Well, gosh-a-roonie, Drunksy, then what does the biggest marketing data company in the world do with their petabytes of consumer data?
Private industry is collecting data all of the time and there are no regulations on that at all. I don’t think we are headed for some dystopian future through most of this, but big companies are irresponsible with our data. Credit card companies are hacked all the time because some cheapskate chose to go with poor security. Even if you think the data we give them is voluntary, putting that data on insecure servers where thrives can get it is not.
What’s the alternative? How should Snowden evade enhanced interrogation techniques? Go to Iceland? France?
And I for one am intrigued that the NSA is hacking into Chinese civilian computers. I don’t have sufficient information to draw solid conclusions, but I can’t rule out the possibility that Snowden is playing a very deep game. (He could also be playing a naive one, but I’ll go out on a limb that he isn’t as trollish as Bradley Manning.)
Any evidence at all that he would have faced “enhanced interrogation?”
A lot of people have done a lot worse and not been tortured. Why would this prick get something that Jonathan Pollard didn’t get? Your notion is absurd.
By running away – to Red China, for God’s sake! – the guy destroys his credibility.
Why don’t you ask Bradley Manning?
If I were Mr. Snowden, I would probably what asking what evidence there is that I wouldn’t.
Care to bring something to the table other than a rhetorical question?
If being held in isolation is “enhanced interrogation” then, yes, a lot of suspects ought to be subjected to it. It’s called cooling your heels. The waiting game.
If you’ve got rubber hoses, ice water, caffeine injections, or something else in mind, cite it. Otherwise… What have you got?
I was alluding to the treatment that Bradley Manning received. Wikipedia: POI status is one stop short of suicide watch, entailing checks by guards every five minutes. His lawyer, David Coombs, a former military attorney, said he was not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am at weekends) and 8 pm, and was made to stand or sit up if he tried to. He was required to remain visible at all times, including at night, which entailed no access to sheets, no pillow except one built into his mattress, and a blanket designed not to be shredded.[57] Manning complained that he regarded it as pre-trial punishment.[58]
His cell was 6 × 12 ft with no window, containing a bed, toilet, and sink. The jail had 30 cells built in a U shape, and although detainees could talk to one another, they were unable to see each other. His lawyer said the guards behaved professionally, and had not tried to harass or embarrass Manning. He was allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals were taken in the cell, and he was shackled during visits. There was access to television when it was placed in the corridor, and he was allowed to keep one magazine and one book. Because he was in pre-trial detention, he received full pay and benefits.[57]
On January 18, 2011, the jail classified him as a suicide risk after an altercation with the guards. Manning said the guards began issuing conflicting commands, such as “turn left, don’t turn left,” and upbraiding him for responding to commands with “yes” instead of “aye.” Shortly afterwards, he was placed on suicide risk, had his clothing and eyeglasses removed, and was required to remain in his cell 24 hours a day. The suicide watch was lifted on January 21 after a complaint from his lawyer, and the brig commander who ordered it was replaced.[59] On March 2, 2011, he was told that his request that his POI status be removed had been denied. His lawyer said Manning joked to the guards that, if he wanted to harm himself, he could do so with his underwear or his flip-flops. The comment resulted in him having his clothes removed at night, and he had to present himself naked one morning for inspection.[60]
The detention conditions prompted national and international concern. Juan E. Mendez, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture published a report saying the detention conditions had been “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” In January 2011, Amnesty asked the British government to intervene because of Manning’s status as a British citizen by descent, though Manning’s lawyer said he did not regard himself as a British citizen.[61] The controversy claimed a casualty in March that year when State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley criticized Manning’s treatment and resigned two days later.[62] In early April, 295 academics (most of them American legal scholars) signed a letter arguing that the treatment was a violation of the United States Constitution.[63] I think I’ve demonstrated my case: “Cruel, inhuman and degrading” counts as enhanced. That said, I concede a dash of hyperbole: this wasn’t Abu Grahad. Though it certainly wasn’t SOP either. At any rate, Snowden has very good reason to expect mistreatment if caught.
