(Community Matters) Edward Snowden, the young man who divulged the NSA’s broad data collection on American’s telephone calls, emails, dropbox and google docs, being described by David Brooks. Brooks description of Snowden as beholden to the CIA and Booz Allen for the “breaks” they gave him even after he failed to graduate from high school, community college or university . . . forgive me, but I doubt either the CIA or Booz Allen were giving the man a break. I find it hard to believe they didn’t employ him because he was smart and because they thought they were getting more than they were paying. The condescension in Brook’s column reminds me of a recent conversation where a friend derided a government official as someone “who’s never made more than $150k” in their life – openly suggesting that this was evidence that this person wasn’t worthy of government authority. I still feel bad for not speaking up against this comment, as if I didn’t say anything while someone said something derogatory against someone for the color of their skin or because they did or didn’t have a penis.
Amy Davidson in The New Yorker does well at taking on Mr Brooks point by point.
Community Matters 
That’s funny. I agreed wholeheartedly with David Brooks’ assessment, and found it neither smug nor overly harsh. Snowden broke the trust of his employer, Booze-Allen, and the NSA because he decided to be a cowboy and personally decide what the public needed to know. His action was self-centered and self-indulgent. I hope he is rooted out of his 5-star hotel in Hong Kong and prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law. I don’t have one whit of sympathy for him regardless of his salary, which has absolutely nothing to do with his narcissism. Whistleblowers have their place in our society. Cowboys running amok looking for self-glory and jeopardizing National security, do not.