Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

©September 17, 2016 (9:24a)

In tandem with the release of Oliver Stone’s excellent biopic "Snowden" this week, there’s also a resurgence of the effort to discredit NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

I don’t need to suggest who might be interested in doing that.

Potentially the most effective trick is to suggest that Snowden and his "leaks" were some sort of psychological operation, planned and executed by the supposedly omniscient surveillance state itself. If successful, this ploy strengthens the myth of the state and discredits Snowden’s information at the same time.

However, even a cursory examination of what he leaked—and the volume—make such a claim completely ludicrous. Unless the organism is self-destructive—or there are enough honest folks left manning the monster who are on "our" side.

That would be nice, but I’m not in fiction mode right now.

Snowden is the real deal. And, by luck and ability, he ended up in a one-of-a-kind situation at the right time. He became the key developer of a program he code-named "Heartbeat," to collect and collate the data from the ~150 odd surveillance programs the spy-mongers constantly run on all of us. This gave him unique access to the massive amount of information with which he was able to prove what was going on.

It’s as if one live human was the only person able to see Skynet clearly. And, at great personal risk, he warned us.

We only get one warning. Don’t let it go to waste.

Future Tech: Autonomous Killer Robots Are Already Here — NBC News

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L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. His hobby is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.