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Edward Snowden Leaves Hong Kong
hazeii writes "Ed Snowden, the U.S. whistleblower responsible for exposing the degree to which the U.S. watches its own citizens (as well as the rest of the world) is reported as having left Hong Kong for Moscow. According to the South China Morning Post, he is on a commercial flight to Russia but intriguingly it seems this is not his final destination. It's not clear whether this move is in response to the U.S. request to extradite him."
What has the world come to?
The BBC and the New York Times also have articles reporting the Edward Snowden has left Hong Kong on a flight to Moscow.
By the time this was posted on slashdot, he hadn't just left Hong Kong, but landed in Moscow.
DICE: When copying news in development, please make sure you update it as needed before posting. This worked better before. Not well, but it has become worse.
China's interests are to tied to maintaining their farce of good relations with our government. They would have interceded and made HK turn him over eventually. Putin's ego on the other hand will triumph over any desire to not raise tensions (which he may actually want anyway); this will offer Snowden much better protection.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
He just landed in Moscow.
It takes about same time for news to appear on Slashdot as it takes to fly from Hong Kong to Moscow.
What I heard on NPR this morning is that Snowden's rumored travel involves Moscow to Cuba and then Cuba to Caracas, Venezuela according to an unidentified Aeroflot official.
That, of course, could all be misdirection.
My work here is dung.
According to Interfax.
God speed. Enjoy the hot Venezuelan women. There is no justice for you in the US...not anymore.
He's suely lost the trail by announcing Iceland, Cuba and Venezuela as destinations, as good as gone.
Gently reply
He's anything but a coward. A coward would have kept his mouth shut.
By going to Moscow he would seem to risk interrogation by the KGB (or whatever the agency is currently called).
Given that his espionage charges and leaning on HK for extradition was all over the US news, why has there been very little popular outrage outside of tiny niche communities like slashdot? Why are there no mass cries to try the senators responsible for the spying program on charges of treason? Where are the million-man marches against the surveillance society that it is no longer possible to pretend we haven't become?
We used to hold ourselves as better than the East Germans and the Soviets for just this reason: we lived in a society free from mass government surveillance, with only special cases allowed based on search warrants obtained with reasonable suspicion. We did not surveil our population as a whole. Seriously, we will let ourselves fall into that place with barely a peep?
What happened to us?
uhh, i think the fact that he hasn't been caught yet (and disappeared) suggests he knew exactly how bad the backlash would be. he knew enough that he could plan for it.
he did not take the path of least resistance here. if he were a coward, he wouldn't have leaked the info in the first place. knowing what he knew, and not doing anything about it, is probably what he saw as cowardly.
Its the folks still working at NSA who should be rotting in jail. What they have been doing is illegal. Personally I think anyone still there should be treated as a collaborator. We didn't accept "just following orders" as an excuse after WWII, it would be good for the nation if we locked away everyone at NSA doing anything above sweeping the floors.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How strange it is that Russia has become the bastion of human rights and the right to expose corruption. 30 years ago you'd be laughed out of a room if you'd suggest that 30 years later people would be fleeing the US for Russia and China for political freedoms and economic freedoms.
Times have sure changed.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
From NYT:
"Russia’s Interfax news service, citing a “person familiar with the situation,” reported that Mr. Snowden would remain in transit at an airport in Moscow for “several hours” pending an onward flight to Cuba, and would therefore not formally cross the Russian border or be subject to detention."
Aren't they?
I hope you discover that you are wrong. That anyone who exposes the misdeeds of governments is a hero. And that rather than wishing them to be punished, that they should be rewarded. We should encourage people to step forward and denounce wrong doing, not punish them.
You are one of the worst sort of enablers, you claim to care about the misdeeds, but you still wish to punish those who expose them.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Frankly, Sparky.. I think he's a flippin' national hero, on a par with many of the heros of the first American revolution, and I'm betting theres a LOT of us out here who think this.... He knew his life was gonna change dramatically and he'd likely be on the run from the pigshit running this country now, YET he blew the whistle on the blatantly UNconstitutional crap these three-letter fiefdoms were perpetrating on the American people.. Sure, I'll grant you that he violated a bunch of laws/rules/regulations, BUT he followed the only really important law.. the Constitution, the one mentioned in the oath that government workers take, where they swear to "protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic..." He was defending it from the pigshit poseurs who are trying to shred the Constitution at every turn.. So you can call me and the rest of us who think he's a hero a moron, but we know we're the people the founding fathers had in mind, and YOU are the moron, if I was into ad hominim attacks, which I try to avoid.. But since YOU started it, I'm gonna play along.. You and your ilk are part of the problem with America today... YOU are the moron...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
I totally agree.. and the old "we were just following orders" didn't work in Nurnberg and it shouldn't work here either.. ANYbody with half a brain AND who has READ the Constitution should KNOW that what they are doing is BLATANTLY unconstitutional.. I don't give a crap what the pigshit running these agencies say, its UNconstitutional..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
You are confused. Just because Congress authorized it doesn't make it legal. Coming to mind quickly is the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform (authorized by Congress), which has come to the Supreme Court three times and every time been ruled unconstitutional, hence illegal. The NSA spying is illegal according to the 4th amendment no matter what Congress says. If they don't like it, the way to make it legal is pass an amendment to repeal the 4th amendment, whcih they know won't be possible.
