Most Americans View Snowden as Whistleblower rather than Traitor

Thursday, July 11, 2013
Snowden supporters in India (photo: Tsering Topgyal, AP)

Edward Snowden, the former contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. domestic spy operations, is not a traitor, say most Americans.

 

In a new national poll (pdf) conducted by Quinnipiac University, 55% of respondents said they consider Snowden a whistleblower for telling the media about secret National Security Agency programs involving phone records of Americans.

 

The survey also revealed what Quinnipiac called “a massive shift in attitudes” regarding the government’s anti-terrorism efforts. The new poll found 45% said those efforts have gone too far in restricting civil liberties.

 

Three years ago, a Quinnipiac survey revealed 63% felt such activities didn't go far enough to protect the country.

 

The survey uncovered a gender gap on counter-terrorism efforts, with men saying 54%-34% they have gone too far and women saying 47%-36% they have not gone far enough.

 

Men and Republicans have grown particularly concerned over the threat to civil liberties as a result of the government’s counterterrorism programs.

 

“The massive swing in public opinion about civil liberties and governmental anti- terrorism efforts, and the public view that Edward Snowden is more whistle-blower than traitor, are the public reaction and apparent shock at the extent to which the government has gone in trying to prevent future terrorist incidents,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a press release.

 

“The fact that there is little difference now along party lines about [this issue] is in itself unusual in a country sharply divided along political lines about almost everything,” added Brown. “Moreover, the verdict that Snowden is not a traitor goes against almost the unified view of the nation's political establishment.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

To Learn More:

U.S. Voters Say Snowden Is Whistle-Blower, Not Traitor (Quinnipiac University)

Public Opinion Shifts on Security-Liberty Balance (by Nate Silver, New York Times)

Majority of Americans Disapprove of NSA Surveillance Operations (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Whistleblowers Versus Obama’s Secret Government (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)   

