Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/15/2013 12:09 PM: > He signed an NDA and in all likeliness become a corpse, a fugitive or a > prisoner > for the rest of his life because he broke that deal. His 2nd interview with > the > Guardian make it clear that he knew he'd go down for this. There's no selfish > upside I can see.
There need be no selfish upside. His lies could easily be seen as motivated by a delusional disorder. He may feel like a martyr. He may feel his chances of surviving are greater than they actually are. ... Whatever. The point is that he saw lying to and about perfectly innocent people as his means to an end. Take my point as a comment on our byzantine "rule of law", where laws must be broken in order for justice to be done, or take it as naive rhetoric for "two wrongs don't make a right." It doesn't change the fact that Snowden is a weasel. Now, I happen to be OK with weasels when their actions make our lives, our democracy better. I don't expect people to have infinite foresight or even to be ideologically stable. People make mistakes and, whenever possible, systemic causes should be sought before assigning blame to a pure, single cause. Persoally, I think Snowden should be welcomed back to the US as a hero, at least to some demographic, perhaps in the same way Ollie North is treated these days. But you can safely bet that I won't be telling any of my secrets to Snowden. 8^) He'll have to steal them (which is not hard, given my lax security). > It's intelligence arena; it's all about deception and manipulation. Children > need not apply. It's fine if you think deception and manipulation cannot > serve > the greater good of the democracy and promoting individual freedom. But by > that > standard every competent employee in the intelligence community would be > guilty > of having that character flaw/feature. No, I don't think so. I actually think the balance between empathy for those you've infiltrated and your original mission is a _difficult_ balance. To paint the whole community of spies and undercover cops as having this particular character flaw/feature is too broad. It does a disservice to those who think long and hard ... and get professional training regarding ... what it means to go undercover. O'Keefe and Snowden seem particularly cavalier to me. They seem very agenda-driven and don't have much respect for the humanity of their targets. -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella There's a light that used to shine ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
