Snowden Hits Cheney

The live chat with the NSA leaker at The Guardian has certainly been lively and revealing--e.g. he claims if he was a Chinese spy he'd already be in Beijing in a palace "petting a phoenix"--but here's just one bit, after he's asked about being called a "traitor" by well-known folks in the USA.  See other answers relating to other charges against him, whether NSA really can listen to/read content, etc.  Also, his advice to whistleblowers:  "This country is worth dying for."  UPDATE  Snowden flatly denies this:  "No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists."  Talked to local press.

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.