects.

Anyway, President Putin won't take orders from America. Imo, he will use Snowden to get support from other countries. And yeah, there is the possibility of sanctions but our government could lose a lot too if they push too much.
But at least Putin is taking time out to go hunting and catch 46 pound Pike and eat fish steaks! We've been doing that too! Well, except fishing. But rappelling trumps fishing, imo!
Vladimir Putin flees controversy, goes on shirtless fishing trip with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev | National Post

Originally Posted by UhOhXplode

That's one of the most important reasons. When I see the UK it just looks like America with different buildings and a different flag. But when I see Russia, I see a totally different country. It's awesome!

Haha, fundamentally the buildings are a bit older! And the culture is a bit different, in terms of people's behaviour etc.

But politically, sure. It's pathetic really. If America says it, it's true, as far as the UK media is concerned.
This country has a large number of American bases on its soil. The exact number is secret, we are not supposed to know. They are disguised as RAF (Royal Airforce) bases in most cases but once you get through the gates (I did once, for work) there isn't aBritish voice to be heard. All the staff apart from a few maintenance workers are American. The USA has a big base in North Yorkshire that spies on the UK and the rest of Europe; Telephone, internet and anything else. It's been going on for years but the lid was kept on it. Media never questioned what a foreign, absolutely massive spy central with mega satellite dishes, and space-age looking golfball tower was doing in the UK. Not even the locals knew much about it. Thankfully Snowden revealed what goes on there.

Our whole financial system here is hostage by the Fed, Goldman Sachs and the rest of them.

Frankly, the UK is so tied up with the USA that it might as well go ahead and apply for 51 state status in the USA.

We probably won't be able to affor free healthcare much longer, and free universities are already scrapped. Why would anyone want these things, when they can spend them money on supporting US wars, global domination quest and create civil wars in the Middle East....

And if Brits ever wake up to the true state of affairs there won't be a thing they can do about it. This country is practically under American occupation, it's just that most people aren't quite aware of it. One day they will be though, when the American empire comes tumbling down and the last veneer of democracy falls off.

Back to Snowden:

Imagine how many US spies are being dispatched to Russia right now!
He won't be able to nip to the cornershop for some milk without having 5 "NGO workers", "embassy administrators" and misc. employees of US corporations on his heels. Unless Russia helps him with a new identity.

And if Brits ever wake up to the true state of affairs there won't be a thing they can do about it. This country is practically under American occupation, it's just that most people aren't quite aware of it. One day they will be though, when the American empire comes tumbling down and the last veneer of democracy falls off.

Horrendous revelations. It sounds as if the spirit of Emanuel Swedenborg frequents you and initiates into the most deeply hidden intertwines of current world history. But what comes next?Are Brits doomed to become the second rate slaves as Afro-Americans and Indians used to be or…? And how this chain of events can result into

The USA hasn't got very long left as a super power. And when it's off the scene, the power will be with the Chinese, possibly Russia/CIS and/or the EU if it can ever agree on anything internally.

Is there any connection with Snowden here?
I’m totally at a loss and eager to learn the truth.

Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is | Technology | The Observer

From article:


...without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would there be – finally – a serious debate between Europe (excluding the UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US) and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.

These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of Snowden's activities. As far as most of our mass media are concerned, though, they have gone largely unremarked. Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap – speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in which it is heading.

As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.

The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.

Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.

Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib."

That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also have implications for you and me.

They tell us, for example, that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again.

Lawmakers Who Upheld NSA Phone Spying Received Double the Defense Industry Cash | Threat Level | Wired.com

From article:

The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA’s phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 “no” voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defense and intelligence industry as the 205 “yes” voters.

That’s the upshot of a new analysis by MapLight, a Berkeley-based non-profit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request. The investigation shows that defense cash was a better predictor of a member’s vote on the Amash amendment than party affiliation. House members who voted to continue the massive phone-call-metadata spy program, on average, raked in 122 percent more money from defense contractors than those who voted to dismantle it.

Overall, political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others ponied up $12.97 million in donations for a two-year period ending December 31, 2012, according to the analysis, which MapLight performed with financing data from OpenSecrets. Lawmakers who voted to continue the NSA dragnet-surveillance program averaged $41,635 from the pot, whereas House members who voted to repeal authority averaged $18,765.

Of the top 10 money getters, only one House member — Rep. Jim Moran (D-Virginia) — voted to end the program.

Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Poll shows that for the first time since 9/11, more Americans are worried about civil liberties than terrorism.

From article:

"Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person's civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004."

Originally Posted by Deborski

Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Poll shows that for the first time since 9/11, more Americans are worried about civil liberties than terrorism.

From article:

"Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person's civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004."

Could Americans be starting to wake up at long last? (I mean, apart from you, Deborski, lol!)
Terrorism is just a bogeyman and an excuse for starting wars, spying on citizens and much more.

The UK had IRA who killed lots of people, Spain had ETA,Germany had RAF, Russia has Dagestan/Chechnya Etc!!

None flipped out like the USA did over 9/11.
And guess what; IRA agreed to a peace treaty, ETA voluntarily put down their arms, the RAF members got old and decided they had enough of fighting the system and Chechnya did --- whatever they did -- but at least they stopped killing regular Russians.

There is no need to turn the whole world upside down, start wars and become Big Brother from 1984 just because of one terrorist attack!

