Colbert turns his funny gun on Snowden in RSA keynote

While I don't disagree that the NSA's directive is international information gathering, and that should be the limit of its scope, I think Colbert's wrong to think that's something that can exist without ever going far beyond its scope. By natural consequence of having an extremely well funded organization with zero oversight, if we don't have whistleblowers, they're going to take advantage of the situation.

Which brings me to the counterpoint which is that Snowden shouldn't spend the rest of his life in jail, which is what would invariably happen would be go to trial in the US. I think it's of little matter that he revealed how we spy on other countries. I think the point of that was to show that that's how we're being spied on by the 5 Eyes, who will freely share their spying information.

>an extremely well funded organization with zero oversight

This is a false statement since the NSA does have oversight.

>Snowden shouldn't spend the rest of his life in jail, which is what would invariably happen would be go to trial in the US.

This, too, is a false statement and conjecture.

>> an extremely well funded organization with zero oversight

> This is a false statement since the NSA does have oversight.

This is a worthless comment. Of these two scenarios, which do you find more likely?

A. Your parent comment knows just as much as you do about whatever "oversight" is notionally exerted over the NSA, but chooses to describe it as "zero" for rhetorical reasons, such as for example a functional equivalence to what might happen in the case where the NSA actually outranked everything else in the country.

B. Your parent comment actually believes that in the US government org chart, the NSA is at the very top.

I lean toward scenario (A), in which case your response has all the value of "does not, infinity!" In general, saying "what you said is incorrect because you're wrong" just makes you sound even more uninformed than the guy saying "but that's wrong!" If you've got something to back yourself up with, use it, don't just assert that it's there.

> This, too, is a false statement and conjecture.

Wow! Do you see any problems with simultaneously describing something as "false" and as "conjecture"?