As far as we know, you mean. What about Michael Hastings, the journalist who blew the whistle on General McChrystal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)

Well, I won't take it back. All governments are corrupt and are equally corrupt. They only differ in the ways they are corrupt and what the corruption is called. In this country it's called campaign contributions, travel junkets, and jobs after leaving office. In places like Mexico and Russia it's called bribery. But saying "feces" instead of shit and "copraphage" instead of shit eater doesn't change the fact that it's corruption.

Well, I stand by what I wrote. The rich can afford lawyers to fight the government. The rich usually don't attract the attention of law enforcement when they do nasty things, especially those who are politically connected. The poor, because they can't afford attorneys or often get substandard representation from attorneys appointed by the court, are the ones who get the justice—whether they're guilty or not. Just how many people has the Innocence Project gotten off death rows of American prisons because they were proven to be factually innocent?

There are occasions when I feel that the only real justice comes in the form of a lead slug. Fortunately, I'm not the one who will dish it out.

The British government is just as corrupt and useless as the American government. Justice, real justice, is only for the rich... or those who know their way around the court system and the time to pursue it.

I mean I can belch out methane from my nether regions with some serious attitude. Does this mean that if I ever go to China (not very likely) and the kung pau chicken doesn't agree with me, does this mean that my life is threatened? Well, maybe. Considering how people smoke tobacco like a brush fire over there all it'll take is one smoker getting to close to me and *boom*!

This letter is a fine piece of legal writing. The only other bits of legal writing I've seen during my legal research when I went to court "in pro per" (that's Legalese for "I did it by myself") over a trifling First Amendment issue that were as funny were a couple of SCOTUS opinions written by the two acknowledged legal hacks of the court, Scalia and Thomas. The original of Scalia's was written in blood; Thomas' original was written in crayon.

I'd be surprised they will give them access to a computer. But the Swedish prison system is supposedly quite tolerable and remarkably humane compared to those in much of the rest of the world (especially the American federal and state gulags which are third-world in many aspects) so I could be wrong.

If you know anything about life in prison you would know that just having a job is a "big deal®". It makes the time fly more quickly. There are worse things than assembling IKEA furniture. For example, prison systems are like Google in this one respect, they eat their own dog food. So they make and consume their own products such as food, clothes, and soap. Can you imagine spending years working in, for example, a chicken factory?

And I thought that those were the talking heads that you see on TV. ;-)

Actually, I can read my own news... at Starbucks.... out of the paper New York Times. All the news that's fit to print! Besides, I'd rather be depressed reading about the evils of the world than be depressed after reading in a news feed about new technologies or whatever that I don't have time to explore or about some new stupid politician trick or read about the latest exploit in Windows. Well, reading about a Windows exploit isn't so bad. It makes me happy that I use Macs.

Well, it depends upon what you want. I pay $50/month for unlimited voice/data/text with Verizon... but I don't use a smartphone. I use a plain ordinary Samsung pay-as-you-go phone at Target for $20 which included a $10 credit. It depends upon what you really need a phone for. I need a phone for voice stuff. When I want the Internet I use my MacBook. Who needs a smartphone or a pad when you have a portable REAL computer.

As a long time Verizon Wireless customer I would have to agree. However, their hiring practices are illegal based upon what a friend's experience. I would not want to work for such an unenlightened and short-sighted company.

Well, maybe not Google but the U.S. Department of Justice. They have a database of all child pornography images known to law enforcement. Whenever there is a prosecution, the images go to them to determine if there are any new ones. They also try to identify who the child actually is with some success. So, in conjunction with them, it would not be difficult to create a database of "images" that Google is proposing. The question is why it's taken them so long? This DOJ database has been around for quite a while.

This has nothing to do with paranoia. This has everything to do with the simple fact that the technology exists, the government believes it can do it legally (and even if they believe it's illegal they'll say they "believe" it's legal in order to prevent going to prison), and that there is a perceived need to do it. They are doing this, and probably more as well.

There are two great forces at work here. There is the U.S. Constitution that states that we have various civil liberties and that these liberties guarantee us from undue governmental interference in our lives. Then there is the U.S., state, and local governments, all of whom have a job to do in the name of public safety. These two forces collide all the time and we leave it to the courts to sort it all out.

In short, the NSA is doing its job. The question is are they trampling upon our right to be free from government intrusion into our business more than is necessary. The answer clearly is yes and Mr. Snowden is demonstrating and probably will continue to demonstrate that they've crossed the line.

If only I were.

Mr. Snowden may eventually be captured by the U.S. government and be hanged by his balls, he may be a Chinese spy as has been alleged by some in the government, but if his revelations are true he is doing you and I ordinary people a great service by airing all this, at a minimum, naughty, and, at most, highly illegal shit. If this stuff is true, I want to see some high government officials hanging by their balls (or tits for those of the female species) for their actions.