President Barack Obama, Bob Schieffer, Ed Snowden, NSA: Notes

Recently Bob Schieffer, of CBS News broadcast his opinion of Ed Snowden, the  former NSA subcontractor BoozAllen employee turned whistle blower; saying he’s  no hero because he exposed certain policies and common practices implemented by government officials.

We say why not?

He took note of activities, he saw the law being broken. He did the ethical thing. He may go to jail or be killed for it. As of Friday, June 20, 2013 the U.S. government charged Ed Snowden with espionage. We think Ed Snowden should charge the U.S. government, along with all its subcontractors and clandestine associates, with espionage.

If it were not for the leaked disclosures We, The People, would not know anything.

“The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person. What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange – for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest – is an assault against the people”. ~ Former Spanish Judge Mr Baltasar Garzon, legal director of Wikileaks and lawyer for Julian Assange

Mark Fiore’s animated political cartoon addresses the topic with the character “Snuggly the Security Bear”.

During our staff meeting we discussed reasons why we need privacy. We concluded it's not that we have anything to hide; that there's been some devastating evil deed in our past we wish to keep hidden that upon disclosure we will find embarrassing or cause us to be discredited.  (Everyone deserves privacy. Even You!)

Our reason is we do not necessarily wish to share our private lives with the government, or you. We have the right to remain private if we wish to. Aside from the fact we're living in a society where nothing is private; many people are revealing far Too Much Information (TMI) about themselves, and others. There is always the distinct possibility what is private can be misconstrued. We have the right to present ourselves how and when and if we want to if we are to have any autonomy, and remain a person instead of data, objectified.

What is private is our choice; we choose the information we wish to remain private, or made public.

We encourage debate on this subject because although the government may have the good intention of causing no harm;  government can harm people inadvertently, or intentionally, using your private information; the private data which we believe is none of their business.

We believe the government has it backwards. The government in a democracy is supposed to be public, we are supposed to understand how it works and know what it does. The individual is not public, is not supposed to be spied on, documented, put in a dossier  and understood.

Talk, debate, discuss, okay, as long everyone understands once our rights are forfeited it will be an uphill battle to re-establish those rights...

Re-establishing our  slowly eroding freedoms,  while trying to make any government relinquish their power; curtail their powers before they end our rights...we'd say that's a Herculean task.

To protect our rights we need to limit access, now.

To our way of thinking people need privacy because they are alive, thinking, emotional beings, who are much more than easily misconstrued data; and it is government, that is not even alive, that needs transparency. Why does the government need secrecy? There is no need to hide what the government is doing , if they are at war or spying, let them say so openly, it does not need to be a secret. In a democracy the people understand their government.

In a dictatorship, or a fascist state, a militarized state, or a state owned by the 1percent, the government is not beholden to the public. In those styles of governance the public has no business knowing what the government is doing.

Which are we?

We believe in a democracy where the government has no business knowing what we are doing.

We support open-source government, not surveillance of us and every other real live, living person, in every room, on every street, in every conversation, whether in a room, a vehicle or surveilled through the Internet electronically.