Please he is not a whistle blower you are taking away from the real whistle blowers out there who are heroes.

And how is he a hyporcite he not saying something he doesn't believe in. Manning got a fair trial he will as well, you loon.

Several members of Congress (as well as Kshama Sawant) have suggested he deserves a clemency deal of some kind.

How long before a SLOG post about Sawant being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize? Do you have to drop her name in every fucking post now?
She won an election by promising longer recess and tater tots with every lunch. Can we at least wait for her to actually accomplish something tangible before we commission golden statues of her?

Snowden is a whistle blower of the first order, one who sparks a national debate and reveals that our public servants are both lying to us and incompetent at their jobs.

And, yes, Larsen is one of those public servants who was caught asleep at the wheel so I can understand his embarrassment, but a better man would thank Snowden for bringing these abuses to light.

Edward Snowden is not a whistle blower he is a traitor. He stole extremely sensitive surveillance data and flew to China with that data on him. Who knows what they snuck away from him. Then he flew to Russia? The United States is less safe because of him. The Terrorists now know exactly how we were monitoring them (if we could find them at all).

If you really want to get scared think about this. Yes our spying is crazy invasive but think about how much more crazy invasive Russia's spying is and they can't find the terrorists that are threatening to blow up the Olympics. There is an imminent threat and they can't find them. We usually only find these cells because someone turns them in.

@5 The US is less safe because of the NSA. I compare the NSA to dry rot in our democracy - the structure may look good from the outside but its just a crumbling shell from the inside. I love the way apologists for the police state like to compare the US to the worst governments out there, as in, 'At least we're better than " ____" (insert name of some totalitarian regime). That is a pretty low standard you want to measure the US by. There are a lot of different approaches to dealing with terrorism. For example, how about we try to answer the question 'why' so many people want to kill Americans, and are willing to sacrifice their lives to do so? You start turning those rocks over you might not like what you find. But too many vested and powerful interests are getting filthy rich under the status quo, so the response is always to ratchet up the military and police state apparatus and tighten control over people's behavior and liberty. Never mind the cost to our civil rights, our treasury or the cost in human lives.

@5 And if you think Snowden was the first contractor to walk out of the building with this kind of data I have a bridge to sell you. Seriously, this guy is not a mastermind. Thank heavens he is concerned more about privacy rights than making a quick buck, but the thieves who came before him weren't so high minded.

The thing that blows my mind the most about all of this hubbub is that with every new stupid revelation people are ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY at the spying and data handling & processing capabilities of entities like the NSA.

I'm far from a tinfoil conspiracy theorist (most of the time the groups you think are masterminds barely have their shit together) but I have YET to be surprised by the scope, techniques and activities of the gov't. I guess it's nice to have it on paper (electrons?), but c'mon.

Though I guess most people still barely understand or care how their wizard boxes bring them all those fancy words and videos.

@ 5,

You just wrote the justification for abolishing the Constitution and establishing a police state. Congratulations.

I guess people who are worried about the NSA aren't worried about the thousands of other private cyber security firms who are more than worried about what you do on the internet,on the phone, on Facebook, on the Stranger. The NSA didn't invent spying and cyber surveillance. They don't too much care that you are addicted to shemale porn and Minecraft.

What happens on the internet was never private. The rule of thumb is that if you don't have physical access to the server that you are accessing, consider it unsafe. Proxies, p2p ip blacklists, onion routers, vpns... none of that shit matters. It never did. The very nature of internetworking disallows complete anonymity. Partial? Maybe. Full? Nope.

What the fuck do you think happens when you are using hardware and software communication systems put in place by people like AT&T, Verizon, US Government, Google, Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft, Facebook, Time-Warner, Sprint? Why would you expect them to respect your "privacy"? What privacy?! Decapsulating and decrypting packets sent across their networks is expected. Some of it has to be done for performance reasons(MAH UTOOB IS SLOW TAHDAY), others for security reasons, others for profit(rate limiting/data caps), and others just because they can.

Besides, Edward Snowden is a shill.

yeah i'm along-with @3; this posting is fine right up to the pounding-it-in-sidewise round-peg/square-hole of:

Several members of Congress (as well as Kshama Sawant)

it does a discredit to an otherwise valid point about Larsen and Snowden and federal surveillance. please Slog-folks, we get that you're smitten with Sawant, but try to give her enough room to prove her worth before you asphyxiate her efforts with kisses.

@6 "I love the way apologists for the police state like to compare the US to the worst governments out there, as in, 'At least we're better than " ____" (insert name of some totalitarian regime). That is a pretty low standard you want to measure the US by."

What are you talking about? I was saying that if Russia can't catch terrorists that they know are going to strike how are we expected to catch ones we don't know about? I never even came close to saying at least we're not Russia.

Snowden is a Paultard who got nervous about govt surveillance once a black person became President. He's an hero.

Larsen has been paying lip service to liberals all along... This anecdote is yet another reason we should be ditching the dems for socialists or greens...