EXCERPT--FORMER NSA BOSS SMEARS SNOWDEN SUPPORTERS

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FROM TECH DIRT

Former NSA Boss Calls Snowden's Supporters Internet Shut-ins; Equates Transparency Activists With Al-Qaeda

from the one-foot-in-own-mouth,-one-jackboot-on-everyone-else's-neck dept

Some of the most ardent defenders of our nation's Skynet surveillance programs and other forms of cyber-overreach have one thing in common: they continue to belittle their opponents as a loose confederation of basement-dwelling loners who exist solely on The Internet. I'm sure this form of disparagement plays well with like-minded people who take comfort in belittling things they don't understand (anyone more than 5 years younger than them; The Internet; bitcoin exchange rates; bronies*).

[*TBH, I don't really understand the last two either. But I have yet to attack them purely out of naivete.]

Mike Rogers, best friend to intelligence agencies everywhere, has done this on more than one occasion. The first one he fired off during his impassioned defense of the indefensible CISPA bill, in which he referred to opponents of the bill (including the ACLU and EFF) as "14-year-olds in their basement clicking around on the internet."

In his recent impassioned defense of not cutting off funding to some of the NSA's surveillance efforts, Rogers returned to his favorite target.

Are we so small that we can only look at our Facebook likes today in this Chamber? Or are we going to stand up and find out how many lives we can save?

Now, it's former NSA director Michael Hayden's turn to call opposition to NSA spying nothing more than bunch of internet malcontents. In his speech to the Bipartisan Policy Center, Hayden speculated that apprehending Ed Snowden could result in retaliatory attacks from "hackers and transparency groups."

"If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?" said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to "nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years".