Friday, April 18, 2014

Putin's Latest Snowden Job

Hey look, Dudebro Defector has gone from heroic figure of the information age to Putin propaganda tool!

NSA leaker Edward Snowden put a direct question to Vladimir Putin during a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, asking Russia's president about Moscow's use of mass surveillance on its citizens. 
Speaking via a video link, Snowden asked: "I've seen little public discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance, so I'd like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?" 
Putin replied by stating Russia did not carry out mass surveillance on its population, and that its intelligence operations were strictly regulated by court orders. 
"Mr Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for the intelligence service, we are going to talk one professional language," Putin said, according to translation by state-run broadcaster Russia Today
"Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law so...you have to get a court permission to stalk that particular person. 
"We don't have as much money as they have in the States and we don't have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special services, thank God, are strictly controlled by society and the law and regulated by the law."

To recap, Obama and America, evil fascist capitalist pigs who spy on everyone so you can't trust a single word he says.  Putin and Russia, so much better than America as beacons of human rights who love freedom and are 100% totally credible, because Snowden!  (Please ignore our invasion of Ukraine.)

Please, tell me again how awesome Russia's human rights record is. I wonder if Edward is uncomfortable with Putin's hand up his ass like that.

Speak, puppet.  Speak.  Eli Lake at the Daily Beast rips into Snowden:

Snowden and his defenders have repeatedly said the former NSA contractor does not control the master files of intelligence documents he originally took from the U.S. intelligence community even if he wanted to hand them over to Russian intelligence. Thus far no U.S. official has provided any public evidence to suggest that Snowden was a paid foreign agent when he took those documents.
But on Thursday Snowden looked to some like he was participating in a Soviet-style propaganda play. “Whatever else Snowden might think he has been doing, surely he must understand he was just used as a prop by the president of the Russian federation,” said Michael Hayden, a former NSA and CIA director under the George W. Bush administration who has been one of his former agency’s most ardent public defenders. Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has also been critical of Snowden and the journalism his leaks have helped produce said, “It speaks volumes that Snowden lends his name to Putin’s propaganda efforts.”

Galeotti says he found the display of Snowden’s question for Putin on eavesdropping to be depressing. “I believed he was an honest man who made some stupid choices,” says Galeotti. “But in this case he was doing what was in his handler’s interests.”

“We have to think of two Snowdens,” Galeotti tells The Daily Beast. “There was the original whistleblower who thought he was doing something good for the world. Now there is the Snowden—to put it crassly—who is bought and paid for entirely by the Russians. The Russians are not altruistic, if they are protecting him they are doing so because there are things he can do to repay them.”

In the immortal words of Trent Reznor, "Bow down before the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve."

3 comments:

RepubAnon said...

One wonders whether Mr. Putin's PR folks went to Mr. Snowden and said something like: "Hey, your permission to stay in Russia is up for renewal soon... and the Obama Administration keeps asking us to deport you to the U.S. We're thinking of a way to make a painless concession to the US to help defuse the Ukrainian situation - do you have any ideas of things the Russian government could do that might make the Obama Administration happy? ... Oh, by the way, do you have a few minutes to appear on a TV program with Mr. Putin?"


This tactic has been used from time immemorial to turn people into agents. Get something on them, then squeeze them. Had Mr. Snowden been a bit more thoughtful, he'd have flown to Ecuador first, and THEN sent out his revelations. Now, he's caught in a vice of his own making.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

The gullible freaks over at the Daily Kos are squealing that this is a masterful setup by Snowden: bearding Putin in his lair is exactly like Wyden going after Clapper and shows up both America and Russia as lying hypocrites who can not be trusted under any circumstances.

All I can say is: Keep choking that chicken, guys, the truth is bound to be out there somewhere.

Horace Boothroyd III said...

The frightening and disheartening aspect of all this is that so many self styled leftists are displaying a perverse mixture of paranoid cynicism about the government compounded with a childlike naivete regarding how the world works. They brag about their sophisticated analysis of NSA spying methods while they would fail remedial fieldcraft. And this is the alleged expertise and moral superiority they would bring to American politics. No wonder no one respects the Left and no wonder we can not get our program implemented despite its overwhelming popularity with the American People. There are simply too many goofballs standing around, eager to sabotage the works in the interests of their little pet projects.

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