Snoden exposed illegal activity by the NSA, also exposing Congress "authroizing" illegal activity without worrying about consequences because they kept it hidden from the public. So in addition to exposing the illegal activity, he also exposed the illegal cover-up of the illegal activity.
He is the definition of a whistleblower, also showing that there are no whistleblower protections for citizens in the USA.
Will be a bit off-topic but it is somewhat related to your questions and Snowden gave us a chance to fix this.
I've ran across this article and another one. Both in quite a reputable magazine that is around for 100+ years. While these are theoretical ones, I'm stunned by what they wrote. Theorizing whenever it is possible to dronebomb Snowden without even acknowledging how lawless and cruel such murder would be (yes, murdering, assasination - not just killing!). I'm even more stunned with comments below commenting technicalities of such act without any regard to criminality of such act. Face it folks ! You've been brainwashed to the point where your moral consciouness does not work anymore - you just take such crap for granted from your psychopatic, corporate media and then wonder why there is no outcry ?!? I haven't seen such levels of apathy anywhere in the world ! Add result of latest polls into equation (majority americans don't mind being spied by NSA) and see how sad state of affairs is. Your corporate government can manipulate you into anything it wants ! That huge data cache collected and stored in the NSA is propably the crucial tool it uses to achieve this goal. They can strip you out of everything (see housing bubble, bailouts, healthcare system bankrupting and killing people, fraudclosure, mass-jailing people for profit etc. etc.) and there is virtually no backlash from american citizenry. How this happens is just beyond my perception. I don't know what kind of science does it take to borg 330 millions people into submission, but I suspect it might be as advanced as science behind putting Curiosity rover onto Mars.
Two words, my friend. "Secret laws".
Some biting rap satire on the current state of affairs : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnMPQmIPibE
Wow... Look everyone the Obama administrations mouth piece is here on Slashdot, seriously I think you hit every 'talking' point they've put out up to now on this issue.
He's just going on a vacation. I've heard Russia hosts space tourism and he's just gonna go visit the ISS for a bit.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
"Trust of his country?" Sorry, but not. The government is NOT the country. And the last time the government acted in the interests of the majority of this country was WELL before I was born. I was pretty happy believing the US government was the good guys -- I'm a good guy and so it's not hard to extend that belief to the government that, I believed, represents me. They don't. They endanger us all. There are places in this world I can't go because of the symbols associated with my identity material. Was it because of anything I did or believe? Not particularly. It's because of other people and other causes. And the same is absolutely true of millions of innicent men, women and children in this country.
The fact that someone within the government (or at least, in this case associated with it) could see what's going on and realize it's wrong AND act on it is amazing. There is no shortage of people in government who see what's going on. There's a large number who realize what's going on is wrong. But so very few will do anything about it. Take it from a former TSA screener.
I think it's time for you to do a personal check-list about what's going on. Check the constitution and the bill of rights. How much of it do you agree with? Check what people in government are actually doing and compare with how much you actually agree with. And forget the causes and motivations you've been told. They're moronic on their faces. "The official stories" are written so badly, it's as if they aren't even trying to really convince anyone of anything any longer.
I'm still having trouble deciding if you're a troll or an idiot. The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive. After all, if you were trolling, you're clearly divorced of the gravity of this situation which makes you an idiot. But if you're just an idiot who believes what he's saying? Well... I can't see where there's much hope for you.
Interesting speech by President Clinton in Edinburgh this week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/21/clinton-nsa-scotland-speech
I would expect a speech from a past US President who was also smart enough to be a Rhodes Scholar, to carry some weight.
However, I somehow think that nuance and thoughtfulness expressed in that short article will probably not jibe with the prejudices of the Slashdot peanut gallery.
I still think that Snowdon, like many commenters here, is a twit. Snowdon in particular is a dangerous twit because he's not qualified to judge the impact of the secrets he's leaking being made public. I hope for his sake that he doesn't end up with blood on his hands.
Hope this treasonous coward gets extradited and spends the rest of his miserable life in jail. I'm not a fan of the NSA doing all of this, but anyone who didn't know it's been going on is a moron.
So let's get this straight, it's ok for Government organisations to break the law in the national interest but not for individuals, not only that but you knew about this all along but kept it quiet because you thought that everybody except morons knew already.
In all seriousness do you really think that he deserves to be treated the same way as Bradley Manning for revealing the extent to which your own government spies on you?
