My Reading List 8/13/2014 - The Most Wanted Man In The World (Edward Snowden dummies)

He doesn't always drink beer but when he does...


Wired - Edward Snowden: The Untold Story -

A mostly well done article on Edward Snowden; maybe a little overwhelming on the praise, but not as over the top as some others I have seen.  Does a pretty good job of putting Snowden and his activities in context and addresses a lot of open questions I have had about his background since this all first started.  As you probably know I have been of two minds about Snowden since his leaks began - on the one hand I have felt that he potentially has done a service by revealing potentially illegal or unconstitutional activity.  On the other I have questioned not only his motives but those of his partners Greenwald and Poitras.  

After reading this article I am much more sympathetic to Snowden himself; the article however reinforces my concerns about Poitras and Greenwald.  I have maintained that the leaks being attributed to Snowden are too convenient and serve (specifically) Greenwald's agenda too well.  Two passages in this article reinforce that for me:

And there's another prospect that further complicates matters: Some of the revelations attributed to Snowden may not in fact have come from him but from another leaker spilling secrets under Snowden's name. Snowden himself adamantly refuses to address this possibility on the record. But independent of my visit to Snowden, I was given unrestricted access to his cache of documents in various locations. And going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find some of the documents that have made their way into public view, leading me to conclude that there must be a second leaker somewhere. I'm not alone in reaching that conclusion. Both Greenwald and security expert Bruce Schneier—who have had extensive access to the cache—have publicly stated that they believe another whistle-blower is releasing secret documents to the media.

and

Copies are now in the hands of three groups: First Look Media, set up by journalist Glenn Greenwald and American documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, the two original recipients of the documents; The Guardian newspaper, which also received copies before the British government pressured it into transferring physical custody (but not ownership) to The New York Times; and Barton Gellman, a writer for The Washington Post. 

This has been my problem from the beginning.  I DON"T TRUST GREENWALD.  He is a fabulist and he has an agenda.  Poitras also has an anti-American agenda (in my opinion).  The others may not but they are not making  full documents available in context, but these are the people who are controlling access to the information.  Nothing can be adequately verified therefore literally everything or nothing in these leaks could be true.  There is no way of knowing.  And on top of that they know that documents being attributed to Snowden are not in his cache, but no one is saying where they come from.  To me that screams the potential for fake documents to be mixed in.

Again this is my opinion, but it seems to me that if the people in possession of these documents are really interested in effecting change, they would provide copies to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees so they could begin investigations.   To my knowledge they haven't and (again in my opinion) there is a reason for that - they are not interested in effecting change.  They are interested in causing damage.