Scott: "But if Snowden liked the easy route, he'd be in Hawaii right now with his girl on a sandy beach like all the other NSA contractors."

... apparatus out here in the islands is hardcore, given that the City and County of Honolulu is the most militarized municipality in the entire United States, and its personnel aren't whiling away the hours with the babes at the beach. They're put through their paces, and they're sent home if they don't perform optimally to their superiors' satisfaction.

It's a rather odd dichotomy, really, since Hawaii along with Massachusetts is easily one of the most politically liberal states in the union. But political ideologies aside, most local residents recognize that government personnel, military and civilian alike, have an important job to do, and we are content to let them do it with minimal interference. I chalk that up to the longstanding residual effect of the Dec. 1941 Japanese naval assault on Pearl Harbor, and the resultant imposition of martial law in the islands during the Second World War.

If I have one serious reservation about the actions taken by Snowden and then-Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald did, it's that they appeared all too willing to seek out the limelight and insert themselves as central characters into their own otherwise compelling storyline. This made it all too easy for hostile journalists like Ruth Marcus to personalize the issue and make them the primary object for no small amount of public scorn and ridicule, rather than have to address the uncomfortable issues raised by Snowden's national security revelations.

Contrast that with the behavior four decades earlier of Daniel Ellsberg, who was perfectly content and even eager to remain anonymous, and thus let the incendiary content of the so-called "Pentagon Papers" speak for themselves.

Of course, the Pentagon Papers story happened just before the Watergate scandal, when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and their editor Ben Bradlee made investigative journalism exciting and fashionable -- not to mention personally celebratory and financially lucrative -- with "All the President's Men." I mean, forty years ex post facto, does the general public really remember the name of the reporter at the New York Times who first broke Ellberg's revelations back in 1971, never mind the name of his editor?

(For the record, that reporter was Neil Sheehan, who would eventually author what's now considered to be one of the truly seminal non-fiction accounts of the Vietnam War, his 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. And Sheehan's editor at the Times, who helped him review and analyze reams of Pentagon documents in an ultimately successful attempt to make some sense of it all, was the indefatigable Gerald Gold, who died in relatively comfortable obscurity in Aug. 2012.)

But then again, if one is to take issue with the establishment's position, as we are by supporting Snowden's bid for clemency, I think it probably helps to first try to learn what that establishment is thinking.

And in that regard, Ruth Marcus has long been one of the bellwethers of establishment opinion within the Beltway. In this case, if you read her closely, she goes to great rhetorical lengths to avoid taking direct issue with the actual results of Snowden's revelations, and she grudgingly acknowledges that the public discussion over these matters was probably long overdue.

While also realizing the inherent problems with reading between the lines of an op-ed, I'd offer that if Marcus is indeed the Beltway barometer I think she is, then the establishment is probably quietly looking for a graceful way to back down from their previously stated public positions regarding Snowden's legal disposition.

That there may not be any graceful exit strategy for them is beside the point, at least for right now. What Marcus is doing here is really just so much kabuki, but she's nevertheless admitted with this column that the establishment has lost the NSA arguments on its merits -- and that's an important thing to know, if we want Snowden to be able to return the the United States with minimal or no consequences to his personal freedom.

The world is still reeling from the incredible revelations made by Der Spiegel and Jacob Appelbaum over the NSA's well funded quest to control the world's information. The most newsworthy revelation, at least at first, was DROPOUTJEEP a software program that gives the NSA total access to your iPhone.

But that is just the beginning of the revelations. As Appelbaum's hour long presentation at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress provided even more amazing details of NSA's  future plans and current operations for dominating global communications and intelligence or, as Appelbaum put it, a "planetary strategic surveillance system."

There's a lot to unpack that involves both software and hardware tools but let's start with the NSA's three key systems to handle the internet:

• TURMOIL is deep packet inspection or a passive dragnet surveillance sensors for interception system for the entire internet.

• TURBINE involves deep packet injection (infection).

• QFIRE is infrastructure for the other two systems - a way to systematically use TURMOIL to find you then use TURBINE to infect your computer.

Appelbaum claims TURMOIL violates the Fourth Amendment because it acts as a "general warrant dragnet surveillance system." Whereas TURBINE is not passive but aggressive exploitation into a computer system - also a legally dubious prospect if not legally authorized.

QFIRE poses even more problems because it compromises other people's routers (not the target) to make sure they can localize attacks which may also violate the Fourth Amendment.

I can't understand why the people behind this and responsible for it are being defended, and those revealing it or responsible for obtaining the information about it are being treated like traitors.  

I'm sorry, but cheering for the police state, for policies and activities and programs that are painting over our rights and freedoms with an opaque coat of totalitarianism, doesn't work for me.

disclosing specific intelligence/spying activities;

the NSA director said the disclosures caused irreversible damage to the US,

Putin told Snowden to stop damaging his American partners,

senior UK intelligence officials have stated that the disclosures has caused serious damage to UK intelligence,

a former CIA director says Snowden is the most damaging leaker in US history,