ogijaoijfawje

I do not follow what you mean by discretize, could you elaborate?

I'm merely trying to explain it's worthwhile to consider Snowden isn't acting in our best interest. Imagine Snowden's supervisor comes to him and says: "You're going on an extended special mission abroad. Leak these documents to some journalists. Act like you're trying to shed light on what's going on by playing the victim card. The goal is...."?

Per the leaks, solutions to the surveillance problem are limited and likely won't become something proliferated through the masses due to cost, availability, usability, or some combination of the three. We're talking about eliminating hardware-level vulnerabilities, not patching software. And even when and if we do fix these vulnerabilities, what's to stop them from doing it again? All it takes is threatening the life of the company or individuals involved in the development process.

Snowden is milking the attention as well. Look at the livestream going on right now, he's discussing the information live.

Snowden is a controlled pawn, though even he might not know it. This is all too....Hollywood.

Edit: Feel free to downvote as much as you like, the points don't mean anything. If it's determined later on I was right, I hope you remember this post and consider it for future events.

I know many love to consider Snowden and Assange "heroes", but I think these two are people we should think outside the box on. Are they acting in the interest of everyone, themselves, or another party? The releases, interviews, and otherwise that get released seem very scripted and controlled. The propaganda machine is skilled and there may be unseen benefits to these leaks.

I'm not disputing that the NSA stuff is real - of course they're doing it, it's what the agency is expected to do.

I'm disputing whether these are leaks or announcements. The media might not even know they're part of the plan. Is it that farfetched for the NSA to say "Hey, we want to make this information public for some reason, and we're going to do so by using a whistleblower. You're going to release all these documents to a bunch of media sources and live abroad for a while and be hailed as a hero"? There's a long history of leaking information, factual or otherwise, for a number of purposes. There's potentially no end to the rabbit hole. Maybe Snowden doesn't even know he's part of the plan.

It's my opinion that the NSA, some group, or some individual, is letting us know they're watching closely. Maybe they're acclimating us to the idea of being spied on, or worse, distracting us from or preparing us for something else. I think the big picture has yet to be revealed.

I believe this "source code" is made up, invented for the masses. In fact, the more and more I see of these surveillance reports and reveals, the more I believe this is all purposeful deception, and that while it may be true they're doing all these things, they aren't leaks, but announcements.

On a board where most of us should be familiar with the concept of not trusting user input, I think we should all take a step backward and treat these "leaks" as just that: input from an untrusted source. This could all be a fabrication we're buying into.