If we continue our insatiability for personal narratives, we run into situations where organizations like the NSA can choose scapegoats and blame everything on them. That would be bad, because mass surveillance programs are not the work of individuals, they are systemic constructs. So the NSA gets to hold one or two out people for crucifixion, say "see, we've made things right by punishing X and Y", and continue doing things exactly as they've always done them.

We have all been conditioned to use dialectic materialism as a means by which to argue - and THIS is the issue. There is a third way in this debate - and that is, continue to discover the crimes of the US Military Industrial complex, enlighten the people, and remove the criminals from power before it is too late.

Going back on forth on the "rightness/wrongness" of this whole situation is exactly what the powers that be expect, and depend on in order to continue to be able to operate in full view. Abandon the synthesis/anti-synthesis method in this debate, people.

Remember: what he revealed so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more heinous secrets to be revealed, and we would all be better off - US Citizen, or not - if these secrets were finally pulled out into the open and made available for The People to understand.

Remember China is a country in which a policeman can send you to jail without trial for criticizing the government.

The only outcome which would encourage future whistleblowers is being allowed to live in honor in his own country, like Daniel Ellsberg has been able to. Unfortunately it does not look like any branch of the US government is willing to offer assistance, nor does there appear to be any prospect that either political party will ever embrace that idea, no matter what happens in polls (which currently are slightly against Snowden).

If I lived in an oppressive state then a lifetime of exile would not be too unwelcome.

During the cold war, the USA was somewhere persecuted people fled to. Now it's somewhere persecuted people flee from. While it is not yet as bad as the USSR was, it seems to me that it is sleepwalking to authoritarianism.

Those facts are unlikely to change until we are much farther down the road to authoritarianism than we currently are.

That's just spooky. That is exactly the same thing my friend who moved to Shenzhen said of that part of China.

The only thing left to figure out is if its "worse" in China or just different (in regards to how authority is "threatened").

No government would consider that to be acceptable.

Note: This is no defense of the NSA. However it is dishonest to claim that people who criticize the US government are persecuted and need to flee.

The US is not chasing Snowden because he criticized them. They are chasing him because of the stolen documents.

Just look at the measures taken in order to intimidate or capture Snowden: In effect, the US government grounded the private jet of a foreign head of state. If a similar action was done against the US, it would be considered an act of war. A persecution is exactly what this is, under the plausible (even legal) guise of criminal proceedings.

Tens of thousands of Americans question authority on a daily basis and nothing happens to them. America is still a place where your rights and freedoms are respected quite a bit more than other countries.

What do you think would happen if you questioned authority in, say, Venezuela?

In short, if the action in question does not affect the powers that be from operating as they want to operate, there are no consequences from doing it. If the action challenges the powers that be then - no matter how wrong their actions - the consequences are real.

Those in power will respond to challenges. And shrug off questions.

And yes, that is indeed better than many other countries. (Though I personally felt that the rights and freedoms which I cared about were better protected when I lived in Canada.)

I am pretty sure that tens of thousands of Venezuelans question authority too. The difference is that it takes less to make the Venezuelan government feel threatened than it takes in the US.

Or to said authority, for that matter.

No it's not. That's very melodramatic. A single person who hasn't even been persecuted yet has flown from the US. Maybe he (and others) think he will be persecuted if he returns, but that's something very different from what happened in the eastern bloc during the Cold War.

He is being chased because of his intentional theft of classified government documents. Can you name a country in which that would be legal?

Sorry to have a somewhat real answer to a rhetorical question.

Now consider how he would have been viewed by the US if he'd instead flown to Moscow and applied to Brezhnev for asylum.

To me the more interesting change is that Ellsberg believed (correctly!) that a story like his could go to US media and would get out. Today nobody trusts the US media to report critically on the USA. (Hrm. If the 2000 election were to happen today, once the Guardian began digging up evidence of concrete, massive, and clearly illegal suppression of black turnout in Florida, would that get reported in the NY Times? Or on something that big would they maintain silence again until it was a mere footnote months later about the state of Florida having admitted to it, been sanctioned, and having promised to not do it again?)

Also, compare that fate to what happened to Bradley Manning. Living in Venezuela is way better than solitary confinement.

I think there's the fact that a lot of people care about what happens to someone who has delivered some vitally important information to the world at large. In a sense, by keeping him in the public spotlight he's a little bit more protected. It's also likely that this latest grant of asylum is a PR stunt, one that wouldn't have materialized had it not been for the ongoing media circus.

2. Somebody calls out the trend

3. Somebody calls out the `the person that calls out the trend`

4. Repeat as long as neccessary

5. Somebody calls out the meta

Every time, every single time.

I think your problem is that you're seeing one article as the indicator of the state of public discourse. Heres a bunch more:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0...

This article is a brief update on Snowden's asylum status and it conveys just that. Not every article on the matter needs to discuss the full depth of the issue.

I'm OK with some news about Snowden from time to time as long as the number of stories about surveillance largely outnumber the ones about Snowden. I think HN has a healthy ratio.

Furthermore since Snowden's revelations has resulted in basically zero change to the status quo (no legislation, no change in policies, no change in diplomatic relations, no mass uprising by the public) you have to imagine he's wondering what the whole point of it was.

