Is the NSA Also Spying on Industry ?

While individual Americans may not have the power to force restrictions on the NSA's domestic spying on American citizens, perhaps the captains of industry will.  As the Virginian Pilot reports, in a new interview, Edward Snowden states that American industry is also being subjected to invasive and illegal spying.   Personally, I believe that Snowden is a great patriot for exposing the wrongs and illegal activities being done by the NSA.  Sometimes being a patriot means refusing to close one's eyes to wrongs being done purportedly in the name of Americans.  Here are story highlights:

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden claimed in a new interview that the U.S. agency is involved in industrial espionage.

In the interview aired Sunday night on German public television broadcaster ARD, Snowden said if German engineering company Siemens had information that would benefit the U.S., but had nothing to do with national security needs, the National Security Agency would still use it.

It wasn't clear what exactly Snowden accused the NSA of doing with such information — he only said he didn't want to reveal the details before journalists did.

Snowden also told ARD television that he was no longer in possession of any NSA documents, because he had passed them all on to a few selected journalists and that he had no further influence on the release of the files.

He also said U.S. government representatives wanted to kill him, according to a simultaneous German translation by the station. Snowden referred to an article he had read on Buzzfeed in which U.S. government representatives had told a reporter that they wanted to kill him.

Snowden, wearing a white shirt and black jacket, also chatted about his childhood and said he'd always been fascinated by computers and was one of those kids whose parents would tell him late at night to finally turn it off.

Snowden faces felony charges in the U.S. after revealing the NSA's mass surveillance program. He is living under temporary asylum in Russia, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S.

The revelations about U.S. surveillance programs have damaged Washington's relations with key allies, including Germany following reports that the NSA had monitored communications of European citizens — even listening in on Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone.

We should have learned from the Vietnam disaster that a mindset of "America, love it or leave it" or "America right or wrong" is a prescription for horrific results that damage America both domestically and internationally.  But sadly, too many seemingly have learned nothing.