{"id":46364,"date":"2013-06-29T08:40:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T07:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-snowden-matters-national-security-vs-the-national-security-state\/46364\/"},"modified":"2013-06-29T08:40:36","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T07:40:36","slug":"why-snowden-matters-national-security-vs-the-national-security-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-snowden-matters-national-security-vs-the-national-security-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Snowden Matters: National Security vs. The National Security State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nBy\u00a0Jim Fetzer<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0PressTV<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n\u201cSnowden is not revealing information that places the national security of the nation at stake but information revealing the NSA has instead been tracking enemies of the national security state.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/div>\n
\n\"\"<\/a><\/strong>The most obvious responses to Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations that the NSA has been conducting massive and all-pervasive surveillance of the American people\u2014and, indeed, of targeted populations abroad\u2014have come from those, such as Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who maintain that he is placing the national security of the United States at risk.<\/div>\n
\nThere is no evidence that that is the case, where the very idea that the world\u2019s greatest spying agency would attempt to have him prosecuted for espionage is at least faintly absurd.<\/div>\n
\nOther less-familiar sources have taken the opposite tact by asserting that, since everything he has revealed was \u201calready known\u201d, his integrity and sincerity are in doubt, where he may actually be some kind of dupe or double-agent.\u00a0\u00a0The Anti-New York Times<\/a>, for example, contends that he cannot have abandoned his $200,000 a year salary, his girl friend and his life to tell the world such familiar information, which makes his actions highly suspicious from the opposite side of the spectrum.<\/div>\n
\nThat strikes me as very odd, since no one I know has ever taken for granted that the NSA had such an all-encompassing surveillance program in place, especially one that vacuums up our phone calls, our emails, our financial transactions and, no doubt, our medical records as well. A more intriguing proposal has come from Jon Rappoport,\u00a0\u201cEd Snowden, NSA, and fairy tales a child could see through\u201d<\/a>, who considers the situation to be completely preposterous:<\/div>\n
\n
\nLet\u2019s see. NSA is the most awesome spying agency ever devised in this world. If you cross the street in Podunk, Anywhere, USA, to buy an ice cream soda, on a Tuesday afternoon in July, they know.<\/div>\n
\nThey know if you sit at the counter and drink that soda or take it and move to the only table in the store. They know if you lick the foam from the top of the glass with your tongue or pick the foam with your straw and then lick it.<\/div>\n
\nThey know if you keep the receipt for the soda or leave it on the counter.<\/div>\n
\nThey know whether you\u2019re wearing shoes or sneakers. They know the brand of your underwear. They know your shaving cream, and precisely which container it came out of.<\/div>\n
\nBut this agency, with all its vast power and its dollars\u2026<\/div>\n
\nCan\u2019t track one of its own, a man who came to work every day, a man who made up a story about needing treatment in Hong Kong for epilepsy and then skipped the country.<\/div>\n
\nJust can\u2019t find him.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\nRappoport believes that these revelations come from the CIA, which is engaged in a \u201cturf war\u201d with the NSA, resenting that the NSA has been granted funding at the expense of the CIA, for which it is now engaged in retaliation by embarrassing it.<\/div>\n
\n
YouTube – Veterans Today –<\/a><\/div>\n
\nNone of those who question Snowden\u2019s actions, however, are responding to the implicit distinction that his revelations have accented between \u201cnational security\u201d, on the one hand, and \u201cthe national security state\u201d, on the other.\u00a0\u00a0The targets the NSA has been focusing upon\u2014such as veterans, Constitutionalists, Ron Paul supporters, NRA members and 9\/11 Truthers\u2014do not pose any threat to the national security of the United States. What they pose is a threat to the imposition of a fascist military\/police state of the kind the world has seen with The Fourth Reich and the former Soviet Union, where the NSA and DHS are two sides of the same fascistic coin.<\/em> The situation appears to be dire,\u00a0as I have sought to explain here<\/a>. We must take appropriate measures\u2014which including arming ourselves for the conflict to come\u2014by confronting the grim reality that his revelations have exposed. His true motivation was displayed when he said he was doing this because \u201cI am an American\u201d!<\/div>\n
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Republished with permission from:: Stephen Lendman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jim Fetzer\u00a0and\u00a0PressTV \u201cSnowden is not revealing information that places the national security of the nation at stake but information revealing the NSA has instead been tracking enemies of the national security state.\u201d The most obvious responses to Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations that the NSA has been conducting massive and all-pervasive surveillance of the American people\u2014and, indeed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-46364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}