Previous NSA Leakers, Thomas Drake And Mark Klein, Speak Out In Defense Of Ed Snowden

[jakeXT]

As US politicians and pundits push each other aside to tar and feather Ed Snowden for revealing some basic facts about NSA surveillance that the politicians and pundits themselves refused to call out for its clear abuse of basic 4th Amendment principles, two of the most important previous leakers of details of NSA surveillance have spoken out in support of Snowden. Thomas Drake, the former NSA employee who blew the whistle on NSA surveillance abuse (and faced decades in jail on trumped up charges that fell apart in court), has pointed out that Snowden's revelations confirm his own claims from before:

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

"The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent."

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data.

Drake also highlights how he did use the "official" whistleblower channels that many are saying Snowden should have used, and look what happened to him:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130612/12291923424/previous-nsa-leakers-thomas-drake-mark-klein-speak-out-defense-ed-snowden.shtml