It's only been 5-6 weeks, how fast were you expecting things to happen? The Watergate scandal took over two years to unfold even though many of the major revelations took place during a general election campaign.

I actually think the problem is the messaging. Rather than argue specific policy changes e.g. "ban monitoring of social media" or "transparent FISA courts" opponents have opted for the vague and somewhat vapid "restore the fourth".

You have absolutely no proof of that. If you'd read anything about the NSA, the history of it, or paid any attention at all, you'd know that to be false. Even if you were a casual observer of the situation, it would be foolish to make such a statement in defense of the NSA.

I agree with you about the messaging, and don't think the fourth amendment has ever supplied the broad privacy protection that its boosters seem to imagine. I think we need a more explicit privacy amendment, but haven't really thought about how to effectively promote this idea so far.

Sometimes getting the public to accept a particular argument is not the hard part, it's laying out the alternatives factually in a way that shows the public how they contrast.

I find it very difficult to argue positions that take extremes of the type you laid out. I would also agree that vague notions are a waste of time.

Even with the revelations in 2004 and '05, it was clear that the focus of the program was traffic analysis by completely automated means, and we should have been willing to legislate the extent to which we will allow that activity in public laws in the public domain. The role of the FISC should be to allow for warrants in very uncommon cases of foreign espionage or international terrorism, not as a general mechanism to allow the presentation and consideration of secret evidence. And it doesn't end with that court, the state secret privilege has been used commonly and repeatedly (see the work of Steven Aftergood for more details) to quash cases that the government considers inconvenient, and the Congress has essentially wiped away the complicity of common carriers in violating their implied assurance of the privacy of voice communication. The President called, after these revelations, but nonetheless, for a renewed and expanded debate of these tradeoffs. Do we consider this over now that the broadcast and print media (of all political stripes) have left it alone? Have we now decided that the American people have accepted this as the new normal and moved on?

At every opportunity we conflate the mostly benign traffic analysis and ignore the very real threat (by those we call government) of a persistent and permanent archive of all of our most private conversations. These tools in the wrong hands would be devastating to any free people, placing so many of us in deadly danger of a government that may take our past words as proof of our treason. This is not theory, this is history. (The traffic analysis would also contribute to the ends of such a government, where guilt by association may be sufficient for punishment.)

Isn't Snowden's whole point that it really just looks like that on paper? Really, nothing prevents determined insiders from doing what they want.

There has never been any doubt that whistle blowers can seek refuge in countries that are enemies of the United States.

What constitues a country to be an enemy of the USA, and who gets to decide who is the enemy of the USA? On one side, 15 individual from Saudi Arabia was involved with 9/11, 2 from UAE, one from lebanon and one from Egypt. One could argue that so many of the terrorists and their organization originated from Saudi Arabia, they should be considered as the enemy of the people of USA. Yet they are not. To the best of my knowledge, they received no rebuffs from the USA government.

Why is Venezuela and other so called socialist latin american countries enemy of the USA? What did they do to harm the people of the USA? Nothing, yet they are considered the enemy of the USA. On the contrary USA over many decades wreaked havoc in latin america, caused many economical, political and human misery.

Does every article need to recount all the events leading up to the current situation? Where do we draw the line, exactly?

But I think the Snowden story is important as well, perhaps even more important. It's not really about Snowden, personally. It's about the power and secrecy of the government. It's about individual conscience and defiance. It's about how we, as a society, deal with non-conformity.

Compare Snowden with Bradley Manning. Compare Manning with previous whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Fein or Thomas Drake. Manning's leaks were much more consequential than those that came before him, but things turned out pretty badly for Manning himself. Snowden clearly thought about how to increase the impact of the information he released, as well as how to decrease the negative consequences for himself. The next leaker, whoever it turns out to be, will undoubtedly learn from Snowden's example, just as Snowden learned from Manning.

Snowden's story is important for the rest of us as well. Most of us will never have the chance to do what Snowden did. But we all face situations where doing the right thing could lead to negative consequences. Seeing what happens to Snowden, seeing how we collectively react to what he did, in the media and in person, who can avoid putting himself in Snoweden's shoes? Who can help asking, "What would my family say about me if I did something like that?"

I think the focus on Snowden's story can help us figure out what kind of society we want to have, as 911 recedes into the past. Ultimately that's more important than the news that the NSA, the government's largest spy organization, is actually spying.

The reason why ALL the news sources (liberal and otherwise) covered this is because it is newsworthy. It's human nature to want to put a face to a scandal. And to be honest it's a great face. Snowden is young, exciting, mysterious, less than perfect. Add the fact that he is jetsetting around the world, visiting exciting countries with great visuals, upsetting foreign leaders and creating lots of mini scandals just keeps his story rolling.

CNN especially is just a business. And Snowden is a money maker. No conspiracy needed to work this one out.

Yet, other than taking advantage of people's insatiable appetitive for salaciousness, scandal and the travails of the rich or pretty or the gruesome there were no conspiracies or 'invisible hand' of the [TLA agency] coordinating any of these news cycles.

  CNN, and many other liberal "news sources" whose primary charter is to support the Obama administration can be blamed for most of this

I have been, but there hasn't been much available to upvote. I come on the front page, I see Snowden this and Snowden that and Hong Kong this and Moscow that and Iceland this and Ecuador that.

What's the point of having our own news aggregator if it's just going to reflect the mainstream news?