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Charles Cooper reports that venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has called former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for leaking national secrets about US surveillance practices and says that foreign nations may use the disclosures as an excuse to promote their domestic technology suppliers over American rivals. "Obviously he's a traitor," says Andreessen. "Like if you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor,' there's a picture of Ed Snowden. Like he's a textbook traitor. They don't get much more traitor than that. I will say that I'm in the distinct minority out here. Most people in Silicon Valley would pick the other designation."
Andreessen added that NSA leaks may well wind up getting used as a cudgel by foreign governments against American companies that depend on overseas sales. "There's a big open question right now how successful our companies will be when they go sell products overseas," says Andreessen. "I think there are a lot of foreign companies that are very envious of Silicon Valley and America's domination of tech and wish that they could implement protection policies. And they are going to use this whole affair as a reason to do that ... as an excuse."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by computersareevil on Saturday June 07 2014, @12:58PM
If Snowden is a "textbook traitor", he is only a traitor to the textbook fascists [merriam-webster.com] like Andreessen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 07 2014, @03:28PM
Andreessen [merriam-webster.com]
(Score: 1) by digitalaudiorock on Saturday June 07 2014, @08:04PM
What's getting so silly about all these accusations is the fact that a huge, growing portion of the population is viewing him more as a hero for essentially throwing his life away in an attempt to expose a huge wrong. Most everyone I know falls into that camp.
And seriously...lets remember that all this shit has been (supposedly) about the so-called "war on terror". At it's best that whole thing amounts to a complete and utter disregard of anything resembling risk assessment, and at it's worst it's...well...exactly what the Snowden revelations have proven it is. It's as if the feds want us to accept that it's OK that they've lied to us for decades, broken the law, burned the constitution and everything it stands for...but "oh...don't ask questions...we have to do this to make sure you don't get struck by lighting three times in the same fucking spot". I don't buy any of it.
I guarantee that Osama knew this is exactly where we'd go as a result of 9/11, and we can all thanks the feds and our own irrational, mindless, fear for making him succeed.