Quote Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios View Post
He didn't "stumble on something", at least not by his own account. He sat on the info and mulled his options for quite a while, then reached the decision to go public. I still fail to see how that labels him delusional. Secondly as to whether or not this news is in fact, surprising and newsworthy: IMHO the answer is yes. Not because some shady government wiretapping is going on, but because of how much is going on; additionally he has disclosed quite a few specifics which most definitely were not public knowledge.
There is a lot of information. It stands to reason that there would be fingers in the pie. He is deluded because he thinks he's some sort of martyr for freedom. He was a low level cog whom got his hands on some low level bullet points and it's blowing up because people are being told that they are being "watched"


So it passes the acid test for news on a few fronts. First of all information which was previously something of a open secret among insiders under NDA is now public knowledge. Secondly this information is of public interest, to the US public because of implications regarding their civil liberties (which they seem to have been content to ignore wholesale, but that's for the US public to decide itself) and to the wider world (being on the "receiving" end of the programme). The alleged hacking into Chinese university computers and telcos by the NSA, the breach of quite a number of international treaties and protocol, the criteria for targeting subjects, etc. are definitely of public interest on the receiving side. And finally there's a few debates to be had about the role and scope of the power of government, as per usual, this tendency towards surveillance states. For example: any moral objection to the PATRIOT act was suddenly validated as practical concern grounded in reality. Or as the Daily Show put it: Good News: You're Not Paranoid, which should give some clue as to how this alters the debate. This is not limited to the USA, but then again the USA is not exempt either.

So tell me again why such "news" is not worthy of publication?
It's certainly more newsworthy than the average story that's churned out, don't be so melodramtic.

It's well established that other western countries have similar programs and it's well established that the Chinese hack out computers. Turnabout is fairplay.