Comments

William H. Depperman 10 years ago
The USA Capitalist Dictatorship has Launched a Program of Vilification, Excoriation and Character Assassination of Andrew Snowden as it Prepares to try to Assassinate Him Physically! Snowden Represents the Beginning of a Potential Mutiny in the US Military! But Mutiny must be Organized by a Communist Party which has not yet been Re-organized! CUBA would be Snowden’s Best Asylum Bet because Cuba is a Workers’ State, but Russia Has Effectively Imprisoned Edward Snowden to Please the USA! Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua Could Turn Out to be a Fatal Error! For Example, Daniel Ortega Assassinated Both FMLN Leaders Carpio and Ana Maria under Orders from the USSR in March-April 1983 Because Carpio Insisted on Waging a Guerilla War for State Power in El Salvador!—National Security Agency Surveillance Programs: Snowden, Bradley Manning and Assange Snowden is seen as a HERO and is more respected than OBAMA, who is more and more despised! In order to try to discourage hundreds and potentially thousands of future Snowdens the NSA is now 1.) Implementing the “Two-Person Rule” that requires a second person to approve access to sensitive information and also 2.) Subjecting the worldview of prospective employees to extensive scrutiny prior to hire (!) and 3.) Thorough vetting of present staff in a McCarthy Era-type anti-Communist witch hunt to try to weed out those not loyal to a system which is fundamentally based on war, mass murder, crime and subjugation in order to steal natural resources and new markets to increase private profits. But ALL these measures can be easily circumvented as greater numbers of NSA/CIA system analysts and the military rank and file and those at every level of government begin to realize that the USA capitalist dictatorship must be disarmed through a systematically organized mutiny. The capitalists realize the limits of these stopgap measures and think the best way to discourage future Snowdens is to pursue him to the end of the Earth and ASSASSINATE HIM WITH MAXIMUM PUBLICITY JUST LIKE OSAMA BIN LADEN! Assassination is the new USA policy under Obama just as torture was the new policy under Bush 2 and that is the USA plan for Snowden, which may fail but ONLY if Snowden reaches CUBA! In the meantime the USA capitalist dictatorship has decided to try to vilify Snowden and assassinate his character instead, while using the Snowden revelations to try to intimidate the masses, while simultaneously denying the surveillance on various levels and falsely justifying it simultaneously as “preventing terrorism.” On June 7, 2013 the media initially reported Snowden’ revelations of MASSIVE USA (and UK) phone and Internet surveillance programs, which are routinely and criminally rubber-stamped by Congress and “secret intelligence courts” and appeared to be comprehensive on every conceivable level! (Later in July it was also revealed that the French “DGSE foreign intelligence service” was doing the exact same thing!) In addition to recording all phone calls made in the USA for over 10 years, it was revealed that the so-called National Security Agency (NSA) and MI6 British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have ALSO been tapping directly into servers of ALL social media websites, e.g. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. to track Online communication in a program called “PRISM!” Over 200 fiber-optic international and undersea cables were also directly tapped by the UK permitting monitoring of 600 million communications every day and the information stored INDEFINTELY! Later Snowden revealed that the USA and UK are spying on the European Union and the governments and citizens of all European Union countries and all Latin American countries! The irrefutable fact that ALL “Terrorist Plots” from the 911 Trade Center Provocation Attack to the 2001 and Subsequent Anthrax Provocations to the Underpants Bomber to the Times Square Bomber to the Boston Marathon Bombers to the Buffalo New York High School Student “Terrorist Plot” to the Florida High School Student “Terrorist Plot” were ALL SET-UPS is proof that the claim by “Gen.” Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, that “surveillance helped stop dozens of attacks” is a BIG LIE! (Even Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have said they had seen no evidence NSA programs had produced "uniquely valuable intelligence.” The surveillance described by Edward Snowden was partly used to locate anti-American Islamic Fundamentalists in the USA, who were then immediately contacted by deep-cover NSA/CIA agents sent in who pretended to support them, manipulated them and then set them up with explosives, help with picking targets, etc. Thus any supposed “terrorist plot” has already been reported in the media! There were not more than a half-dozen such “plots!” The USA also spies on China, Russia, UK, EU and all 197 countries in the UN! The USA is waging war against the entire world! The USA is even able to block asylum for Snowden in violation of International Law! The USA capitalist dictatorship also controls the entire Internet by controlling all the political websites, most of which permit NO COMMENT WHATSOEVER or require “sign-ins” and “passwords,” which the so-called “intelligence community” then often immediately deletes (!) to prevent access. The only political comments usually permitted are occasional brainless “peanut gallery twitter-type” short responses. The USA also blocks access to hundreds of servers and websites so that American users of the