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
authorized by and deemed legal by Congress and the court system
That's not entirely true. The court system has not ruled one way or another whether the secret programs are legal. The Supreme Court has so far refused to hear cases brought against the NSA's spying program because the defendands have not been able to prove that their constituional rights were violated by these programs (due to their secret nature) but with Snowden's leaks they can now easily prove that their communications have in fact been targeted and, as a Verizon customer, the ACLU has filed a case against the NSA in federal court.
Thanks to Snowden the Supreme Court will likely be forced to rule on the constitutionality of these programs and if they are found uncsontitutional it matters not what laws Congress passed or Executive Orders the President issued to authorize them because those all become null and void.
16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177 late 2d, Sec 256:
The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be In agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows:
The General rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.
Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it.....
A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one. An unconstitutional law cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law. Indeed, insofar as a statute runs counter to the fundamental law of the lend, it is superseded thereby.
No one Is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.
I love it when I get modded "Troll" for speaking the truth. How about you refute any part of what I posted?
I grant my trust that somebody in the government will have the stones to do the right thing and expose law-breaking by the government, no matter how many layers of threatened criminal charges the government layers into the contract. That nobody did it before Snowden speaks volumes to how stupid and uneducated Americans really are to what their civil rights are and what their duty to their country is (the oaths all say "support and defend the constitution" not "follow all orders, legal or otherwise.") Really? Nobody in a uniform (before Bradley Manning) had the guts to say "I won't help cover it up any more." Nobody? Not one person?
Nobody is obligated to follow an illegal or unconstitutional order, and this kid did the exact right thing in exposing it. I wouldn't have trusted the US government or relied on the whistle blower statutes (as weak and ineffectual as they are) either based on the government's recent track record of prosecuting whistle blowers. His only "mistake" seems to have been attaching his name and face to it rather than simply mailing it anonymously to the Guardian.
Who did what now?
While I appreciate your honest opinion, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that very little of this can be categorized into "black" or "white"; at least not yet. I not only respectfully disagree with the absolute premise that you offer, I also disagree with the absolute premise taken up by most of those who have replied to you. There are many questions that need to be answered before these kind of conclusions can be drawn.
It is clear that Snowden did violate his confidentiality agreement - there is no arguing this. He broke the law, and I'm not going to dispute it. The legality of the program at-large, however, has not been established. You are correct that the program was authorized by Congress. Suggesting that the program was deemed legal by the court system is dubious, at best. The existence of FISA courts, where federal judges review and grant surveillance warrants does not qualify as judicial review and does very little to validate that the program meets constitutional standards. If it is established that the program violated the constitution (the highest law of the land), it will be the government who violated the law, and covered it under a veil of secrecy. If this is the case, it is a serious violation of the trust of the American people; and whether or not it prevent terrorist attacks is irrelevant, as the ends don't justify the means (IMO). The government can't have it both ways - holding citizens accountable for following the law when it doesn't adhere to its own laws.
I'm also curious about you meant by Snowden doing this for his own gain. What did he have to gain? Notoriety? It seems to me that he had more to lose than he had to gain...but then again, I do not understand the desire for notoriety, and would prefer to avoid the public eye. Either way, until the program is understood and scrutinized, I don't think that it's fair to categorize Snowden is a whistle-blowing patriot or a traitor (yet).
I hope that we do the right thing here and analyze the program; asking the necessary questions to determine what is constitutionally acceptable. Further, I hope that my fellow Americans think long and hard about the implications of programs like this. I'm a bit uncomfortable with the government warehousing massive amounts of data about its citizens, even if mining it takes a warrant from a secret court. I understand the argument that companies are already doing this (to an extent)...but what differentiates them from our government is that they don't have the power to incarcerate or kill people. Now, I'm afraid that our government will sweep this under the rug, preventing any honest dialog in the name of national security. I honestly believe that even if this program is legitimate and legal, the ability to secretly monitor Americans will eventually be abused; if not by this government/administration, it will be by another one.
-Turkey
Rubbish... Setting this up as an us-vs-them isn't constructive. You could have painted Snowden the same way right up until he blew the whistle. There are plenty of good people in there I'm sure. Perhaps they're trying to put pressure on the culture from within. Perhaps they're staying in until they see the next thing that needs leaking. Perhaps they're saving for an escape, or perhaps they just have too many vulnerable family members they just can't expose to the kinds of attacks that would come. Perhaps they've been drinking the coolaid and just need a few more months to realise where their real duty lies.
and the other followers of Faux news.
And this is why this shit continues to happen. Those followers of "Faux news" have been against the tyranical government for a decade, and congratuations you have finally just agreed with them. But now they will not support you because you voted for it, you attacked them, and you called them racists. Because you are a bigot, the government has effectively continued this kind of behavior because instead of calling Obama a tyrant, you are calling other US citizens that had the opinion first idiots.
USSR coined a term for people just like you. "Useful idiots".
