Tag: Snowden

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Potentially Reasonable Words: ARD Interview with Snowden

German broadcaster ARD is streaming an interview with Edward Snowden at 23:05 German time, 5:05 PM EST in the US.

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I’m sure he’ll be asked about the claim that the NSA taps Angela Merkel’s cell phone. Which, as German editorial writer Volker Wagener puts it, if true, is no way to treat a close ally.

 

“The most suitable solution would be a more transparent handling of friendly relations and a retraction of the tentacles of the NSA octopus. This agency has long surpassed the many absurdities practiced by the communist East German State Security apparatus until 1989. And that’s saying something.”

 

My personal hope: Stephen Colbert does a video chat with Snowden for his upcoming key note at the RSA conference!

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Snowden: Hero or Criminal?

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly has provocative reflections about Edward Snowden, the now famous Booz-Allen contractor and source for the NSA story.

What’s my own gut reaction to the hundreds of images of Edward Snowden all over the Internet and television today? Not immediately positive, I must admit. For a putative martyr, Snowden’s had a pretty cushy existence, it seems, and yeah, there’s pretty clearly a narcissism problem when someone in his 20s decides to give Barack Obama a chance to “keep his promises” before leaking what he knew about PRISM.

The Guardian calls him a “brave whistleblower.”

And the New Republic asks if he’s more Aaron Swartz than Bradley Manning?

Only two things seem like safe bets: the story will keep unfolding, possibly until it reaches, god help us, the Cincinnati IRS office somehow, and it was one tough day at Booz Allen Hamilton. We outsource wars, we out source security, we let banks outsource bank failure (to the public). Scandal, so far, seems non-out sourceable, although I suppose Booz could be calling up McKinsey for crisis management right about now…

Booz Allen Hamilton headquarters in McLean, Virginia