The anti-Snowden brigade generally claim that he should have worked within the system to blow the whistle on it, and/or should have returned to the USA to face the subsequent music — although it has since become apparent that the NSA has not been completely forthcoming about Snowden’s attempts to express his concerns without going public. Quite aside from self-preservation, it’s pretty obvious that Snowden would have been enormously less effective over the last year if he’d returned and been clapped into solitary a la Chelsea Manning. (“The law he has been charged under doesn’t let him make his case in front of a jury,” according to the EFF’s Trevor Timm, accepting a Crunchie on Snowden’s behalf.) Instead he’s been able to chat with Sergey Brin at TED, appear on panels with Daniel Ellsberg, etc., and get his message out via telepresence. But you know what? It’s a moot point. Even if Snowden was an outright foreign spy all along, on a results-based analysis, he would still deserve a medal — because, despite our vestigial Cold-War anti-commie knee-jerk reactions, the truth is that we live in a time when the greatest threat to the American way of life is America itself.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 11:38:35 +0000
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