What happened to them saying he didn't have any secrets, he didn't have access, and that they weren't doing that crap, they were saying it like a week ago.
Did he release the docs he had? How come I feel like there is something missing from then & now?
Be seeing you...
Very interesting! Looks like Cold War II (or the continuation of the Cold War) has begun.
You want a rebuttal? Here you go:
Congress can't deem things legal. The DoJ (executive branch) can claim things are legal and the courts can rule on whether they are legal, but Congress just makes laws.
Which case did the Supreme Court rule on? The closest I can think of would be al-Haramin's lawyer's case regarding the transcript of his own phone call he was mailed "accidentally". He won that case, the 9th overturned the award. However, the 9th did not overturn by claiming the warrantless wiretap was constitutional, instead they claimed that sovereign immunity meant that the government could not be held responsible for violating the constitution, and Bush's Telecommunications Nuremburg Act meant you can't hold the phone companies responsible for Just Following Orders, therefore the lawsuit was void. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case, so the current "court system" position is that warrantless wiretaps are unconstitutional and illegal but you can't do anything about it, even when you have proof that it happened.
BTW, if you're so certain it's legal, you're welcome to point to which article of the Constitution permits the federal government to spy on citizens without warrant.
By telling everyone what we've already had proof of since the above-mentioned al-Haramin case, and what we've assumed since Clinton's ECHELON days. The only difference is that now we know it's every American, and not just the lawyer of some terrorists.
Was there any left?
Awww, you spy on your own citizens and now people compare you to East Germany. Reputation, like respect, is earned not given.
Perhaps the quote should be changed to "better to live on your feet than die on your knees".
https://twitter.com/RicardoPatinoEC/status/348841761684197378
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
I'm not a fan of the NSA doing all of this, but anyone who didn't know it's been going on is a moron.
So, where's the treason? Is it treasonous to tell everyone that the sun sets in the west?
Do the world a favour and kill yourself.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
"We were just following orders" only fails if you lose the war.
Which doesn't matter one bit, if those actions run afoul of the Constitution.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
He can spend up to 3 months in Cuba on a tourist visa. Obviously the Cuban government isn't going to extradite him and Cubana won't be sending the US any flight lists. This point is perhaps the most important. Cuba is a place where Snowdon can break the paper trail. He can stay anywhere from 1 to 90 days there and then procede to his final destination.
The only risk to this strategy is that the Cuban government may want to ask him a few questions about the NSA before allowing him to leave. Assuming the Cuban government allows him to leave I would guess Ecuador. It's obviously willing to protect whistle blowers and Assange could have discussed the matter directly with officials at his embassy. According to this list Ecuador does have an extradition treaty with the US though, but maybe it is just for murders and other violent crime. I think Ecuador and Venezuela are both nice places to live. So either way he's good as long as he has money. Hopefully he moved all of his funds out of US banks before blowing his whistle. Otherwise freezing his funds will be one of the first things the US LEO thugs will do.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
What backlash?
Other than a few people freaking out like yourself and the rest of slashdot, there has been no reaction.
There certainly has been no backlash. He didn't even really say anything we didn't already know and have known for years.
The US government isn't even trying hard to get him, thats why he's still talking and actually traveling. Its not like he's hard to find, he's freaking walking into the airport and traveling with a US passport for fucks sake. They JUST NOW revoked it. The DoJ barely bothered to file the extradition request with Hong Kong.
He may be 'wanted', but not very bad. He's as wanted as Assange, which is pretty much not at all unless you're a massive conspiracy moron.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
'Speak out' ... seriously?
You're an idiot if you think 'signing an internet petition' is speaking out. The only way you could put less effort into it is by not doing anything at all.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I would say the same to all the guards in Gitmo.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I took a speech class in high school. Take that for what its worth.
We were taught to use note cards, and the note cards were only for writing an outline of your speech with maybe a reminder to touch on some important points as you progress in your speech. Anyone who tried to write their entire speech into the note cards had significant points deducted from their grade.
The purpose of a teleprompter is not to outline a person's monologue, it is to spoon-feed it to them verbatim. Go watch a nightly newscast if you want to see an example of teleprompters in action.
For as bad as Bush's diction skills were, coupled with his extremely limited vocabulary, he managed to give hundreds of speeches without a teleprompter.
He swore to perform his duties according to the constitution of the United States. He was asked by his superiors to choose between (a) violating his oath to the constitution of the United States, and (b) violating the oath he swore to his superiors.
If a country is asking you to make that choice, that country deserves to have its "political capital" and "reputation" damaged.
