Tom

“The Snowdenistas' exaggeration stems from a conflation of self-criticism with self-hatred. In their eyes, democracy, the rule of law and constitutional government have been so eroded that the West carries no moral weight at all. The authorities are capable of anything, so it is sensible to assume that they do what they are capable of. Why would they stop?”
― Edward Lucas, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster

“But to portray the NSA and its partner services, as Greenwald does, as akin to East Germany's Stasi, or to the KGB, and claiming that they have the 'literal' goal to 'eliminate privacy globally'42 is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence. So far, nothing of the kind has been forthcoming. As Snowden's 'Christmas message' broadcast on Britain's Channel Four television stated: A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves: an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.43 But this is a huge exaggeration. What the Snowden documents do appear to show”
― Edward Lucas, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster

“The Snowden revelations have also exposed the fact that senior officials, particularly America's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, have not been fully frank with Congress.”
― Edward Lucas, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster

“It is only a mild caricature to say that the presumption behind the leaks is that the intelligence agencies in the West are the greatest threat to freedom on the planet.”
― Edward Lucas, The Snowden Operation: Inside the West's Greatest Intelligence Disaster