On the road again - Edward J. Snowden

I have not been blogging about the Snowden affair -- a lot of other people have, go and read them. I am appalled at the extent that our government is snooping on us but Snowden is just a distraction. A bauble to keep our eyes off the main issue. Interesting to see his movements though -- from the New York Times:

Snowden, in Russia, Said to Seek Asylum in a Third Nation
Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor wanted by the United States for leaking classified documents about global American surveillance, fled his Hong Kong hide-out for Moscow on Sunday aboard a commercial Russian jetliner, in what appeared to be the first step in an odyssey to seek political asylum in Ecuador.

In a day of frustrated scrambling by American officials who are seeking Mr. Snowden�s extradition � and had annulled his passport in attempts to foil any escape � he boarded an Aeroflot jetliner in Hong Kong that reached Moscow on Sunday afternoon. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Mr. Snowden was in a Moscow airport transit area, apparently awaiting a connection to another country.

Ecuador�s foreign minister said that Mr. Snowden had submitted a request for asylum, an assertion corroborated by WikiLeaks, the organization that discloses government secrets and has come to the assistance of Mr. Snowden. In a statement on its Web site, WikiLeaks said �he is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.�

It was this line on page three that caught my eye:

Mr. Snowden is reportedly carrying four laptop computers with American intelligence documents that he downloaded to a thumb drive this spring while working in Hawaii for the National Security Agency as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton.

The fact that he is carrying laptops as well as the thumb drives indicates that he is also bring working applications with him -- crypto programs complete with keys. Of course, the keys will be changed in a heartbeat were changed many days ago but there will be the huge body of intercepts that have yet to be decoded. Lots of goodies there to discover! The general public needs to remember that there is not one scandal of the day, there is also Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service, Immigration, Fast and Furious and these are just the biggies...