Thoughtful NYT article on Kerry as SoS

[Mass]

3. Kerry is carrying the government policies. I am unsure what you are surprised about here.

It would be shocking he would take any other position, considering the DOJ charged Snowden with espionage.

You can agree or not with the decision, but there should be no surprise that Kerry (particularly abroad) would defend this decision. So, I am unclear what your point is here.

To go back to the question itself, I had two reflections:

=Last week-end, the tone was so nefarious that I wondered for a while whether I had ventured on RedState by mistake. People worried that Snowden would be tortured or killed by the govt. That is plain silly. And sadly, DU seems to have reverted to a silly mode. Sad because each time you want to start an intelligent, issue based conversation, on things that effectively affect people (like poverty, or women's rights, or), it is now absolutely impossible.

= I have little sympathy for Snowden. However, I think this will have ONE effect. People should wonder how much they value the notion of privacy, both at the state and corporate level. What is it we are ready to tolerate. Is it OK that Google sells your private information (including searches you make) to private companies. With the War on Terror, we have lost a degree of privacy and it is no surprise that, as this notion slowly disappears, we see women's rights, who largely deal with privacy, be more and more challenged. So, if would be great if we could forget the entertainment complex and deal with the issues.
The other question that should be asked is about the role of government. Is it normal that functions like Snowden's are outsourced to private companies and that these people are paid huge salaries (Snowden was reportedly paid $200,000). What ironically transpired from this story (and was most likely not Snowden's goal) is that there is a huge intelligence complex that makes big money on our paranoia. Should this not be an issue as well?

BTW, I also think it is striking that Kerry foresaw this in 2004 and said we had to get back to a state where terrorism would be a police issue. He was hammered for that, but truly, are we going to be in a state of war forever (because there will always be terrorists)