Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
What I don't quite get is why America only accepts dead people or comic characters as heroes.

IMO someone who does something heroic and lives on to do even more heroic things is a better hero than someone who dies in the process.
At the very least the former hero saved one more life by saving his own.

What would have happened had Snowden stayed in the US would probably have been a death sentence and he would've had to release all of his documents at once given that he probably couldn't have done it piecemeal out of a federal high security prison. Then the press would've condensed it all into two weeks of shallow reporting before Snowden would've been officially killed as an evil traitor who aided terrorists and the US public would've cared even less about all of it...

Where exactly do I overlook the advantage of that approach?

They are mainly victims of their own complacency.

That and comic book. The Hero always stands up to the bad guys and wins in the end!

Justice will prevail!

Of course none of them have any experience with the federal legal system. Justice doesn’t enter the equation.

Snowden is already tried and convicted by the press and the pundits. He would never receive a jury trial. And none of it would be in open court.

That they are naïve is an understatement.

Despite numerous experiences they continue to believe their government are “The Good Guys”.

Collectively, I have to say, my countrymen are simpletons.

As for justice;

No one who knew this was going on could go to court to stop it because it was secret and they had no standing.

When Snowden gave them the proof so that they had standing what was the result?

Dismissal!

On December 28, 2013, Judge William Pauley granted a motion to dismissed the suit. The court acknowledge that the program "vacuums up information about virtually every telephone call to, from, or within the United States"
In an argument regarding the ACLU's claim that the NSA was exceeding the bounds of section 215 of the Patriot Act Judge Pauley wrote:
"The ACLU would never have learned about the section 215 order authorizing collection of telephone metadata related to its telephone numbers but for the unauthorized disclosures of Edward Snowden. Congress did not intend that targets of section 215 order would ever learn of them. And the statutory scheme also makes clear that congress intended to preclude suits by targets even if they discovered section 215 orders implicating them. It cannot possibly be that lawbreaking conduct by a government contractor that reveals state secrets—including the means and methods of intelligence gathering—could frustrate Congress's intent. To hold otherwise would spawn mischief: recipients of orders would be subject to 215's secrecy protocol confining challenges to the FISC while targets could sue in any federal district court. A target's awareness of section 215 does not alter the Congressional calculus. The ACLU's statutory claim must therefore be dismissed."

Old stuff: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-0...the-free-.html

And what has changed?

Nothing! A few promises to reform and a little bit of show.

And I guess that makes it ok.