Edward Snowden: Interview Video

Do you trust Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower?

Is he a patriot? A hero?

From Tony Lee, Breitbart's Big Government:

The Guardian revealed on Sunday the identity of the NSA whistle-blower who gave the publication information about the NSA's data surveillance programs.

Edward Snowden, who is reportedly hiding out in Hong Kong, leaked information about the PRISM program and presumably gave the publication documents about how the federal government has obtained court orders to force Verizon to turn over the private and international phone records of all of its customers on an ongoing basis.

Snowden is described as "a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton," who has been "working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell."

After the Washington Post broke the story about the NSA's PRISM program, the Guardian revealed more details, including the three billion pieces of intelligence the NSA reportedly collected from American computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March of 2013. The article, though, is not clear about what specific pieces of information Snowden leaked.

Snowden said he leaked the the various NSA documents because he felt the agency was "intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them," and he believed this posed an "existential threat" to democracy.

He is currently hiding in Hong Kong and may try to get asylum in Iceland because of its "reputation of a champion of internet freedom."

...He said he did not see himself as a "hero" but as someone who just leaked the information because he did not "want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Snowden also claims to have "carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest." He chose to disclose them because he said the NSA programs posed an "existential threat to democracy." He said he did not turn over documents that would have made a big impact because those documents could have harmed people. He said he once viewed the Internet as "the most important intervention in all of human history" before realizing how it could be used to undermine everyone's privacy.

Watch video of the interview:



I question Snowden's motives.

Is he a selfless individual out to stop an out of control government from infringing on our privacy? Is he an egomaniac, looking for fame, hoping to cash in and sell his story?

I don't know.

I am glad he exposed the abuses. I don't care why he did it.

This story isn't about him. I'm sure the White House and the other Leftists will attempt to discredit Snowden and put the focus on him. Of course, that matters to Snowden and his family, but it's irrelevant in the overall picture.

This sort of monitoring by the government isn't supposed to happen in the U.S.

Enough!


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Mark Levin: "Stick Your Data Mining!"