On Edward Snowden

 

At the moment my big concern is the poetry in the soul and heroism and sacrifice of Edward Snowden to try to get us to save ourselves from the security state that has replaced Jefferson, a plain reading of the Bill of Rights, and the Civil War ammendments as the basis for legitimacy in this country. We have become so fearful that we want all the bombs to explode somewhere else. And so we will acquiesce.
Someone made it very clear that the general architecture of security programs and the legal opinions that are their basis – should be declassified.                 Then particular investigations can be kept secret.
As for the data collected, it has to be kept out of the hands of people who could misuse it – local sherrifs for whom the patterns of calls would make the people involved perfectly clear to them, and future presidents and attorneys general etc. And oversight must be stronger
with a publicly observable and appealable FISA court.
Is this conceivably possible? Or are we actually already in the hands of a structure beyond our control — and the catastrophes that inevitably follow.
Still as I say I think Snowden is beautiful like a poem of what human character can be.
When people in Nazi Germany said they were just following orders we said that they had an inborn moral duty to refuse their orders.
The same applies to Snowden – may God give him peace and a  life.