What should Edward ‘I’m a brave martyr but I wanna go home’ Snowden do now?
Edward Snowden’s saga — I hesitated typing that grandiose term instead of “pickle that this immature techno-geek with moral autism has made for himself” — is now feeling like the TV series SMASH, which started with a big, respected bang and ended up eliciting wails of: “Please, pull the plug on it already!” Put another way, he’s becoming the Jill Kelley of international whistleblower-dom.
Started with a screen-grabbing visual and a stunning bit of news, petered out into someone who keeps trying to revive attention against an onslaught of competing compelling news stories (SCOTUS gay rights decisions, Egypt re-exploding, Asiana crash, Zimmerman trial wind-down and verdict) by ever more look-at-me! measures.
He keeps saying he’s a whistleblower who is sacrificing himself for the principles of transparency and against our NSA’s spying on its citizens. But he wants freedom from prosecution – to the point of bringing in Daddy to plead his case for full immunity. Besides — though the relevance of this has been hotly debated – collection of cyber data (“spying” on us) is something that Google, Facebook, metro transit passes, credit rating services, political candidates’ pollsters, and every company that roto-announces “This call may be monitored or recorded” when you press the customer-service phone option have been doing for decades. As for countries spying on other countries – that’s hardly a novel offense in the rocky history of nations.
Most disconcertingly, Snowden’s assertions – especially those made through his sponsor/mouthpiece, “journalist” Glenn Greenwald — seem more like threats, even blackmail, than exhortations to the “conversation” about government overreach that he claims to want to start.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/07/15/what-should-edward-im-a-brave-martyr-but-i-wanna-go-home-snowden-do-now/
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