Right now Bradley Manning is on trial for aiding the enemy. He has already plead guilty to charges that will put him away for 20 years. The Federal government, under orders from the President, is trying to put him away for another 37, effectively meaning they want him to die in prison. For dumping a bunch of mostly innocuous data into the hands of Julian Assauge, himself hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy to avoid ridiculous rape charges (news flash: it’s not rape if she regretted having sex with Julian Assauge after having sex with him, even if she had to fake her orgasm).
Recently, NSA surveillance details were leaked by one Edward Snowden, a former government contractor. This was more or less an open secret as most people know that we should be getting much faster Internet bandwidth were it not for the NSA’s own illegal intercepting of all popular forms of communicating over the web. Fearing for his life, he has fled to Hong Kong and now flat out disappeared. I personally would have fled to Uganda in order to commit to building some kind of infrastructure there, but that’s me.
In both cases, these men did what so many other people inside government should be doing. They are ensuring that the so-called Republic we live under is a Republic. You cannot properly vote for any candidate in any Federal election if you do not know what the government is doing. It is that simple. In order for representative democracy to have meaningful elections of any kind, you must have access to the full scope of what that government is doing.
These days, nearly every form of business the government engages in is classified. You cannot contract with the Post Office without at least Secret level clearance. I know as I have worked for companies that have tried to obtain them for me, although I think my application fell through the cracks. Not that I’m sad about it, as I view government contracting work as nothing more than worthless, unfulfilling, and tyrannical.
The fact is, pretty much all of what is currently classified by the Federal government should not be. All emails from just about every department and agency should be readily available to the public. Unfortunately, instead of allowing people to see what goes on in government, the current system would rather punish or murder those who expose it.
Right now, Senators and Congressmen are calling Snowden and Manning traitors. I can only conclude that they do so because they believe that both men are aiding and abetting the enemy. But in this case, the enemy is the American Citizen, or rather, an informed American Citizen.
That is how the Federal government views all of us. What other logical reason could there be for them to collecting all that private information on all of us while demanding privacy in what they do?
Besides the fact that they are all a bunch of assholes I mean.