Yeah. This was all planned from the very begin. Snowden is the real evil person here.

The Russians knowing through intelligence channels about domestic surveillance programs and how those would be perceived, and then exposing them with the help of a "hero" explicitly to sow distrust in Western governments is not even a far-fetched story. It's absolutely plausible.

Right, and this is about the hero as opposed to actually what the Western governments have done.

The propaganda does work.

So you're saying PRISM and everything else was just propaganda? Fake news?

The Russians rules about what needs to be hosted where are indicative about them running exactly the same kind of surveillance programs. Let's not pretend this is done for a greater good.

Dunno man. I don't believe Russia, or any other country for that matter is innocent. But I'm certainly not naive enough to believe US is or that its intentions are the greater good of other countries. I don't know Snowden's intentions but I do believe it's important this came out

I agree that it is important for those programs to have been disclosed. That does not conflict, at all, with the theory that the Russians made those disclosures and the information campaign around them happen and to have done so primarily to serve their own interests.

I have no doubt the Russians were happy about the disclosure and did everything they could to exploit it. But there’s no evidence, nor do I see any reason to believe, that Snowden was controlled by or collaborated with them.

Except that he ended up on an Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong to Moscow just in time to avoid an arrest by HKSAR authorities on behalf of the US.