I'm Totally Confused Why This 29 Year Dude Who Said The US Records Everything You Do Is A Big Story

WASHINGTON (AP) — A 29-year-old contractor who claims to have worked at the National Security Agency and the CIA allowed himself to be revealed Sunday as the source of disclosures about the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs, risking prosecution by the U.S. government. The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation into the leaks. The Guardian, the first paper to disclose the documents, said it was publishing the identity of Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, at his own request. ‘‘My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,’’ Snowden told the newspaper. Snowden said the NSA’s reach poses “an existential threat to democracy.” He said he had hoped the Obama administration would end the programs once it took office in 2009, but instead, he said, President Barack Obama “advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in.””I don’t see myself as a hero, because what I’m doing is self-interested,” he said. “I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”

Snowden left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there since, according to the newspaper. Snowden is quoted as saying he chose that city because ‘‘they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent’’, and because he believed it was among the spots on the globe that could and would resist the dictates of the U.S. government.

Stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post published over the last week revealed two surveillance programs, and both published interviews with Snowden on Sunday. One of them is a phone records monitoring program in which the NSA gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records each day, creating a database through which it can learn whether terror suspects have been in contact with people in the U.S. The Obama administration says the NSA program does not listen to actual conversations. Separately, an Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the NSA and FBI to tap directly into nine U.S. Internet companies to gather all Internet usage — audio, video, photographs, emails and searches. The effort is designed to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

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So this bro Edward Snowden is all the rage right now. It’s the #1 story in the country by a mile. I got to be honest I don’t get it. What did he even say? That the US government can pull phone and internet records on whoever they want? That everything you do is being recorded? Well no shit. Isn’t that a given? And more importantly who cares? I mean I don’t think Obama is checking in on me to make sure I don’t cheat on my wife.  It’s to catch terrorists and shit.  Seriously how do these people want us to catch bad guys? Just by closing our eyes and hoping they walk into jail by accident. It makes no sense. It’s the same argument as TSA lunatics that don’t want to go through security because it’s an invasion of privacy. Newsflash a terrorist just hid a bomb in his ass and blew people up. We need every weapon we can use to stop these people. If that means the Government needs a program that can tap into everybody’s phone or Internet system so be it.  Let’s just be clear about it.  Hey bad guys we’re taping everything you do. There I said it. Now everybody is on the same page. Time to move on.

PS – I actually don’t hate this guy. He did give his name so you got to give him credit for that. I just think he’s a delusional fuck. Like dude you really think Hong Kong is more open than the United States? That should tell you everything you need to know about this fruit cake. Fucking communism bro. Ever heard of it?