How do I stand on the charges the country has leveled against Snowden? I think the fact that he gave up an outstanding job, career path, and even his freedom reveals an inner strength and fortitude lacking in 99% of the politicians accusing him of being a traitor. To hear John Kerry call him a traitor and a coward who should come back and face the music is laughable. A coward or turncoat would only take such actions if guaranteed safe haven and reparations better than what he already had. No doubt, if he were to ever return to the U.S., he would not receive true justice and his sentence would surely be stanch enough to deter any future whistle-blowers. Kerry's own background, as a war veteran, who later returned home to join protesters against the war to the point of throwing his own medals away, does little to sway me in favor of his argument. If anything, he should feel empathetic of the plight of such a supposed coward. As a recipient of only one medal I would throw away due to the fact that its narrative was laced with misinformation and absolute untruths of which I did not provide or endorse, I I can relate to his willingness to wholeheartedly depart with them.
The government agencies who are allowed to operate with impunity outside the realm allowed by the constitution, who ignore the purpose of the FISA court, and who gather and maintain trillions of documents, phone, text, photographic, and emails of innocent U.S. citizens should reigned in and bought to justice. As a veteran, I'm in full agreement that there is much within the intelligence realm that should remain secret as it serves a legitimate purpose in protecting the citizens of this country. I also agree that these programs could serve a good purpose as it relates to protecting our nation from future attacks. I'm aware that terrorist groups, malicious foreign governments, and even so-called allies need to be kept at bay and for that I can appreciate our intelligence agencies. However, what has been revealed obviously isn't even the tip of the iceberg of what is truly going on. The fact that a man who was initially labeled a mere "hack" by the leader of the free world was able to gain access, copy, and share these documents with the press isn't a black eye on the whistle-blower, but is instead a damning confirmation of the flaws inherent to the agencies themselves and the programs as currently operated. If nothing more than an "analyst" and a "hack", then the agencies programs are nothing more than warehouses of information protected by skeleton key locks. If Snowden were a true traitor, he could have vacationed to HK, sold the documents to a foreign government and in all likelihood, returned back to a similar post totally undetected. As it stands, the agencies themselves are uncertain as to how much information was taken. To attempt to discredit such ingenuity serves more to slap the accusers own face in light of the overwhelming ineptitude of their own computer security measures. Imagine the lengths that the Chinese, Iranian, and Russian governments, to name just a few, would go to blackmail or bribe insiders who have similar or more access to such documents or worse, the information of otherwise unheralded citizens that could be used in turn to blackmail them.
I believe that future generations will look back at seeds of the "Orwellian" behavior of our government with regret that the leaders who promised change in government transparency weren't held to this promise. As the private lives of each and every citizen becomes nothing more than a trove of glass slides to be analyzed at will under the all seeing microscopic eye of any agency or individual employed by them to include actual traitors and spies, we sit idly by with faces like that of a lamb being led before the shearer. Even as the woolen fleece symbolic of individual rights and freedoms fall to the wayside, we do little more than bleat occasionally in protest before realizing that without these rights and privileges, we are at the mercy of the shearer for protection from the elements, many of which it controls and manipulates.
As for those in the military and intelligence services who truly serve to protect us from the ill-will of others, I admire and honor them for their service, but I cannot help but be wary of a government that continually seeks to skirt established protections afforded the citizens of this country, while allowing freedoms to illegals not afforded by the constitution. I cannot keep silent as I see a future where silence is the only right we have left that doesn't serve to incriminate us in the hands of agencies who maintain the ability to selectively deliver the most intimate details of our lives "A la carte."
I think the most poignant argument Snowden presented in the course of his interview was his challenge for the government to produce evidence to the contrary that his revelations have cost the lives of others or brought harm to the capabilities of the intelligence community. While their initial accusations after the interview were staunch and stoic that proof was available and forthcoming, the fact that it has yet to be revealed serves to weaken their argument, while given credence to distrust what might later be revealed as mere fabrication.