Source: CounterPunch
by John Kendall Hawkins
“The atmosphere Snowden describes in vault V22 at NSA headquarters — decorated, let the detail stand, with a seven-foot poster of Chewbacca — is not the atmosphere of men who believe they are doing something wrong. It is the atmosphere of men who believe they are entitled. The technology did not corrupt them. It handed them a key. This is the surveillance state at its most human, which is to say, its most revealing. The apparatus built to protect a democracy from its enemies was being used by young men to look at photographs of women who had no idea they were being watched. The technology did not create the entitlement. It removed the friction that previously constrained it.” (07/09/26)