It makes me wonder if Snowden thinks his sacrifice was worth it.
Mark Twain observed it best when he parodied the fickleness of the lynching mob in Huckleberry Finn.
I've always enjoyed Israel Regardie's metaphor that society is like a candle. Only a tiny fraction, the wick, needs to be lit to say that the whole thing is enlightened.
You can't change everything, and not all at once. But even a little bit of light can do a whole lot.
Thank you for sharing that.
It made me think of a quote by Theodore Roosevelt.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
Success isn't always measured by accomplishing the goals you set out to do, but instead in the journey and experience. I think the USA needs this experience and only time will tell if this falls into the failure category.
The real reaction of the American public isn't the talking that happens now. Or the next month. Or the next year.
It's that people like me, who are young and have decades of time we're going to put in to society - working on infrastructure, working in the military, working in civil service jobs, etc - have this information and have someone like that as a counter point to the obvious corruption happening in government.
I'd wager the biggest effect of Snowden - because anyone watching suspected much of this anyway - is going to be the legacy of someone who stood up and said something about it, screw the cost.
Rolemodels like that are important, especially amid a context of massive social and governmental breakdown.
There were no rallies, no strikes, what did the populous do when they heard about it? Complained silently and some are probably annoyed that it's still being reported on.
Donated to Ron Paul? Watched one too many Chomsky videos? Sorry, Booz Allen doesn't have a position for you at this time.
What we're actually seeing is the cusp of a very important transition, where currently governments can afford to do all these kinds of things (and large corporations are quickly getting in on the game), but in 10-15 years, we'll be able to do it /at home/.
I think society will change - will have to change - with the massive distribution of computing power that's likely to occur. We're not even outside the realm of where a motivated citizen could build a cluster at home, scan through all the publicly available documents, and profile government (and related contractors) in the same way they're doing to the public.
It simply hasn't entered the public awareness yet that we're living in that age.
If you really freeze out everyone of conscience (and motivation), do you really think they'll just go "ho hum" and do nothing with their time? That they'd just accept being thrown to the side of major political affairs and take no follow up?
I think it's far more likely they'd reach out to technology, and take matters in to their own hands.
It's this access to technology that really scares the government, people in power, etc. They just have no idea how to constructively deal with the change.
I'm still optimistic in the long term. It's just a shame we've forgotten the lessons of history, and won't take action until there's real abuse, instead of being a smart enough culture to nip the problem in the bud.
Sorry for the delay, I just saw your comment and wanted to respond to this:
The point isn't that /everyone/ can use it; it's that /anyone/ can use it.
Similarly, at the point that drones become easy to construct at home, it doesn't matter that it won't be everyone that has home-operated drones monitoring government actions - just that people who want to can.