Snowden is Missing and So is Transparency

Edward Snowden was fired today from Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH, humbug) and is likely in hiding. This young man is a hero to himself, his girlfriend pole-dancer, and some others who believe that what he did was justified because it is unconstitutional when the government decides to collect information on its citizens without just cause. Others believe that national security trumps the privacy of our phone numbers. Of course, there is that little thing called email that changes the story quite a bit--email contains actual words, messages, private thoughts, that the government can acquire. That sounds over the top, to me. 



The Obama administration promises us that the information acquired by the PRISM program will not be used against us. For example, Obama will not use it for political gain such as getting "dirt" on Republicans like he did in his Chicago style Senate run where David Axelrod got the divorce papers on Obama's opponent unsealed and used it to smear him. He would never do that again, or have his friends do that for him--we trust him this time, right? They will also not gather information, like the IRS did on conservatives, anymore.

And we can easily justify why this information is okay for them to acquire. Like Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt (huge Obama fan) said, "if you don't want others to know what you're doing, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." That's paraphrased, but quite accurate. So let me see if I get Schmidt's meaning: if I email my wife that I want to do something in private with her tonight, he can see that email. If I tell my buddy a dirty joke, Schmidt also gets to chuckle or be offended, based on whether or not he actually has a sense of humor, which I doubt. It seems to me that it's easy for the guy who controls the information to say what Schmidt said, but I think it sucks like a Dyson D42. 

Let me tell you where I really stand. I believe we need to do everything we can to prevent another Islamic terrorist attack. We need to keep NSA in business and also follow BAH's lead when it comes to employees who are a problem like Snowden--fire them. Get rid of the Lerners, Shumans, Millers, Rices, and even Clintons. But definitely don't take BAH's lead in how to determine if someone is a viable candidate for Top Secret Clearance. Then again, Bradley Manning was and look how the government did with him. I don't believe we need to gather private emails on all citizens to do that. Let's face it, the government had enough intel on the Boston Marathon bombers, and even more intel on Nidal Hasan to save lives, but they were incompetent, or didn't care to step in to stop them because it wasn't politically correct. The real problem is that little old competency thing.

Snowden's girlfriend 

Greg Gutfeld made a great point on The Five today when he said that if James Rosen (from Fox News) could be named a co-conspirator, what does that make The Washington Post, or The Guardian after Snowden spoke to them?

Lastly, if Obama is claiming that we've won the war on terror (which in itself is a stupid way of saying that we won the war on Islamic jihad--a much more accurate statement), then why do we need to have these programs anymore? Of course we haven't won squat and we do need them, just in the hands of people who would use them for the greater good, not their own good. And therein lies the biggest problem--the absolute power thingy.

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