Did Snowden do the citizens of the USA a big favor or was he a Benedict Arnold?

Barack Obama announced some half-baked reforms to the practices the USA uses for surveillance of its private citizens and foreign leaders that were revealed by Edward Snowden who some people call a traitor and some call a hero.

President Obama is set to call for protection for foreigners from the USA spying and demand presidential approval for surveillance of foreign leaders, maybe.

Obama is likely to call for new protections for foreigners from US spying and to say that foreign leaders may only be targeted for surveillance with presidential approval. Is that something like executive privilege?

No one except Snowden knows exactly what motivated him to commandeer all of the top secret documents and expose a multitude of improprieties by the USA government.

I say this with mixed emotions. If it wasn’t for Snowden’s supposed illegal actions, the Obama administration would not have ever been forced to make the changes they may be making.

This is a very sensitive issue not knowing exactly if Snowden is a national hero or a master spy with ill intentions. I have heard of him being referred to both ways.

On one hand, because of his illegal activities there has been or will be (maybe) many changes made in the laws regarding spying on USA citizens and foreign citizens and countries. That is a good thing.

It is very hard to draw a line in the sand and expect the authorities not to cross that sensitive line in their spying surveillance. If in fact they did not exceed their authority and do not cross the line it would be very beneficial to our government but that has not been the case. As the old saying goes “Give them an inch and they take a mile”.

When any government that is spying on their citizens by way of checking email, all electronic communications, viewing what people are doing in their homes through the cameras on their computers, they are totally out of line. That is one of many examples where the government is crossing the forbidden line. Is this Red China, Russia or the USA?

The spy game and intelligence should be sophisticated enough for the government to know exactly who the terrorists are and who is not a terrorist. They have all the right in the world to spy on them. That is what they get paid for.

On one hand we can call Snowden a Benedict Arnold or on the other hand we can call him a Audie Murphy. Only time and public opinion will hash that out.

Possibly we can dub Snowden “Benedict Murphy “.