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It has been revealed that on internet chat-rooms, Edward Snowden used to heavily criticize social
security (holding an unusual contempt for the elderly), said that whistle-blowers should
be "shot in the balls," and once wished death on someone for simply posting on a gaming
forum. It's clear that Snowden is quite the Ron Paul-loving Libertarian as well. But honestly,
who cares about the foolish nonsense he said in the past? Besides, people can change -- those
posts were made well over four years ago. Snowden risked his life and his freedom to
leak secret information that was indeed unconstitutional. Judging by what Snowden said in those forums
-- yes, he seemed like a heartless imbecile. But who's to say that he hasn't grown up a
bit? I am very glad he leaked this information and we, the public, deserve to know that our
government is keeping tabs on us. It's baffling to see so many of my fellow liberals wetting
their pants over this. Their main argument seems to be "this NSA spying has been going
on since Bush! See! Obama gets a pass!" No, he does not get a pass. He was elected on
the platform of CHANGE - not to maintain Bush's status quo of Constitution-killing. And don't
give me this idiotic argument of "the spying has been going on for 10 years! We already
knew about it!" Yes, we already knew about the NSA keeping tabs on our phone calls, but
we did not know about PRISM, a massive surveillance agency that collects online data. And by the
way, if this information is "nothing new," then why the hell is Snowden being charged
with espionage? Another silly argument made by my fellow leftists is that Snowden leaked
this information just to make Obama look bad. Well, why on earth would he risk his life
and security just to make a president he disagrees with look bad? Of course he knew what the
implications would be (lest we forget Julian Assange and Bradley Manning). That theory
is simply ridiculous. These liberals seem to defend Obama no matter what he has done,
which is absurd. Perhaps Snowden still is, for the most part, a ***, or maybe he
is a concerned whistle-blower that has matured. It doesn't really matter because we deserve
to know that our government is spying on us - keeping track of who we call and keeping
track of online data. All of this information is quite unsettling. Let's not focus so much
on the whistle-blower himself, but focus on the information that he actually leaked.