Treasonous Spying: Shoot the Messenger, Not the MonitorIs he who watches the watchers a hero or villain? A traitor or whistleblower? And do the watched even take notice? In true form, the regular fixtures of establishment media and Washington circles have come forward to demonize the most recent whistleblower, former National Security Administration (NSA) Contractor Edward Snowden, as well as journalist Glenn Greenwald who published Snowdens leaks. Together they reveal a program of massive, wholesale surveillance by the NSA of Americans Internet activities on every major platform available. Instead of focusing on the fact that warrantless wiretaps have continued since shortly after September 11 (if not prior to 9/11), as well as through web communications since (at a minimum) 2007, the story has been centered around the treason committed by Snowden, who the mainstream media has been quick to point out again and again is a mere high school dropout (although that didnt stop the NSA from paying him $200,000 a year as an NSA contractor). As with the Bradley Manning case, shooting the messenger has become sport. The much larger crimes of systematically violating Americas Bill of Rights and Constitution using new high tech powers never before held by government are glossed over by apologists, cynics and apathetics alike. Greenwald, an investigative journalist and one of the foremost critics of Americas unaccountable drone program, has been specifically targeted by NSA contractors including HBGary Federal in retaliation for Greenwalds support of Wikileaks covert government misdeed exposure. Now, in attempt to discredit Greenwalds work in bringing forward another whistleblower, Council on Foreign Relations member and obsessive gun control advocate Senator Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, asserted that Greenwald did not understand the nature of the surveillance program, absurdly insisting that Americans privacy (somehow) remains intact. Rogers went so far as to claim that the NSA wasnt spying and denied that data mining was even possible, declaring with a straight face that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order was necessary to even retrieve information, and that even then, no names could be obtained through the data. Besides, a as in one, single, solitary terrorist plot was supposedly disrupted in the last few years through the NSA spy program. Watch the video: Apparently, the establishment has wagered that its television audience is dazed enough to actually believe that a $2 billion NSA spy hub was built in the desert merely to feel around in the dark and grasp at straws in the hopes of stopping a terrorist, while the cutesy civil liberties of the American people are safely locked away in a security box. Obviously, such a nave and unconcerned audience where it exists is under the impression that technologically adverse terrorists in a foreign land hate our freedoms more than the power hungry technocrats whove taken control of our present system of Western culture. Are we witnessing an expansive data mining protective bubble that will safeguard against evildoers, or the infiltration of a free system by the worlds first high-tech super-tyranny, albeit wearing a subtle and often velvet-lined mask? AARON DYKES AND MELISSA MELTONcreated TruthstreamMedia.com, where this article first appeared,as an outlet to examine the news, place it in a broader context, uncover the deceptions, pierce through the fabric of illusions, grasp the underlying factors, know the real enemy, unshackle from the system, and begin to imagine the path towards taking back our lives, one step at a time, so that one day we might truly be free 