Obama administration charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with espionage
http://rt.com/usa/snowden-charged-espionage-sealed-092/It will be a travesty to internet freedom if they succeed in ruining this young man's life. I think espionage carries the possibility of the death penalty, though they probably couldn't countenance using it.
More likely, it would be indefinite detention and torture -- like the way they did Bradley Manning: three+ years in solitary confinement, long-term sleep deprivation, nakedness. The poor kid was broken to the point of "dancing erratically" to pass the time and licking the bars of his cage. (Source:
http://www.vice.com/read/the-torture-of-bradley-manning, Google.)
Hopefully, Snowden is beyond their grasp, but if they get him, I'd love to see the action protested by having the community name a bitcoin unit after him.
1 Bitcoin
.1
.01
.001
.0001
.00001 = Snowden?
.000001
.0000001
.00000001 = Satoshi
Of course the big Bitcoin players would never overtly support this. They are rightly afraid for their investment, afraid the legions of heavily armed tax collectors, and the thousands of pages of vague, confusing laws regulating their economic activity.
A case can be made that such a protest action would violate Bitcoin neutrality, but I think that protecting individual privacy is very much in the spirit of Bitcoin. If empowering individuals is a valuable part of the Bitcoin ethos, then Snowden's revelations can only be considered heroic.
Of course, like everything Bitcoin, like everything peer-to-peer, this must be driven by consensus. At this point, its just a thought I wanted to share.
