Those of you that know my background won’t be surprised at what I think of Edward Snowden. In my book, he’s the lowest of the low — lower than used car and aluminum siding salesmen.
I have absolutely no problem with the fact that he disagreed with what NSA was doing. The problem I have is that he took an oath to protect that information when he started to work there. That’s his personal promise to not divulge the information he is working with — the fact that he chose not to honor that oath says a lot about his integrity and him personally. It also says a great deal about his loyalty to our country. I’ve been a lot of places and I guarantee that he’ll soon realize that there is no better place to be than the United States, even given all the issues and problems we, as a country, face.
If he did disagree with the NSA policy, there are established procedures to deal with it — Snowden didn’t even give the system a chance to work.
Soon after this country was established, it didn’t take long for the government to realize that eavesdropping on the communications of other countries and even its own citizens is a necessary evil in a dangerous world. That fact should be even more apparent today.
The United States is significantly less likely to order wiretaps than almost any other country. The most wiretapped country in the world is Italy. The country with the next most wiretaps is the Netherlands.
In the U.S., judges almost always only grant wiretap requests that are “specific,” meaning they have to have a list of numbers they expect the suspect to call and what they’re expected to talk about. So if you’re living in the U.S. and you think the government is listening to your phone calls, unless you’re dealing in illegal drugs or something like that, you’re probably just paranoid.
In 1929, President Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, shut down the office in the U.S. State Department responsible for breaking codes to read messages sent between embassies of other countries and their capitals. He’s rather famous for stating, “Gentlemen don’t read other Gentlemen’s mail.” Of course the only problem with a gentlemen’s agreement is that our enemies don’t always act like perfect gentlemen — and — they do read our mail.
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