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Re:Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Mo... by Estragon on Monday April 06, 2015 @02:14PM (#9329683)
I think it was an act of desperation to some extent. People had already been convincingly reporting the broad outlines of NSA's surveillance activities for the better part of a decade and no one seemed to care. It probably took an extended, highly specific information dump to get people to take notice.
Re:Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Mo... by superobserver on Monday April 06, 2015 @02:36PM (#9329849)
I'm not entirely sure it's merely a matter of getting people to take notice. After all, if you take notice, then the agency itself will take notice of that and that is liable to make you a target for information gathering purposes. Your best defense out of fear is to proclaim anyone fighting such a power is deserving of that power's treatment as it deems fit. In a way, I guess you could say it's a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

On the other hand, when you have state powers like China to contend with (who have a greater degree of explicit control over their citizens), it wouldn't be surprising to see state-level competitors wanting to keep a leg up on their competition by employing similar tactics. Unfortunately, the dragnet in place is unconstitutional for the NSA, which is why it is a part of the Five Eyes to work around that issue - by relying on collaboration with other institutions to provide the data that is ultimately being collected.