Bullshit. The US wants him badly. Very badly. Short of obvious assassination attempts on foreign soil, they are doing everything in their power to get him to Gitmo, but they are too stupid and incompetent. The whole world is laughing at them and smiling as their quarry slips from their grasp forever. And I am cheering as this hero gives the finger to the USDOJ and the rest of the corrupt, thuggish government as he exposes all of their illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional behavior. I'm hoping that this is one of the few times where the good guy actually wins. For once, perhaps a good deed will go at least somewhat unpunished. I wish him a happy life in Ecuador. It's a nicer place to live than the US anyway.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Protests are about getting attention. Many of them are theatre. That does not change the issues that they are drawing attention to.
Just because Congress authorized it doesn't make it legal.
Actually it does. Thats the way our government works. Congress, by definition, is the ONLY group who can make something legal.
And as you noticed, its legal UNTIL the supreme court says otherwise.
God, we're going to have to start spend more time on American Government in our schools, you guys have no fucking clue how your own government works.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Don't think I said two wrongs make a right anywhere. The law does not automatically make a right either, sometimes you have to use your own moral compass. Sounds like you would support any Government action as long as it is a technically legal one, and you would obey any law regardless of the moral implications.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
Yes, he should be treated like Manning, thats the punishment for doing what he did.
Apparently not. Looks like Snowden's only punishment is going to be permanent exile, which I don't really consider much of a punishment since many countries are much nicer places to live. Looks to me like Snowden will be living a long and happy life.
Hopefully future whistle blowers will learn from this example and not be so afraid to speak out against US government evil and corruption for fear of being tortured and then murdered in Gitmo.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Here is a typical definition of the word:
whistleblower: an informant who exposes wrongdoing within an organization in the hope of stopping it.
As you can see, the law does not enter into the definition. How about this hypothetical situation? What if you discovered that not only is the government assassinating dissidents, but also discover the existence of a secret section of the constitution that overrides the rest of it, and gives the government unlimited power to disappear dissidents while making it illegal to reveal the existence of said section of the constitution to the public?
In this case, the government is not doing anything illegal, and you would be breaking the law by revealing it. I think you would still agree that revealing this to the public would be moral, and that doing so would be whistleblowing. Of course, the real situation in the current case is less extreme than that, but what Snowden did was still moral. He did not damage national security, and even if he had, national security is overrated. Political capital was only damaged to the extent that this was both unknown and unpopular with the population. I.e. the only way this could have damaged political capital is if it were moral to release it.
This has nothing to do with an absolute right of privacy. The 4th Amendment clearly spells out the power the government has regarding search and seizure. This has nothing to do with a right to privacy. This has to do with a limitation of government power that according to Obama logic needed to be destroyed so our rights could be saved.
Let's take a close look
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
Is it your position that the secret courts have warrants fitting this description for the information they are collecting?
Its not unconstitutional until the supreme court says so. You don't define unconstitutional. Thats the way we run our government. If you disagree, get voters to change it, but you don't get to redefine the words any more than the government does.
Considering that the supreme court is part of the government, your distinctions mean little.
Thank's for quoting the 4th Amendment! If you read it carefully, it says person's house, papers and effects are only subject to "unreasonable" searches when a warrant has been requested and authorized. Going back about 45 years to the Katz decision, the courts have said a search is unreasonable when it violates a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy". Anything outside of that that "reasonable" expectation of privacy is fair game for the government without a court approved warrant. Anything within, that "reasonable expectation expectation of privacy" requires a warrant.
Subsequently, the courts have been trying to determine what stuff falls inside or outside that "reasonable expectation of privacy" and the most recent jurisprudence says that when you give your data to a third party, and you aren't paying them to store it for you, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when it comes to that data and thus is subject to government subpoena without a warrant.
Now don't take my for all this - read what the eff has to say:
https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/fourth-amendment
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
"The request was confirmed by Ecuador's foreign minister on Twitter." Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23023576
Hope this treasonous coward gets extradited and spends the rest of his miserable life in jail. I'm not a fan of the NSA doing all of this, but anyone who didn't know it's been going on is a moron.
The only coward here is you, turd. "People" such as yourself who support blatantly unconstitutional garbage like the Patriot Act, TSA, stop-and-frisk and now this NSA spying are the filth who are dragging the United States down the road to a police state - if we aren't there already. In 10 years or less there will be drone strikes against suspected "criminals" and "terrorists" in the US itself, and there you will be, cheering it on from the sidelines like the mindless simpering piece of shit you always were.
The day that freedom finally returns to America, folks like you who supported tyranny should be held every bit as accountable as the bullies and thugs who carried it out. Without your disgusting kind, what they do would have been impossible.
And here is more specifically about reasonable expectations of privacy:
https://ssd.eff.org/your-computer/govt/privacy
...and IN SOVIET RUSSIA, beowulf clusters imagine 1, 2, 3 profit!!!! jokes made out of YOU!!!
Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, China, North Korea... the list goes on... and none of them are building dozens of massive data centers for the sole purpose of spying wholesale on its own citizens.
How can you possibly know that what you saying is true or false?
Not that you need the high-tech data center if your people have no contact with the outside world.
