My guess it doesn't matter if they were encrypted.

There are copies of the encrypted files. But, as a newspaper, you don't really want third rate spooks breaking into the office trying to steal the hard drive or SD cards.

You don't want run of the mill nerds rifling your dumpster for a piece of history they can sell on eBay.

etc.

By getting most people to think the stuff was destroyed they head off a lot of headaches without really changing anything.

They have been surprised by some of the information, so they don't know for sure what he has. Look into the details of how he got the stuff. THEY HAVE NO IDEA.

They also have no idea who has information. You can bet there are dead-mans-switches sitting on some of it. What the media has is what he wanted to release, plus the material to make it clear he could strike back.

A smart guy (Snowden counts as that) would have more stuff set aside being held by someone who's not public about it yet. There are quite a few large encrypted files floating around on BitTorrent if you know where to look. All they would have to do is release a key and thousands of /b/ chan nerds and spooks would have all of it.

Without proving with certainty with no possibility of doubt that he could massively hurt the US government, he would have been a dead man. Releasing that information HAD to be done to PROVE he could hurt the administration.

You are completely stupid if you believe otherwise. He would have simply been killed before the media decided what to do with the data.

Remember, this is the Obama administration that has no problem missile striking US citizens who happen to be accused of being terrorists in foreign countries without even a sham trial. (Some of them are, but some of them might not have been before they were blown up.)

If anything, releasing that information made it clear he does want to help. Doing so put him at greater risk of ending up in jail assuming the US didn't outright kill him, because that's less excusable during a trial. It was the ONLY gambit that he could play to get the information out.

So the fault of the information being out there is twofold: the US for doing the illegal and morally wrong shit in the first place, and the US for being corrupt enough that whistleblowers get treated poorly (if not killed) in the first place.

That someone would come along and do this was basically a certainty.

And when they did, that they would also take and prove they have massively damaging information is ALSO a certainty.

Yup.

And consider Holder, who trafficked guns into Mexico knowing that Mexicans would be killed with them for political purposes, then swept the fact that a US Citizen Border Patrol Agent was killed by one of them under the rug, as someone to trust for "let's a make a deal" on the NSA leaks....

Only a complete idiot would deal with Holder. Snowden should drop a bunch more embarrassing documents just to punish Holder for opening his big fucking mouth on the subject.

If following the Constitution, and expecting all levels and members of government to follow the Constitution is a "cult" to you

Guilty as charged.

By the way, considering that other people who tried to do whistle blowing by other means ended up in jail, dead, or hiding in some other country when they tried "limited" release, taking the whole schebang was the proper and prudent move.

How about this, asshole, let's have a government that doesn't break the fucking law and violate the constitution in the first place? Then you can stop worrying about people fighting back with a large pile of damaging secrets.

You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide right?

Network Solutions is one of the few registrars you can get to on the phone.

Which is quite valuable for some companies, especially those that make good money with a web site.

Yeah, they are a bunch of spamming assholes and try to trick you into buying more services with every web site visit, but they are better than a lot of registrars. If GoDaddy spent as much money on proper customer service as they do on fancy advertising, they'd have taken over long ago. The market is saturated with stupid hucksters... which a lot of customers just don't trust.

Part of it is cars are different now too.

It used to be, the old impala could bang into a pole in the parking lot at low speed and drive away. A little duct tape, a new light or two and you could use it.

Bang into that same pole at the same speed now and you've got four panels that need replacing, the radiator came off it's mount and the car has to be towed. Some cars, that may even total them.

This new car is MUCH safer for the occupant, the real expensive part of repair would be the bodies inside. But, the cars now days don't withstand normal little "oopsies" anymore. Which translates into repairs or loss of the vehicle over minor events.

Which in turn makes it more expensive to drive.

My guess is, teens getting in reasonable "accident accidents" are living now, and even not getting injured due to the vehicles saving them. The ones that go 100 mph and hit a tree still die. But the "low end" of the accident ends up costing money in trade for people damage.

That trade off has made it harder for a non-working teen family to afford a car for them, and harder for the working teen to support a car and the spending money they want. Some of them, are rationally, choosing the spending money over ability to wander all over the county.

I know a few 65+ year olds that are scared to death of driving. Plus a few too stubborn to stop when they get dangerous, and a few who simply don't have driver's permits in the first place.

A safe and efficient way for all of them to get to the store or doctor's office would be a godsend to most of them.

Sure, a few stubborn old men have substituted their driving and car for their non-functional penis, but that's not a valid reason to do anything.

PS, 65 would be way too young now days. 75 or 80 is a more realistic "most of them can't drive anymore" age.

That's called the "It's not fascism when WE do it!" effect.

Not only that, you could burn the oxygen and hydrogen and get pure water AND energy out of it.

Somehow I think that whatever this thing is doing, it's not doing what they think it is doing.

They may increase the injury rate by pulling people from the "dead" rate.

Helmets do indeed work for low impact low energy type events.

"Helmets don't reduce injuries" may be a more complicated issue.

People who are now injured by a particular impact, used to die, sometimes dead right there. And people who used to have brain injury and a life of drooling in a home somewhere, are now "not injured" or just scraped and bruised and get back up, continue, and buy another helmet. The "degree of injury" brackets shifted over one slot on a whole bunch of types of impact severity.

Similar effects can be seen with safety features on cars where drivers act more recklessly when they perceive their cars as more 'iron clad'. We've all seen that, the invincible Suzi McSoccermom barreling down the highway on her phone because she drives a Tahoe with lifted suspension and a brush guard on it to the grocery store and tanning place.

The fact the bicycle crash brain injury numbers didn't go down doesn't conclusively demonstrate helmets aren't helping.

People don't know what "correlation" and "causation" mean in the first place.

Let alone used together.

We will be said to have dined primarily on high fructose corn syrup.

Somehow I think there's going to be some big holes in what they actually do "know" about what those folks ate.

The "Rule 34" Option.