Internet are only able to read approved propaganda and Big Lies of Commission or Omission. Another method virtually ALL websites use to decrease readership even in the short comments which are permitted—only after the 5th page of websites listed on websites such as Google—is to chop up all the sentences of blog entries into sentence fragments separated by huge spaces sometimes as large as several lines. “We are modifying comments” blocks the rest! Although media coverage of Edward Snowden first focused on his “fugitive” status and the question of which capitalist country would grant him asylum, at another level there was an initial media build-up of Snowden and Bradley Manning, and previously Julian Assange, comparing them to Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers, who merely represented that faction of USA capitalism which wanted an end to the Vietnam War; Woodward and Bernstein who reported on and wrote a cover-up of the Watergate Bloodless Removal of Richard Nixon by Nelson Rockefeller—the real “Deep Throat;” and Phillip Agee. Agee was a CIA deep cover “limited hang-out” operative who specialized in “Covert Action-Dirty Work” information who pretended he had “defected from the CIA” in the 1980s and acted as a supposed “authoritative source” for leftists unaware of his purpose, which was to try to monopolize “truth” about capitalist statecraft and conspiracies in order to cover up actual imperialist political policies and political assassinations, etc. from a supposed “left” position and keep genuine opposition loyal to capitalism by keeping them confused and by never ever proposing the solution—Socialism. But Manning and Assange, despite the fact that Assange appears on Sunday’s “This Week” (ABC), appear to be manipulee cutouts. There is no possible way that Bradley Manning though he was without a doubt legitimately motivated, or any one person anywhere could have accumulated 250,000 United States diplomatic state department cables plus 500,000 army reports (the Iraq War logs and Afghan War logs) onto one or even two (2) computers (!), which were then serialized by Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, WHO CENSORED (“redacted!”) ALL documents before release to the media! It took a lot of long, coordinated arduous work from all branches and offices of the State Department worldwide and the USA military to get this information to these people who were then hung out to dry! Assange, a vehement anti-Communist who also “documented millions of emails sent by the Syrian government and business officials,” (New York Times, June 24, 2013) thus assisting the USA in its Proxy Invasion of Syria (!), is presented as the only person in his Australian University class who did not work for DARPA! Right! (HaHaHa!) Assange undoubtedly has been working for DARPA and US “intelligence” the whole time as a deep-cover “intelligence” operative. The Wikileaks “revelations” were apparently thus a total set-up: 1.) to popularize USA Statecraft and 2.) to try to generate patriotism at the same time by denouncing and charging Manning and Assange and now Snowden as “traitors!” Manning and Snowden naively think that the only alternative is to claim to be “patriots.” Remember this is not our country! We just live here! We owe no loyalty whatsoever to the USA capitalist dictatorship! Precisely the opposite! On July 4, 2013 it was also admitted that every piece of mail in the USA has been photographed since the 911 Provocation/Set-Up! Snowden is now excoriated as a “traitor,” which has become the primary focus to try to prevent a “SNOWBALL EFFECT” with more inside people turning against the USA capitalist dictatorship and starting a mutiny mindset! A successful mutiny leading to a Socialist Revolution in the Untied States must be led by a genuine Communist Party, which itself does not yet exist. Snowden is also now “being accompanied by (at least) one of Wikileaks legal advisors ‘at all times,’” (BBC, June 26, 2013), acting for the USA “intelligence community,” in order to try to prevent Snowden from divulging ANY of his actual documents to the Russian Federation, thus demonstrating that “Wikileaks” is a total sham and has NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of ever publishing Snowden’s actual uncensored documents Online and have so far published NONE! Snowden, by his statements and actions appears entirely different than Manning and Assange, who indeed may or may not have inspired him! Manning, though he had huge outside “help” appears to have been 100% sincerely motivated, while Assange was NOT and IS NOT! Snowden and Manning appear to have credibility from their statements and in what they did, although Manning apparently had extensive outside help. Despite the fact that both countries have betrayed him Snowden should still have provided complete copies of ALL of his documents to both the Russian Federation and the Peoples’ Republic of China but he foolishly did not! As the capitalists’ very own US Senators Wyden et al concur as explained above, all this spying from an “intelligence” point of view has NOT produced any "uniquely valuable intelligence” nor prevented ANY genuine terrorist attacks, but has been used primarily to covertly locate and manipulate Islamists for possible “terrorist plot” set-ups. However, the mass awareness of such huge surveillance operations which include emails, telephone calls and Internet social networking sites, etc., DOES have an enormous INTIMIDATING EFFECT on the USA, EU and world populations. Such a level of INTIMIDATION functions to hinder and block