You won't find people in North Korea checking Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates on the tense situation created by its leader, Kim Jong Un. That's because the nation of 24 million is largely shut out from the Internet. Few outside the government and military have ever been online.
''In North Korea, we don't see evidence that much of anyone has access,'' Jim Cowie, chief technology officer and co-founder of Renesys, which does global Internet measurement, told NBC News.
''You don't see banks or factories or universities attached to the Internet,'' he said. ''In North Korea, Internet is extremely limited. They don't have those resources. There's basically one service provider and that is state-controlled.''
The country's Internet access physically comes through from China, he said, supplemented ''sometimes'' by a satellite provider.
So much so that North Korea was named one of 12 ''enemies'' of the Internet last year by Reporters Without Borders, which monitors censorship globally. ''We still consider North Korea as an enemy of the Internet,'' Delphine Hagland, the group's director in Washington, D.C., told NBC News. Other countries making that list included China, Iran, Syria and Vietnam.
There aren't many other sources of information available in North Korea, which according to the CIA World Factbook, has ''no independent media,'' with ''radios and TVs ... pre-tuned to government stations.''
North Korea's Internet? What Internet? For most, online access doesn't exist
Those followers of "Faux news" have been against the tyranical government for a decade, and congratuations you have finally just agreed with them.
Bullshit. They are in favor of their particular flavor of tyranny. That's why they keep re-electing the incumbent, like everyone else.
But now they will not support you because you voted for it,
No, I didn't.
you attacked them,
Waaah.
and you called them racists.
That's because that's what they are.
Because you are a bigot,
I love it when bigots call me a bigot for pointing out their bigotry.
the government has effectively continued this kind of behavior
hahahahahahaha.
because instead of calling Obama a tyrant
I call Obama a tyrant every other day or so. Sometimes more.
you are calling other US citizens that had the opinion first idiots.
You are certainly an idiot.
USSR coined a term for people just like you. "Useful idiots".
So you made some truly stupid assumptions about me, and proceeded to make an ignorant post about it and some other things you know fuck-all about, and I'm the useful idiot? uh no, and also, uh no. But I can see why you're too cowardly to log in.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And "Secret Judges" Seem a lot scarier. I thought the whole point of holding a "court" was publicly finding the truth.
The fact that people whose job it is to "know history" and to "know better" set these up is just icing on a very scary cake.
Its not unconstitutional until the supreme court says so. You don't define unconstitutional.
So rather than to use my own brain, I'm to let a third party decide for me what I think? Wow, that takes a load off my mind. Thanks.
If he goes to Russia, he might get snowed in.
Table-ized A.I.
Why because the the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court alone decided it has the right to determine what is and what is not Constitutional? Where the fuck is it written in the Constitution that the Supreme court has such power. Clue: it inst.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And the Ecuador Consulate in Moscow has just cleared out a storage room. Coincidence?
Anybody want a peanut?
If you subscribe to the generational theory of Strauss-Howe, it might be because the generation that would employ the "take to the streets" tactic hasn't quite been born yet. The previous iteration of that (Baby Boomers) is aging. The generations currently in power or rising to power are likely to pursue less ostentatious (but no less effective) strategies.
Of course theories like this may be complete bunk; but it's an interesting starting point. Generation X and forward are sick and tired of hearing their parents and grandparents reminisce about how they marched at Berkeley, and are jaded because all of that (in their minds) didn't really accomplish very much even if they did manage to stop Vietnam and end the draft. What have you done for us lately? There's more than one way to skin a cat. Either that, or it has to get bad, really rotten... just in time for the next generation of marchers to storm the gates.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
At the same time, there are degrees of evil. IMO, a central government of ANY type is inherently evil. Yet I still won't advocate the philosophy of the anarchists out there, simply because I think their idea of a "better way" to do things vastly underestimates the number of people on this planet who don't think logically or act in what is actually their own best interest in the long-run (opting instead for short-term gains at the expense of others around them). Human nature is what, ultimately, makes central government a necessary evil.
The reason I rather like the original idea of a Democratic Republic the United States' founders envisioned was the attempt to place checks and balances on power while giving the general public a meaningful voice. The Constitution and Bill of Rights spelled out a recognition of *innate* human rights that no government could grant or take away. All in all, that makes it a far less evil system than most of the competing forms of government in use.
Unfortunately, I think we're seeing exactly what some of the Founders cautioned ..... that it might not be able to last more than 200 years or so, as people became complacent with the prosperity enjoyed under the system and as corrupt individuals finally opened up enough loopholes to circumvent the checks and balances, and begin breaking down the system for personal gain.
Honestly, the entire concept of a country like the USA operating secret spy agencies is one I've never really been comfortable with. I think such a thing goes against everything we claim to stand for. (If our nation is so prosperous and successful on its own merits, why the need to go on the offense, trying to steal secrets from other nations while professing to care about such concepts as privacy or individual freedoms?) I can see running a defensive, anti-spying group -- but nothing else, except perhaps in time of war. (And unfortunately, even war itself has become a "loophole" for our government. Seems we like to stay in a perpetual state of declared war on somebody, so politicians are free to do questionable things under the claim of the "National Security" need.)
