Traitor or Patriot?

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.

I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. . . . I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under. . . . I don't see myself as a hero, because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity. --Edward Snowden

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. --Fourth Amendment, United States Constitution

An interview filmed a couple of days ago with the 29-year-old whistleblower who spilled the beans to the Guardian and the Washington Post about the National Security Agency's vast data-mining operations, thereby rocking the United States Government to its core:



Snowden was in Hong Kong when the interview was filmed, and quickly running out of funds. As of Sunday evening, Texas time, he had checked out of his hotel room, and the press says his whereabouts are "unknown."

He strikes your Head Trucker as a sensible, conscientious person, not a bug-eyed radical; and while he may or may not have been mistaken in his conclusions, my gut tells me his motives were good, and selfless, and for that I think he deserves our attention and respect. Of course, his days at liberty are likely to be numbered - if he is still alive, and not already kidnapped and flung into a hellhole "black prison" somewhere. But he seems to have known the enormous risks he was taking, and took them anyway. God help him.

Rachel further explores the limits of secrecy and freedom with the latest on the unfolding PRISM scandal, including a talk with one of the prime investigative journalists who broke the story - about 20 minutes of stuff here, but well worth your time:

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