More Spying

It was brought to my attention that perhaps the unnamed NSA source mentioned in the Bild am Sonntag article was none other than Edward Snowden.  Now Edward started leaking information June 5th so I have to assume that his source of on-going information was cut pretty quickly around that time so I am not sure how relevant he would be as to at-the-minute revelations about Obama and Merkel.

If it were Snowden they were speaking with then it throws a very different light on his self-proclaimed  intentions where he said that he was just trying to help the U.S. national security by prompting a badly needed public debate about the scope of the intelligence effort.

If that is truly the case then either he is very stupid or someone else has taken over the responsibility of the time and nature of the continuing leakage of information. 

In May of this year Snowden arrived in Hong Kong with 4 computers which allowed him to access the highly sensitive information he then leaked/handed over to journalists from the Guardian newspaper.

He then travelled on to Russia where after a convoluted process was granted asylum.

His initial interview with the Guardian opened up the existence of numerous programs run by the NSA which allowed them to eavesdrop apparently on anyone anywhere through some form of collaboration with the big internet/phone networks.

Without question the ensuing articles touched off a debate in the US and in Europe.  It didn't create the same debate in China or Russia although one has to assume that the same sort of surveillance was taking place there as well so either the NSA was not able to breach their defences or the Russians and Chinese were very quick to clamp down on any distribution of the eavesdropping taking place in their countries.

But if Snowden really just wanted to spark a debate about the intelligence effort why has he gone on to leak information which is potentially seriously damaging to the geopolitical relationship between the US and Europe in general and with Germany specifically?

I fully understand that Snowden was full of righteous indignation at what he considered to be the invasion of privacy on a massive scale by the NSA.

I would however think that either he is totally naïve and has no understanding of the damage he is doing to the US-rightfully or wrongfully- potentially opening doors to the Russians or the Chinese to exploit.

Does he think that there is any internal debate about anything in either of those countries let alone the activities of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Russia or the Ministry of State Security (MSS) in China.

Two wrongs don't make a right. 

But geopolitics is not kindergarten.