Former NSA and CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden speculated yesterday that activists, hackers, and transparency groups were likely to respond with cyber-terror attacks if the US captured whistleblower Edward Snowden.
He then proceeded to dismiss Snowden's supporters -- a diverse cross-section of Americans who care about their constitutional right to privacy and believe whistleblowers serve a crucial role in our democracy -- as “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”
He even conflated hackers and activists with 9/11 hijackers, asking his audience, "Who are they going after? Who for them are the World Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida."
Please sign to the right to call out Hayden for his ridiculous and offensive comments.
As the Washington Post's Andrea Peterson points out, it is precisely those hackers who Hayden disparages that the government's cyber-security apparatus depends on to help them identify vulnerabilities and defend against cyber attacks.
And to be clear, Hayden is the guy under whose watch the NSA began collecting Americans' phone records and internet data without warrants after 9/11. He is obviously grossly out of touch with the perspective of the American people -- whose privacy he condemned to be perpetually violated by the state's watchful eyes.
Please sign to the right to tell Michael Hayden that you support Edward Snowden and demand an apology for his insulting comments.
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Full article from the Guardian.