Snowden And The FDLE
By Rick Boettger
Edward Snowden exposed our federal mass spying program over a year ago. He saw our National “Security” Agency was breaking our laws and scorning our Constitution. He blew the whistle. The NSA’s massive violations have been admitted and are being corrected.
Snowden is scorned as a traitor who should be shot by the government whose lawbreaking he exposed. Obama and Kerry would torture and imprison Snowden as they did to Bradley Manning. Remember, Manning exposed the brutality of our helicopter operations in Iraq, the mad machine gunning of civilians including Reuters reporters. He barely survived his abuse in our prisons, and is serving a 35-year sentence.
What makes Snowden and Manning criminals for exposing government crimes? They were guilty of breaking a single law: Keep everything secret. They each signed a document pledging not to disclose the “secrets” they knew, for, of course, “national security” reasons.
For the government, whose numberless crimes and even atrocities are being exposed, it is easy to understand why they think keeping their crimes secret is the very most important rule in the whole wide world. To protect themselves, they deem telling their secrets to be a bigger crime than violating the constitution, lying to congress, or machine-gunning innocents.
Their public reason for keeping their crimes secret is that “national security” will be endangered, that innocents will die if the “traitor” exposes them. This is bull shit. The result of Snowden’s giant secrets’ dump has been that no individual has been harmed, and our real “national security” has been improved. The facts are that no exposed secrets have led to any harm to the U.S., and in fact the real threat to the actual security of We The People, our lawbreaking NSA, has been reined in.
The true reason for keeping crimes secret is that people in power want to do anything they want, and get away with it for as long as they can. This applies to governments who spy, bankers who swindle, and cops who kill. Snowden brought down the mighty NSA. Our SEC has brought down the great Swiss banks that proudly hid American money for generations, getting a $2.5 billion penalty and admission of criminal guilt even from behemoth UBS. (Locally, a Keys banking director had to pay a $1.5 million dollar penalty for not having reported his $1 million Swiss account.)
The government made it a crime to expose the NSA’s secrets. The Swiss made it a crime in their own country to divulge who owned accounts in their banks, but this was overturned by the U.S. Our nation’s police forces have no formal law that makes them keep secret anything they see another officer do, but they have their informal “thin blue line” that requires the same thing.
In this informal secrecy they are aided and abetted by their supposed investigators, locally the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. While the FDLE is supposedly “investigating” the facts of Charles Eimers’ death in police custody, they are in fact imposing secrecy on everyone else. This makes sense from their point of view. They are police officers themselves, and they are simply protecting their own.
But what does not make sense is the press and the people cheering the cover-up. Snowden has been excoriated by the national media, most viciously the Washington Post, who called him every mean name they could think of. It is baffling and outrageous to me that the media would blame anyone for performing at great cost to himself a prime directive of the Fourth Estate, written into and protected by our Constitution: To be free to speak, especially to oversee our government. Remember, Snowden did not dump his information on the Internet, he with great care went through respected international media.
Locally, I am glad that most of our reporting media are finally watchdogging Eimers’ death. What is sad is that our public leaders are still hiding behind the FDLE’s secrecy wall. But in this they are sadly representing a majority of the population. We The People don’t want to fear government spying. Nor do we want to fear our brave Men and Women in Blue. Such fears make us feel small and powerless. So we get mad at the guy who told us about the spying, and turn our faces from the possibility of police violence.
So: Whose side are you on? Truth, or Secrecy?
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Nice article, Rick. I think I recall reading Snowden’s disclosures compromised some US intelligence operations and operators. I would not be surprised if that is so. Rock and hard place, once Snowden’s conscience finally kicked in.
I have mused a few times, were I El Presidente Obomber, I would have called a press conference and told the world, to tell Snowden, that I want him to come home and work for me at his old salary and benefits, for so long as I am President. He will be my adviser on US intelligence agencies and their doings. if he accepts that mission, he is conditionally pardoned. If he sticks with that mission and stays with me for so long as I am President, his pardon is full, unconditional. Maybe Snowden gets word of my offer before I am bumped off. 🙂
Locally, FDLE is not looking good in Eimers case, but the Medical Examiner’s just released autopsy throws FDLE and KWPD and City Hall a bone. Eimers died accidentally. Meaning, it was all his fault his heart stopped beating after hypoxia (lack of oxygen) set in, as, face down on the sand, he struggled mightily to escape and run away, after he had docile as a lamb surrendered and lay face down on the beach.
Did I miss something? Yeah, he caused his heart to stop beating by giving the cops the impression he was homeless.
I wonder how the Medical Examiner would have fared, if he were to have switched places with Eimers and they cops thought he, the Medical Examiner, was homeless.
Ciao maim
Rick, you are spot on. I speak from personal experience as a whistleblower and victim to violence/hostile work environment within the (local) US Postal Service. Laws that “protect” government whistleblowers are nothing but a sham, even more so within the USPS who exclude employees from certain “protections” and even have their own private Gestapo called the USPS Inspection Service to insure the agency’s dirty deeds are not exposed.
I believe whistleblower laws that offer these bogus protections exist only to draw those of conscience into the open for targeting by the guilty agency for better damage control. There is no justice for whistleblowers and are often dismissed as “disgruntled employees” by both the agency and the public. Whistleblowers who trust the government to protect them for exposing government crimes are complaining to the Devil about his demons.