Very good question: why was Manning treated worse than Pollard? A: Selling secrets to Israel is forgivable: indeed there are plenty of bigwigs calling for his early release. Exposing war crimes to the press without compensation is not.
It shouldn’t be about Snowden. The topic should be about massive privacy violations conducted by the NSA, with the acquiescence of the Executive and the Legislature. I find the revelations interesting. As a US citizen I also feel morally entitled to them. Snowden released this data at great personal sacrifice, though not greater than that extended by hundreds of thousands of our fighting men and women past and present.
I’m not sure those millions of babies murdered by abortion would agree with you. That is if they were given a chance to do so.
He sacrificed a well-paying job, his relationship and, most likely, his future freedom. And for what? Exposing government programs that are not only lawful, but also already known to anyone paying attention. Brilliant!
Unless there are more sensational revelations yet to come, this exercise seems to be more about Snowden’s vanity and paranoia than some noble service to all mankind.
Vanity exercises don’t usually involve words like extradition or treason. I haven’t seen Snowden do much to hold himself up. Seems to be others doing that.
When did Hannity say that NSA data mining was okay? You appear to be conflating this issue with his opinion on the Patriot Act, which btw has been expanded.
Also, I don’t recall any public demonstrations against the Patriot Act except those by Ron Paul Republicans and Libertarians. So, I wouldn’t be so quick to suggest that Republicans are changing sides.
Video evidence of Hannity changing position:
I guess that after becoming radioactive the memory resets on some Republicans. 
He obviously knew that that was what would happen, though. That’s why he ran away. Assuming the previous poster is right, and this was well-known to anyone paying attention (and not just an assumption that any smart terrorist should make), then it was stupid of him to come out about this. You only blow whistles on things people don’t know. The consequences are just too great.
Republicans’ memory is much like radioactivity: after only a few half-lives, not enough remains to be detected. Democrats need to adopt the same technique. Anthony Weiner could just shrug and say “What phone messages?”
Here’s the thing…people keep saying he ran to China because he was afraid of being tortured. How stupid is that? Is there anyone, no matter how extremist to either end of the spectrum, who actually believes that he has a better chance of having his right not to be tortured for information respected in CHINA rather than the US? Seriously?
ETA: Then again, it’s not like China even HAD to torture him…he was spilling information about the NSA hacking Chinese computers within a week to a (Communist-)party favored newspaper. Good going, Mr. Liberty! We have names for people who do things like that. Sure sounds like a patriotic American to me…
And now he’s revealing details about NSA intercepts of Russian communications. I leave as an exercise for the reader to draw conclusions about what Snowden is really about from that and the China revelations.
Yeah, sounds like a great career move: take zillions from the Russians and the Chinese, then live like a king in China. I’m highly dubious about this innuendo.
More generally, James Fallows discusses some of the cost/benefit issues of the PRISM leak: But when it comes to PRISM? At face value, it seems to be one of the most clearly beneficial “security violations” in years. Why?
[ul]
[li]On the plus side, for the general public it is of very significant value to know (rather than suspect) that such a program has been underway. President Obama says that he is “happy to debate” the tradeoff between security and privacy. The truth is that we probably wouldn’t be having any such debate, and we certainly couldn’t have a fully informed debate, if this program (and others) remained classified. The greatest harm done by the 9/11 attacks was setting the US on a ratchet-track toward “preventive” wars overseas and security-state distortions at home. In withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has partially redressed the overseas aspect of that equation. (On the other hand: drones.) These leaks, which he denounces, may constitute our hope for redressing the domestic part.[/li]
[li] And on the minus side, what about the harm of the PRISM revelations? Again at face value, it seems minimal. American citizens have learned that all their communications may have been intercepted. Any consequential terrorist or criminal group worth worrying about must have assumed this all along.[/li][/ul] Sure we had the general idea that the government was involved in shenanigans. But we also had public testimony by the head of the NSA that they were not collecting the data of millions of Americans. That response to direct questioning by a Democratic Senator was highly misleading and possibly perjury. So no, I’d say we’ve learned a lot by the Snowden revelations.
All that said, I fully expect this administration to enforce our classified information laws. The security establishment is powerful and crosses party lines.