Snowden Hardly the First to Have Revealed Extend of American Spying & Secrecy

So, I now switch gears.

From two blog entries talking about Nazis, now I will go to Edward Snowden, who is still making a lot of news headlines the world over.

He was trying to make an attractive offer to Brazil, in hopes that they would take him in. He made similar appeals to Ecuador not that long ago and, at least to my best understanding, he remains in Russia presently.

Of course, he is a wanted man here in the United States for all that he revealed about the NSA spying program, both domestic and international. Some, like New York Senator Chuck Schumer, have called for Snowden to stand trial, in the spirit of civil rights, like Martin Luther King, Jr. did.

He may have a point there. Indeed, many prominent figures in the fight for greater civil rights have indeed subscribed to Thoreau's notion that when laws are unfair, the best place for a just man is behind bars.

But, Snowden remains abroad, and so far, has shown no willingness to come back to American shores and stand trial, even though American officials, including the Obama White House, are demanding it.

The thing is, when spying has reached such an extreme, and when the concept of secrecy has been so widely abused as it is these days, something like this was truly bound to happen. Secrecy is supposed to be a last resort, like war. Yet, also like war, it was often used widely for things that should never have been kept secret. This trend started under George W. Bush, and has continued into the Obama years. Eventually, someone was going to be horrified by it all. Someone with access. And then, it would be revealed for the entire world to see. That is exactly what happened. We know the extent of government spying because of Snowden. We know that the United States was spying extensively on it's own citizens, and we know that it was spying all over the world, including spying on some of America's closest allies in Western Europe.

The wonder really is how it did not happen earlier.

It is not the first case like this, though. And Bill Moyers website has an article on a similar case, where the release of some sensitive documents exposing spying by the American government had the unexpected impact of placing the spotlight on those who revealed such documents.

Here is the link to that article:


"Forty Years Before Snowden, Burglars Blew the Roof Off Illegal Domestic Spying" Spying" by Joshua Holland, January 7, 2014:

http://billmoyers.com/2014/01/07/forty-years-before-snowden-burglars-blew-roof-off-illegal-domestic-spying/