A segment of the "progressive community" has lionized Edward Snowden, yet he has sought refuge in China, Russia, Venezuela and Ecuador. China and Russia are corrupt, despotic regimes that routinely violate human rights and basic freedoms. Venezuela is a nominally democratic regime rife with corruption and repression of speech. Ecuador regularly represses free speech and incarcerates journalists.
Snowden is no Daniel Ellsberg, and Greenwald is neither Woodward nor Bernstein. Snowden touts himself as an American civil liberties champion, yet his story has been less than consistent, and he has released information compromising US data collection in China, Russia and the UK. It is common knowledge that China and Russia have active and on-going espionage activities, and both countries steal state, personal and corporate data. As we experienced in Boston, Russia was unwilling to provide information necessary to avert a terrorist act.
Are Snowden and Greenwald advocating that the US stand-down on quid pro quo data collection and surveillance; or more likely, are they involved in a dangerous act of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement with an ulterior motive of undermining a progressive President? Even worse is the possibility that Snowden, either by design or miscalculation, has dropped NSA data into the hands of China and Russia. Why would this "civil libertarian" seek refuge with two of the most corrupt, authoritarian regimes in the world. Has anybody considered the possibility that Snowden and Greenwald are pawns, wittingly or unwittingly, of two countries with interests that are contrary to that of the US? Why are Snowden and Greenwald dripping-out the information instead of making it available to "responsible" persons?
As for data privacy, we have none. Wake-up to the reality that every major website that we visit collects our personal and financial data, and they sell or share it to make money. Every website we visit, we drop cookies that convey information. We receive a telephone bill monthly, and our call data is easily accessible. With every on-line purchase, every credit card transaction and every website visit, we are leaving trails of data that are being collected by private and public entities.
Anybody that has experienced divorce understands clearly that your personal data is readily available from third party providers - legally or illegally - for a relatively low price. If you do not believe it, consider the the routine gerrymandering of Congressional districts: districts are assembled household-by-household because pollsters and political operatives have data readily available to determine with high certainty how you will vote.
With this moral outrage against the NSA and Obama administration, progressives mimic Rand Paul and the NRA. Is some government agent in a black helicopter coming to collect our guns or our computer? Are we really doing anything of interest to anybody in the government? If we are, then it is probably against the law.
Darrell Issa and the Republicans have smeared the Obama administration with the Behghazi non-scandal and the IRS non-scandal. Fox News facilitates the misrepresentations and never corrects the record. Now, progressives are playing into the hands of Republican obstructionists by promoting NSA data collection as some civil liberties catastrophe. The net effect is to weaken the Obama administration and undermine our President.
Think about what progressives are placing at-risk with their NSA fury: comprehensive immigration reform with a real path to citizenship, meaningful climate legislation, reform of the health care system and gun effective control.
The disenchanted progressives that voted for Ralph Nader tipped the presidency to George W. Bush. While 9/11 may have been unavoidable, the Bush presidency led to two unnecessary wars, the Roberts Supreme Court, human rights abuses and the very laws that legalized and mandated the NSA data collection.
Progressives, stop playing the fool and give our President the benefit of the doubt. His leadership and conduct of the nation has been exemplary. We need to move forward.