Having Gone Through Righteous Indignation And Emo Phases, Edward Snowden Now Feeling Cocky

 
 No matter where you fall on the whole spectrum of “Edward Snowden is a Hero/Traitor/Floor Wax/Desert Topping,” can we all agree that this is a bad idea:

For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency's secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media.

"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," he told the Post on June 12. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."

Jesus H. Christ reading a John Le Carre novel, is he getting legal advice from a Bazooka Joe comic? We are but simple mommy-bloggers, and your world frightens and confuses us, but even with our solid lack of legal expertise we’re pretty sure that this is information you do not confess to, in print, long before your extradition status is settled, on the off-chance that the Russians or the Cubans or the Ecuadorans or whomever decide it would be in their best interest to send you back to the U.S. Where you will be tried for infiltrating a national intelligence agency for the express purpose of collecting secret information to share with the world. Which you just confessed to doing. To a leading newspaper in China, just before you got on a plane bound for Moscow, an act that may not have quite the same resonance it did thirty years ago but still sounds pretty shady.

This does not make you look like a conflicted hero wrestling with his disillusionment after finding out the government of the nation he loves and swore to serve has been doing illegal and immoral things. It makes you look like a schemer who didn’t think things all the way through. Haven't you seen any spy movies? We like our heroes to be good, tortured souls.

It means nothing that over 113,000 people have signed a petition calling on President Obama to pardon you. We are a people who like signing petitions as a substitute for action (again yr Wonkette would like to point out that the people calling for Snowden’s pardon would be better served signing petitions to repeal the Patriot Act or the AUMF if they are looking to roll back the surveillance state. And maybe give up your cell phones while you’re at it.) For fuck’s sake, 34,000 of us recently signed a White House petition demanding the government build a Death Star, and we guarantee if the threshold for an official WH petition response had been higher we would have hit it.

Not that there is a chance in hell of Obama signing a pardon after you stuck a thumb in his eye anyway. EvenBarney Frank  thinks you broke the law and should be prosecuted for it. 

Edward Snowden, we command you: stop talking. The more you talk the worse it looks. The more you talk the harder you make the job of your future defense lawyers. The more you talk the more the focus of this story is on you and not on the legal and ethical and moral quandaries brought to light by your revelations (or “revelations” – yr Wonkette maintains that this news was about as surprising as getting wet in the shower), where it belongs.

[ South China Morning Post ]