[hedonist]

A good point at which to stop taking Hayden seriously is where he says:

Snowden fled to China with several computers' worth of data from NSANET, ..

As in, he's trying to plant the idea (and fear) in our minds that Snowden has collaborated with the PRC government in some way. There's no evidence that this is the case, and a lot of evidence (based on how he conducted himself while in HK) that no contact of any such kind occurred.

Yet Hayden is trying to plant the idea in our minds that the main purpose of Snowden's trip was to make contact with the Chinese, in the same way that Benedict Arnold collaborated with the British, or Hanssen or the Rosenbergs did with the Soviets, Ames with the Israelis, etc.

[chiph]

His other fundamental assumption was that the NSA wasn't doing anything wrong. Well, lots of people think that it was.