The NSA - and other spook agencies - are actively engaged in warfare with various social/peacenik groups, and has been demonstrated time and again as a constant source of infiltration, provocation, and so on. Agent-Provocateur isn't just the name of a knicker factory - its a real tactic deployed against enemies of the regime, which include civic groups (unions), churches and other citizen organizations. We simply cannot have this power out there, in the hands of these people.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017268

In the Hoover/FBI days, we had a chance - the Operation Snow Whites' and so on. Now, however, there is no such chance: the NSA has far, far too many safe-guards in place to protect itself, and has infiltrated - and controls, directly - too many so-called 'peace movements' and other groups that might have a chance at awakening the sheeple. We must be more diligent, and with greater resolve to fight back now, than ever before in history - because we are at the cusp of allowing a seriously evil influence over the world to have its will - whereas in the 60's and 70's, people were willing to stand up and fight, now hardly anyone will. At all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7016899

Destroying the privacy of several billion people is not an adequate price to pay for capturing a dozen or even a hundred bad guys.

Sure it did get them some. So would carpet-bombing New York City. Success alone is a worthless measure without taking cost into account.

http://yro.slashdot.org/c ... ?sid=4631081&cid=45871537

We have 1 shot at this and it's now.

After what happened, the NSA will lock down everything and do everything to stop such a leak from ever happening again. The chance that we'll have other whistleblowers with Snowden's kind of scope 10 years from now or later is almost zero. The NSA knows the future of their incredible position of power is being questioned right now and they won't let that happen again.

There won't be another "you have a choice now, it's up to you" moment. If there won't be fundamental changes to our system, we and our children will have to live with drastic consequences. We'll be leading the entire World once again - 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017816

Really? The former boss of the largest organization of mathematicians who literally spend their days in windowless buildings listening in on other people's conversations is calling everyone else shut-ins? REALLY?!

http://www.reddit.com/r/p ... owdens_supporters/cbigmcl

I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

Frank Church

I have 50 pink unicorns in this box. I can't show you because it would compromise their safety. I have them working on a cigarette that stops lung cancer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5901572

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Edward Snowden

http://www.guardian.co.uk ... n-nsa-files-whistleblower