I already see the White House big-shots trying to spin Snowden as a fraud, since he's running away for refuge in nations that don't believe in any of what he claims to be fighting for.
But hey, he's just being practical at this point. As he said himself in an interview, when a major world power decides they're out to get you, they'll eventually succeed if they try hard enough. That doesn't mean it's smart to remain a sitting duck and make yourself easy to snuff out -- which is exactly what staying in the U.S. would do.
It doesn't really matter where in the world he chooses to travel. The media spin, the lies, and the propaganda won't change or come at a reduced rate. The irony of him being temporarily safer in nations like China than here just further illustrates how deep the problem goes -- and buys Snowden some more time to argue for his side of the case in the press.
I mean, how can our country's leaders even keep a straight face when declaring Snowden should come back here voluntarily to get his day in court? Everything they've done regarding the spying is handled by a SECRET court -- so there's no way he'd have a fair trial. Essentially, they'd screw him over just as badly as nations like China do all the time to the people opposing their own governments.
Wouldn't that be special? And how long will it be before a Federal court overturns that order? Oh... probably about as long as it would take you to cook an egg. (Hint: eggs cook fast.)
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Frankly, Sparky.. I think he's a flippin' national hero, on a par with many of the heros of the first American revolution,
But the American revolutionaries were traitors by definition, waging war against their then nation and sovereign. They only escaped hanging by winning, thanks to France.
Snowden has not committed treason, so not quite on par.
Government spies on citizens.
A citizen leaks out that government is spying on citizens.
Government charges citizen for spying.
they can now easily prove that their communications have in fact been targeted
I'd like to know how you could actually target Americans if you really wanted to, knowing there is no America on the Internet and you are just an IP.
The Internet was built this way for Christ's sake. Sorry, but when these companies data is looked at, it is not "American's", and people who download music on P2P sites remind us an IP is not a person, OH - unless it's the NSA looking, then suddenly it's a person of known nationality even!!
Every American abroad should do their due diligence and harbor this patriot.
e.g. Having love for your country and countrymen != love and blind trust in your government.
It is American to distrust your government. Skepticism is the sanest of all perspectives; you can find it in the fisherman, the rancher, even behind the factory worker. The most reasonable person is the one who nurtures our food and whose days revolves around the sun and whose livelihood is ensured by a good harvest.
They stand just as tall and still as the wheat.
"Hey, look Julian! I am in a plane!"
"Fuck you, just wait that I get elected and get my out-of-jail card"
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
That all might be true the right now if we want real change, a message needs to be sent. It needs to be a clear message. Just because you work at three letter, and someone said the word "terrorist" does not mean you are not still responsible for your actions.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Apparently, his final desitination will be Ecuador. My grave concern is that it will be child's play for Seal Team __ to swoop in and snatch Snowden back to the US (probably Gitmo just to make him even more of an example).
Yes, it will be an international dust-up for a week or two, but then what? Ecuador declares war on the US?
It will just be more proof that the US government can do whatever it wants to whomever it wants, where ever it wants, and no one can stop them.
But yes, even we have fallen into the trap of focusing on the man instead of the cancer he has exposed.
"Organization Pirate Party Norway claims that spy accused Edward Snowden landed at Oslo Gardermon airport last night." http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/3802-pirate-party-norway-snowden-passed-through-norway-to-iceland
"Organization Pirate Party Norway claims that spy accused Edward Snowden landed at Oslo Gardermon airport last night." http://www.tnp.no/norway/panorama/3802-pirate-party-norway-snowden-passed-through-norway-to-iceland Stangely enough rt.com havent reported this yet.
Yes ... yes I am. Morons for thinking that the right way to do something is to break federal laws and then run like a coward and not accept responsibility. People like Rosa Parks are heroes, they broke the rules and stood in place so they could further challenge it instead of running like a yellow dog with it's tail between it's leg.
A real hero would have stayed and further challenged the system. Let justice take it's course for his actions, and fight it like a man instead of cowering like a little scared boy.
I see nothing that makes him a hero. No more than robbing a bank and giving money to the poor does.
It's been known for over a DECADE (remember the patriot act???) that the NSA was monitoring foreign calls. There have been numerous news articles about it. Get real people, if you didn't know that then you are truly ignorant.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Its not okay for anyone to break the law willingly or knowingly.
By this standard, what Rosa Parks did was not okay, what the Railway Underground did was not okay, etc.
But for some reason the US government blatantly violating the Fourth Amendment both in words and in spirit seems to be okay to you, since you are stating that it shouldn't have been revealed (even though it wasn't much of a revelation).