the ability to organize to oppose the economic and biological extermination programs being organized against the masses in order to reduce the “population demographic” through “Enforced Social Darwinism.” The answer is NOT to allow oneself to become intimidated and to organize and to remember that the morale of the entire capitalist dictatorship in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere is at rock bottom! Organization is easier if people are not living in fear! Manning, Snowden and Assange should all be critically supported despite the fact that Manning and Assange and “Wikileaks”—a USA-controlled limited hang-out operation—had enormous USA government “assistance” and the information which WAS released is all censored and manipulated except in several cases where Wikileaks determined that the cables had to be re-released uncensored otherwise they elicited no interest and revealed very little of substance in the first place. (“Who was to blame” for the uncensored cables then became an issue and the public was invited to speculate!) This is a very important distinction. Snowden should NEVER EVER turn his documents over to “Wikileaks” because then they will surely NEVER see the light of day! Wikileaks will censor or just destroy most of the documents! The information all 3 have released and actual circumstances of its release as explained here should be used to raise awareness to help reorganize a genuine Communist Party, as we had in the 1930s, and a Socialist Revolution in the USA and Worldwide. Both The Guardian and the Washington Post have covered up much of what they received from Edward J. Snowden! The Guardian has printed the gist of some of it, while the Washington Post printed virtually nothing!! If Snowden wants to get those documents published he has to do it himself and stop depending on DARPA! Snowden is an intelligent person and apparently did break with Wikileaks when Assange informed Snowden that any of his documents published on Wikileaks would also be censored!!! “Wikileaks” is an obvious sham set up to try to perpetuate the false illusion of “democracy” under the hardening capitalist dictatorship! It was revealed that Snowden had applied to 21 plus 6 countries for asylum including Russia, which said it would NOT accept Snowden unless he agreed to stop the release of “any more information which might embarrass its USA ‘partner,’” and refused even to allow him to travel to an Embassy in Moscow! Snowden then applied for “temporary asylum” in Russia to permit him to travel to an embassy of a “Latin American country” in Moscow where he could seek permanent asylum. It would be good if Russia permits Snowden to actually reach asylum in a safe country, but Russia is still playing the Gorbachev game, which has outlived its usefulness! Russia even tried to distract Snowden and the public with sex by publishing the claim that spy/ho Anna Chapman “wants to marry,” Snowden, meaning get into his pants! Ecuador, which is part of the Wikileaks SHAM, also exposed itself completely as a USA puppet, when the slimeball demagogue Correa announced it “had been a mistake to issue Snowden travel documents to travel from Hong Kong!” In other words Assange and “Wikileaks” are OK! But Snowden is NOT! They have such contempt for the masses and believe the masses and Snowden cannot put 2 and 2 together! CUBA is still a Workers’ State, which would be safer than a capitalist regime where the governments can change rapidly. Raoul Castro, however, is a hypocrite and an opportunist similar to Putin and would NEVER permit the NSA/CIA documents to be published. Only Fidel Castro might have permitted the documents to be published Online in full entirely uncensored. For safety—if Cuba is good enough for Assata Shakur it should certainly be good enough to prevent the intended assassination by the USA dictatorship of Andrew J. Snowden! But if the USA capitalist dictatorship decides to use a drone attack with a Hellfire Missile, which it is perfectly capable of doing at a time when the Geneva Convention and International Law mean absolutely nothing, then all bets are off! Surveillance by Drones Expands in the USA and Worldwide! For purposes of INTIMIDATION almost entirely the US Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open US airspace to unmanned aircraft (drones) by October 2015. The aerospace industry predicts there will be 30,000 drones deployed globally within five years, half of them in the United States the Associated Press news agency reported. (BBC, June 19, 2013) The USA is a hard capitalist dictatorship known as RULE BY DECREE and takes the form of a bureaucratic, military police state which is hardening by the day! The refusal by the Obama Regime to pledge never to use a drone strike to kill an American citizen on U.S. soil who is “suspected of being a terrorist,” a pledge proposed by demagogue-Fascist Rand Paul in February 22, 2013, demonstrates that there is a real possibility 1.) That the USA will indeed try to assassinate Andrew Snowden with a Hellfire Missile in ANY Latin American country which might provide him asylum even Cuba, and 2.) That the issue of NSA/CIA surveillance is being used LARGELY FOR PURPOSES OF INTIMIDATION AS THE USA Capitalist Dictatorship begins to escalate its economic war of extermination of its own people and wants the masses to acquiesce meekly to their own extermination due to fear! William H. Depperman, Coordinator United Front Against Racism And Capitalism-Imperialism New York, N.Y. 10003 Revised July 14, 2013

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