Edward Snowden is asking the US president to pardon him based on the morality of his action.
Well, here is a completely opposite view from the other side, so to speak:
http://observer.com/2016/09/were-losing-the-war-against-terrorism/
"Since 9/11, NSA has been the backbone of the Western intelligence alliance against terrorism. Its signals intelligence is responsible for the strong majority of successful counterterrorism operations in the West. More than three-quarters of the time, NSA or one of its close partner Anglosphere spy partners like Britain's GCHQ, develops a lead on a terror cell which is passed to the FBI and others for action which crushes that cell before it kills. If NSA loses the ability to do this, innocent people in many countries will die.
Unfortunately, there's mounting evidence that NSA's edge over the terrorists is waning. It's impossible not to notice that jihadist emphasis on communications security and encryption, which is now gaining ground, began in 2013. That, of course, is when Edward Snowden, an NSA IT contractor, stole something like 1.7 million classified documents from his employer, shared them with outsiders, then defected to Moscow."
"However, our precious edge in the SpyWar is waning fast. We are no longer winning. We're about to hear a great deal of unwarranted praise of Ed Snowden thanks to the hagiographic movie about him by Oliver Stone that's to be released this week. Don't be fooled. Snowden is no hero. In truth, he and his journalist helpers have aided terrorists in important ways. Snowden and his co-conspirators have blood on their hands—and perhaps much more blood soon thanks to their aid to the genocidal maniacs of ISIS."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bogsnoticus on Thursday September 15 2016, @06:36AM
The man who exposed the criminal behaviour of the TLA's?
Or
The TLA's that trained the insurgents, provided them with weapons, and then continued to meddle in the domestic affairs of nations after the insurgents had upset the status quo in their own country?
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 15 2016, @07:42AM
Yeah, perhaps you can con most of the US people but plenty of us outside the USA don't buy that bullshit about the NSA stopping terrorists.
The US Gov and its TLAs are responsible for much of the terrorism around the world:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/155236.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Born in Saudi Arabia to a Yemeni family, Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
He received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian.
Same sort of shit in Syria, the USA supported terrorists to fight vs Russian backed incumbents:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponsored_terrorism [wikipedia.org]
Even within the USA itself:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515 [rollingstone.com]
So far they've been creating terrorists (real or fake) and all their spying is good* for is finding out more details of the real terrorists AFTER the act.
If you want to fight and reduce terrorism you can start by shutting down the CIA and arresting the many in the CIA responsible for terrorism.
* There's plenty of other stuff their spying is for but it's not for good.