Reply #24: I did read the article and it did not support your OP commentary

[Azathoth]

And now I see you calling Drake a "patriot," so it's pretty clear that you aren't exactly sticking to the objective "facts." Moreover, I did not present a "narrative"; I simply reiterated facts. Drake supported the development of a vast, highly-efficient surveillance and data-mining system that was eventually adapted/perverted by Bush-Cheney to shred the FISA laws. He claims he supported the original version in part because it paid greater respect to privacy laws and the Constitution than did Trailblazer, and he may be telling the truth, but that's sort of like saying he supported building nuclear weapons provided they were equipped with guidance systems that could only select military targets. In the end, he was supporting something that had the potential to be horrifically abused, and he was relying on the government not to disable its safeguards and abuse it.

I'm not casting Drake as anything more than an ordinary NSA apparatchik. I oppose his prosecution as I think he is a legitmate whistle-blower whose actions were justified. But I also think that portraying him as some kind of persecuted, open-government, anti-surveillance activist waging a heroic twilight struggle against a 1984 police state is absurd.