What Edward Snowden Won't Tell You

When you hear the phrase “secret database,” what do you picture: A database whose existence is hidden from the public or a database full of secrets?

Edward Snowden’s public Q and A via the Guardian revealed that a sizable number of people think the latter. In spite of being Internet-savvy enough to know who Snowden is, piece together some vague inklings of what’s going on, and figure out how to ask him something, reading the questions posed to Snowden casts doubt on the very notion of “citizen journalism.”

That’s not to say that the crazies were the majority, or they derailed anything. There were over 3500 comments, and there were certainly more good questions than Snowden could answer. The 18 answers he gave didn’t reveal much more than we already knew, although several questions gave him an opportunity to reply to aspersions cast on him since he came forward. It is now on the record: Snowden isn’t giving secrets to the Chinese government.

At the same time, though, it became painfully clear, while I read through the questions, that many people have no clue what Snowden revealed, nor what the NSA does and they’re just going through life looking for opportunities to grind some stupid ax wherever they can. To some degree, it seems like the Guardian realized this too, as Greenwald and other Guardian staffers were asking questions and following up.

Asking a good question is hard, and the message board format doesn’t lend itself to a good interview, although it does lend itself to fights between posters, but that’s what message boards are for, really.

Snowden, for reasons that have nothing to do with his actual actions or personhood, is now a hero for conspiracy theorists. He is living proof that the government is actively withholding information from us. I suppose for the conspiracy theorist who believes that the government (whether US or NWO) is a monolithic tyranny machine, the man who knows that the government is collecting metadata also knows who killed Kennedy, whether aliens exist… basically any crazy shit.

There are people who have a vendetta with Snowden:

Which is petulant and obnoxious. But it's at least more relevant than the people who just have vendettas:

But far and away, more people wanted Snowden to dish on the rest of those government secrets he alluded to. Here he is, the insider who betrayed the insiders! We demanded to know:

And let's not forget the reigning top conspiracy. Never (loose) change, America:

Has someone already come up with the conspiracy theory that conspiracy theories exist to distract us from an actual verified controversy? Actually, yes!

 So there you go; it's just the exact opposite of what I said. But Snowden is here and will make it all better. He is a traitor, a martyr, a patriot, a whistleblower, he ruined/will fix everything. Even the layout of a website:

And these are just the conspiratorial bullshit posts, to say nothing of the smartasses, Ron/Rand Paul supporters and this person who is either slightly confused or just another weirdo:

There are concerns that the controversy surrounding Snowden will surpass the controversy surrounding the actual NSA program that Snowden wanted to put on trial. For some people, though, Snowden can't distract them, nor can the NSA. They already have their issues.