Snowden? (Page 3)

Actually, there have been plenty of polls conducted since this issue came to light. I guess it would depend on how much one trusts polls taken but... in some sense they do reflect the views of many and can be somewhat reliably used to base an opinion or two. 

That would be the key. 

Also I missed the part of the article where the poll asked people what they thought of Snowden and then asked them what they thought of Obama. 

Well, I'm guessing most democrats would somewhat support their democratic president, and that republicans... wouldn't. 

And the poll basically was based on whether people thought Snowden did the wrong thing by leaking classifyed documents to the press. Them saying, I think he did the wrong thing.. would be an indication. 

My personal opinion is, since no one's prolly polled this and few would prolly openly admit to it, but, I don't think I'm being wrongly assumptive when I have the opinion that many of those who oppose the president (this administration), or those of a different political leaning don't mind seeing his administration smeared by scandal.  I'm guessing I could make a good argument of it. 

Correction: he's putting a bad light on every post-cold war administration.  When the Soviet Union broke up, and eastern europe started being less of the "axis", the NSA's requirements over there were slowly reduced.  At the same time, computing power has massively increased over the past 20 years.

When was the last time you heard of a U.S. government agency willingly downsizing?

It's entirely unsurprising that they started spying on Americans.  Snowden just finally got the press to pay attention.

Here is what I think, pure opinion. American citizens are not outraged because the information that the NSA has at it's disposal has not been used, so far as I understand, in a malicious way. Americans are not being rounded up, as far as I know, and being charged without probable cause.

As far as I understand, our judicial system still works relatively well. So we all go on our merry way and worry about stuff like paying mortgage/bills and keeping our jobs. 

Europeans are outraged because, in my opinion, based on my travels, many of them seemed to have a love/hate relationship with this country. I always found it amusing how they seemed to revel in explaining to me, in great detail, their extreme criticisms of the the people and problems of our country. 

Your "assumption" is exactly what is wrong with the electorate in this country these days. 

Rather than focus on the fact that the government is out of control and is seriously degrading the constitution, no matter who is in charge. Remember Bush signed the Patriot Act which opened the door for a lot of this crap. But rather than realize that the government is out of control you would rather talk partisan politics and play the dems vs. repubs game, which is exactly what both parties want.

If you keep the electorate playing the my guy vs. your guy game then the government can continue to grow no matter who is in charge. Government growth typically means more taxes, more regulations and less freedom. Exactly the situation the writers of the constitution warned about. The BS partisan game plays directly into their hands and allows them to ignore the real issues and keeps the electorate from making good decisions in the booth. 

The whole point of the Snowden saga is that the government is taking liberties that it shouldn't. If someone wants to make a pressure cooker bomb and leave it at the next marathon the NSA is not going to stop them. Heck, rather than pay attention to the warning they received about the guy they completely ignored him and went through your phone records instead, that did a lot of good didn't it? The Snowden story has absolutely nothing to do with who is in the Whitehouse atm as both parties have proven time and time again they are out of control. 

The same durn thing has happened with the IRS deal. This time it is one side pissed that the IRS targeted them. According to your train here they are only mad because it was their side that was picked on, this would mean that the other side shouldn't care at all. What happens in 2017? Say the other side is in power and doing the same thing with the IRS. So now the roles are reversed, one side pissed and the other complacent. The whole time no one figures out that both sides should be pissed as this should not be happening to either side. 

Everyone needs to step away from the BS partisan game and stop defending their guys while both sides happily screw us over.

In light of the fact that our country seems to be a party system.. how exactly is that done? 

She comes across like a blow hard ding bat with no clue.. honestly...

I'm sure Obama does have a data base of his constituents . But having information on everything about everyone? lmfao

Make them accountable.  Yeah I know the troubles with voting in our two party system.

... of course Snowden tried to get some accountability from them a different way.  But what he did is small potatoes to Congress.  He really needed to release a bunch of information the NSA had collected about their families -- medical histories or something they would go bonkers over.

But would they go after the NSA for collecting the data in the first place, rather than shooting the messenger?  Not holding my breath.