Although I'm no conspiracy theorist it's certainly INTERESTING to note that 9/11 gave the US government and top corporations carte blanche to start wars, start snooping, sell weapons like there's no tomorrow, create a whole privately employed army in the Middle East, start the drone programme and what not.
Reminds me of a Ludlum novel I read many years ago, where private weapons/security interests set off a bunch of disasters, to turn the whole planet into a Big Brother states so they could rake in the profits from it. To many of thew private corporations in the USA, Osama bin Laden is the best thing that ever happened to their balance sheets.

Originally Posted by Doomer

That's a little bit too much of the black paint
How many unarmed US citizens did the US killed willingly?

The point is: They don't CARE who dies as they try to kill "terrorists".
And besides, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighters. The people they are killing are in most cases religious people who also happen to be anti-imperialist and supporters of Islam in their countries. Why should they deserve to die for that?
If they have to die, let their own governments take care of it; it's nothing to do with the USA.

But for some reason the USA reckons it's entitled to go in anywhere it likes and kill off people it doesn't like. It's revolting.
One day Yemen, the next day...... your country or mine!!!

The USA is totally out of control. Like a rapist who thinks he's entitled to sleep with any woman he likes, and whoever doesn't accommodates gets beaten up, or even killed. That's a good allegory of the behaviour of the USA in the Middle East, East Asia and South America over the last half century!

Originally Posted by Doomer

CPUs of many computers in the world are made in the USA
China doesn't have much of technology to produce competitive stuff on their own

Last I heard, most of the components for CPUs were made in China, Taiwan.... S. Korea, Israel... Japan

Originally Posted by Hanna

Could Americans be starting to wake up at long last? (I mean, apart from you, Deborski, lol!)
Terrorism is just a bogeyman and an excuse for starting wars, spying on citizens and much more.

The UK had IRA who killed lots of people, Spain had ETA,Germany had RAF, Russia has Dagestan/Chechnya Etc!!

None flipped out like the USA did over 9/11.
And guess what; IRA agreed to a peace treaty, ETA voluntarily put down their arms, the RAF members got old and decided they had enough of fighting the system and Chechnya did --- whatever they did -- but at least they stopped killing regular Russians.

There is no need to turn the whole world upside down, start wars and become Big Brother from 1984 just because of one terrorist attack!

Although I'm no conspiracy theorist it's certainly INTERESTING to note that 9/11 gave the US government and top corporations carte blanche to start wars, start snooping, sell weapons like there's no tomorrow, create a whole privately employed army in the Middle East, start the drone programme and what not.
Reminds me of a Ludlum novel I read many years ago, where private weapons/security interests set off a bunch of disasters, to turn the whole planet into a Big Brother states so they could rake in the profits from it. To many of thew private corporations in the USA, Osama bin Laden is the best thing that ever happened to their balance sheets.

If what I see on Facebook is any indicator, then people are definitely waking up. When the Snowden story first broke, I heard a lot of people calling him "traitor" and now I am hearing more concern from those very same people, not about Snowden, but about the police state we live in. Then again, it's only Facebook. But the poll I posted above gives me hope that this could be a new trend.

I think America's biggest problem right now, what is causing this police state as well as our military aggression overseas, is greed, bottom line. The military-industrial complex is the strongest in our nation. It has bought and paid for all of our political representatives, so that they no longer represent the people but rather the lobbyists who bribe them (legally).

If we could eliminate public campaign funding, and ensure that every candidate gets equal and fair publicity, we might have a chance at turning things around I think. That was the original goal of the Occupy movement, before they got sidetracked trying to protest everything at the same time. But I have little hope that this will ever change, especially given prevalent attitudes in the United States.

I do know, however, that every time I gather with my friends, the overriding concern everyone has is the militarization of America, the loss of our freedoms, and the burgeoning police state. What we can actually DO about it is a completely different matter, unfortunately. I think nothing will change until some breaking point is reached, and people are still far too comfortable (and distracted) for that to happen here.

Originally Posted by Hanna

Last I heard, most of the components for CPUs were made in China, Taiwan.... S. Korea, Israel... Japan

I don't think CPUs have components
CPU is a chip that is "grown" on silicon base.

Originally Posted by Doomer

I don't think CPUs have components
CPU is a chip that is "grown" on silicon base.

True. It's more like etching a pattern of transistors from a solid plate of transistors that are just pure silicon.

The NSA is lying. They said they were using keywords to look for terrorists in America and that can't be true. But even if it is true, they are not looking for foreign terrorists in the US with their surveillance system.

It boggles the mind that we didn't listen to the Russians when they warned about the Tsarnaev brothers in part because, well, they're the Russians. But we want to preserve the records of every housewife in Des Moines because data mining that arguably invades the privacy rights of innocent Americans might reveal something.
One person whose privacy was not invaded by U.S. intelligence was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as he repeatedly visited the al-Qaida online magazine Inspire for its recipe "Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...ism.htm?p=full

The new surveillance system was already operating and they were already warned about the Tsarrnaev brothers but they ignored them.
So I gotta ask. If they didn't build the system to spy on possible foreign terrorists in the US, then what is the real reason why they built it?
The only other answer would have to be to spy on non-foreign Americans.

I still think Snowden is a traitor/hero but the "hero" part is starting to look more important. Maybe freedom really does trump security and people shouldn't have to live in fear of their own government.
Anyway, it's really cool that it happened because it kinda forced me to think about stuff I never really wanted to think about - politics.
When it first happened, all I thought was "traitor" but now I don't know. My opinion has changed up a lot since then.

I wonder if it would be possible for Snowden to get a normal job in Russia?
What do you think?

Obviously he doesn't have unlimited funds. Within the next year he probably needs to find some source of income.