Kryptonite
New member
As I was typing this, news broke that Snowden is requesting asylum in Ecuador so I've edited it.
I'm not surprised that Russia has allowed Snowden to use their country as a safe passage to another country for asylum. With the US's war mongering in Syria and now trying to arm Al Qaeda militants (the very people we are supposedly at war with) to overthrow the Assad regime, Russia is getting fed up with us. Hong Kong is now upset that the US spied on Hong Kong and Chinese government networks, so they let Snowden freely leave without detaining him. It's very hard to win people over when you go around spying on them and breaking into their government's computers.
I question his security in Ecuador, though. It's close to the US, and the US can easily put a bounty on him and he can be kidnapped and brought back to the US and charged. If he was in Russia or China, this would be a lot harder to do, and the US wouldn't want to risk severe diplomatic ties with either country if they put a bounty on him. So even though those countries aren't the greatest with human rights, he would have been safer taking up residence there.
Ecuador is a democratic country where, like the US, the power can change hands quickly and the next people in power might not be willing to keep him there and deport him. In Russia, Putin isn't going anywhere for a very long time and neither is the Communist Party in China. So he would have had long time security. I think going to Ecuador is risky.
Also, in recent weeks, even Obama's most liberal allies have jumped ship and went against him. The ACLU is suing the government to release more information on the NSA program and to stop the unconstitutional PRISM program, and the Europeans, who were once in bed with Obama and wished they could have him as their Fuhrer, are now upset with him because the NSA collected online data from millions of Europeans without any of their leaders' knowledge or consent.
According to CNN and Fox, Wikileaks arranged a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. So I wonder what's going to happen next for Snowden.
I think the US deserves this. I do not understand how Snowden, a high school drop out, was seen as the best fit candidate for his position when you have an abundance of college graduates who are struggling to find work, especially for a position that pays over $100K a year. If anyone should be investigated, it should be the employer who promoted Snowden over all the other qualified applicants who had a college education and probably more work related experience than Snowden did. The hiring department of Booz Allen (the contractor who employed Snowden) needs to be investigated for unfair hiring practices. He was obviously promoted due to bias, and as a result, other applicants were unfairly denied their chance. I do not know any IT company locally that will even look at your resume, nevermind consider it, if you don't at least have some college education on it. They get too many applications to consider the ones who don't have the educational background.
Also, was this the hope and change us Obama voters voted for? I voted McCain in '08 and Obama in '12. I still think Obama was the better candidate than the tax dodging, job outsourcing Romney, but that still gives him absolutely no excuse to spy on millions of Americans and record all our phone conversations and texts for "security" reasons. These are the very things he ran again, and he's looking like a major hypocrite in the eyes of the American public and worldwide now.
The author of the Patriot Act came out and said this wasn't an intention of the act and is an overreach. There is no evidence that this spying was done to this extent during the Bush years, and Obama had to go to the FISA court (which has no oversight and is a secret court) to get the blanket warrant on all Americans' phone call records for Verizon (and possibly many more companies we don't know about yet). If this was done during the Bush administration, I would think the warrant would still be active, so Obama wouldn't need to get it again.
I'm not surprised that Russia has allowed Snowden to use their country as a safe passage to another country for asylum. With the US's war mongering in Syria and now trying to arm Al Qaeda militants (the very people we are supposedly at war with) to overthrow the Assad regime, Russia is getting fed up with us. Hong Kong is now upset that the US spied on Hong Kong and Chinese government networks, so they let Snowden freely leave without detaining him. It's very hard to win people over when you go around spying on them and breaking into their government's computers.
I question his security in Ecuador, though. It's close to the US, and the US can easily put a bounty on him and he can be kidnapped and brought back to the US and charged. If he was in Russia or China, this would be a lot harder to do, and the US wouldn't want to risk severe diplomatic ties with either country if they put a bounty on him. So even though those countries aren't the greatest with human rights, he would have been safer taking up residence there.
Ecuador is a democratic country where, like the US, the power can change hands quickly and the next people in power might not be willing to keep him there and deport him. In Russia, Putin isn't going anywhere for a very long time and neither is the Communist Party in China. So he would have had long time security. I think going to Ecuador is risky.
Also, in recent weeks, even Obama's most liberal allies have jumped ship and went against him. The ACLU is suing the government to release more information on the NSA program and to stop the unconstitutional PRISM program, and the Europeans, who were once in bed with Obama and wished they could have him as their Fuhrer, are now upset with him because the NSA collected online data from millions of Europeans without any of their leaders' knowledge or consent.
According to CNN and Fox, Wikileaks arranged a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. So I wonder what's going to happen next for Snowden.
I think the US deserves this. I do not understand how Snowden, a high school drop out, was seen as the best fit candidate for his position when you have an abundance of college graduates who are struggling to find work, especially for a position that pays over $100K a year. If anyone should be investigated, it should be the employer who promoted Snowden over all the other qualified applicants who had a college education and probably more work related experience than Snowden did. The hiring department of Booz Allen (the contractor who employed Snowden) needs to be investigated for unfair hiring practices. He was obviously promoted due to bias, and as a result, other applicants were unfairly denied their chance. I do not know any IT company locally that will even look at your resume, nevermind consider it, if you don't at least have some college education on it. They get too many applications to consider the ones who don't have the educational background.
Also, was this the hope and change us Obama voters voted for? I voted McCain in '08 and Obama in '12. I still think Obama was the better candidate than the tax dodging, job outsourcing Romney, but that still gives him absolutely no excuse to spy on millions of Americans and record all our phone conversations and texts for "security" reasons. These are the very things he ran again, and he's looking like a major hypocrite in the eyes of the American public and worldwide now.
The author of the Patriot Act came out and said this wasn't an intention of the act and is an overreach. There is no evidence that this spying was done to this extent during the Bush years, and Obama had to go to the FISA court (which has no oversight and is a secret court) to get the blanket warrant on all Americans' phone call records for Verizon (and possibly many more companies we don't know about yet). If this was done during the Bush administration, I would think the warrant would still be active, so Obama wouldn't need to get it again.