I'm strongly law-abiding, but if I ever end up in a situation in which the law and my personal principles are in conflict, I'll follow the latter.
There's nothing like $HOME
First, Congress writes the laws of the land. The US system of course has checks and balance, where the Supreme Court can rule something unconstitutional. This means that a law is nullified until Congress either rewrite part of the constitution if the support is there (the consitutition is not a holy text you know), or a new Congress has to wait for the oldest SCOTUS judges dies. E.g. the extreme rightwing tilt of the current court explains why the moderat McCain-Feingold law was struck down, and the last election shows why it is time for age to do its thing. Of course, the current president chose who the new judges will be, again a part of the check and balance.
Now to Snowden, he is clearly not a whistleblower. What he is doing is civil disobedience, in the spirit of e.g. MLK when the civil rights movement broke immoral laws. Because, so far it has not been shown that NSA is doing anything illegal. And it is infuriating to read and hear commentators and journalists that claim what NSA is doing is either illegal, surprising or has been kept hidden from public. What the hell did all these people think the "Patriot Act" was all about?!
What was illegal was the early wiretaps done by the Bush administration; the solution was to expand the Patriot Act. The people back then that protested the Patriot Act were willefied by the Bush administration ("either you are with us, or you are against us"), and got a collective shrug from the corporate media. I just got to shake my head at liberals that are surprised that president Obama will use all the legal tools available to him to keep the homeland secure (thats is part of the job description), or at the republican media like fox that were so eager to defend the Bush teams illegal wiretaps and expansion of the Patriot Act who could not understand back then that Congress should pass laws that are acceptable whatever party the president belongs.
And no, the current rightwing SCOTUS will not find the NSA activities unconstitutional.
So dont feel so smug because you at least are against the collection of meta-data that NSA is doing. Inform yourself and the voters around you, and take responsibility to elect people to congress that will not be pushed around by lobbyist or the latest non-story in the corporat media (only one senator was strong enough to vote against the Patriot Act - Feingold - and he did not get reelected which says a lot about the voters).
Congress is at the moment disfunctional, not least because of a republican party and republican voters that does not seem to believe in anything but Obama bad and to cut taxes for the rich. But this is not good for either of the major parties or for the country. What is needed is functioning opposition party to challenge the ruling party and to bring about an informed debate about how to make the country stronger. Because these are difficult questions: how to find the right balance between decreasing the risk for terrorist attacks while protecting the privacy of the population. Or how to have a transparent government that you can trust, while ensuring that the information that will harm national security is kept away from potential terrorists. There are no easy answers.
Maybe Obama is correct when he states that this is the right time to start such an informed discussions? But then we have to move beyond voters looking at politics as a game where your team is winning or loseing. The politicians you want is the ones with principles but also who will look for the best possible compromise. And we need move beyond a corporate media that just reports he-said/she-said. What is needed is a media that calls out stupid, is able to point out consequences of a law for the future, and who has the courage to pick up difficult topics (instead of scrambling when the NSA story broke in a UK newspaper).
Things can only improve if we move beyond slogans like "government bad, deficits bad" to e.g. discussions on the right level of use of private and extremely expensive contractors to do
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I would not want to be on that plane when it is diverted mid-flight to a secret European prison.
If the press knows he is flying to Moscow, you can be certain that there are certain paid agents who will also be attending that flight.
I've read all the posts on this subject on Slashdot. IMO, if this idiot had stopped at releasing the fact that the NSA is stockpiling phone calls and emails of U.S. citizens, I would probably be understanding of his take on this matter. But, get real! I've known since 2005 that the government has been intercepting these things at will. What's the news in what this guy pushing? Unfortunately, he didn't stop at just exposing an already known fact of government snooping, no!, he went on to release to the Chinese and now probably the Russians, how we are getting intel from them. This, I believe, is where he crossed the line and became a TRAITOR! I could have forgiven his indiscretion of revealing the NSA intelligence as the "frothing at the mouth" rantings of a starry-eyed believer in the idea that the U.S. is pure as the driven snow. However, when he passed the other info to the Sino's and the Russians, he crossed my line of tolerance. I now consider him a traitor to the U.S. and believe anything "bad" that happens to him is justified. What really pisses me off are all these IT people who believe that since he was one of them, he must be pardoned for his transgressions. In my profession as a Pharmacist here in the U.S. you will find very little tolerance of those Pharmacists who succumb to the allure of abusing drugs. I would hope that in the future the IT professionals would show no tolerance to those who violate non-disclosure agreements which they have agreed to and signed. I know that in the professional world that Pharmacists and Doctors have to take an oath which covers non-disclosure of information. Maybe, it's time that IT professionals adopt a similar view. As an example, how would you IT guys like it if your Doctor or Pharmacist decided that it was in the public's interest to know that you were on testosterone therapy or being treated for AIDS contracted in your "unusual" sexual practices? Think about it!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!