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Jimmy Carter Calls Snowden Leak Ultimately "Beneficial"
eldavojohn writes "According to RT, the 39th president of the United States made several statements worth noting at a meeting in Atlanta. Carter said that 'America has no functioning democracy at this moment' and 'the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far.' The second comment sounded like Carter predicted the future would look favorably upon Snowden's leaks — at least those concerning domestic spying in the United States — as he said: 'I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.' It may be worth noting that, stemming from Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, Jimmy Carter signed the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 into law and that Snowden has received at least one nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize."
Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter is no longer president of the United States.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I hate agreeing with Carter.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Give Snowden Obama's prize. He's not using it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Mod parent up. We need more brave politicians to finally speak their minds about this instead of fearing the surveillance machine.
What are you talking about? There are plenty of politicians speaking their minds about Snowden -- but I don't know if I'd call them "brave." Looking at just the previous administration, George W. Bush:
I think he damaged the security of the country
And Dick Cheney:
I think he's a traitor
Of course, as another poster mentioned, they've got nothing to lose same as Carter.
My work here is dung.
It's been said a few times by other people, but there goes: Jimmy Carter is pretty much the best former president the U.S.A. have ever had. Come to think of it, just like Obama might be remembered as the best future president the U.S.A. ever had.
Too bad we are living in the present.
I had not heard of these before and had to look it up. The privacy act ONLY applies to newspaper reporters, stemming from this incident:
"Respondents, a student newspaper that had published articles and photographs of a clash between demonstrators and police at a hospital, and staff members, brought this action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against, among others, petitioners, law enforcement and district attorney personnel, claiming that a search pursuant to a warrant issued on a judge's finding of probable cause that the newspaper (which was not involved in the unlawful acts) possessed photographs and negatives revealing the identities of demonstrators who had assaulted police officers at the hospital had deprived respondents of their constitutional rights." source
On a side note, when explaining the Privacy Act to the general public, Jimmy Carter is probably the only president ever to make this statement: "We have reduced the size of these Government files by more than 10 percent."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
...many American friends and relatives of mine would be agape at my alleged lack of political insight when I said: "Jimmy Carter was one of the best presidents the USA ever had". And now...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I hate agreeing with Carter.
Why?
Looking back on history, I never got the dislike towards him. He was handed a bad deck into his presidency (inflation from Viet Nam, Oil embargo, stagflation, Iran hostages, military incompetence, and a couple of other things he was blamed for).
One of the most ballsy things he did was Tip O'Neil was elated that "one of them" was in the White House and Carter wouldn't play ball. And as we have seen many times, when one party controls both the Whitehouse and Congress, the pork flies and the budget sinks!
He was also one of our smartest presidents and one of the few who had some sort of science training - he was a nuclear engineer (BS, US Naval Academy).
So, why the dislike?
He is more likable since he was president than when he was president.
Here is the relevant message from a former Senator:
Mr. Snowden,
Provided you have not leaked information that would put in harms way any intelligence agent, I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution.
Having served in the United States Senate for twelve years as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I think I have a good grounding to reach my conclusion.
I wish you well in your efforts to secure asylum and encourage you to persevere.
Kindly acknowledge this message, so that I will know it reached you.
Regards,
Gordon J. Humphrey
Former United States Senator
New Hampshire
Here is another of his messages:
Mr. Greenwald,
Yes. It was I who sent the email message to Edward Snowden, thanking him for exposing astonishing violations of the US Constitution and encouraging him to persevere in the search for asylum.
To my knowledge, Mr. Snowden has disclosed only the existence of a program and not details that would place any person in harm's way. I regard him as a courageous whistle-blower.
I object to the monumentally disproportionate campaign being waged by the U.S. Government against Edward Snowden, while no effort is being made to identify, remove from office and bring to justice those officials who have abused power, seriously and repeatedly violating the Constitution of the United States and the rights of millions of unsuspecting citizens.
Americans concerned about the growing arrogance of our government and its increasingly menacing nature should be working to help Mr. Snowden find asylum. Former Members of Congress, especially, should step forward and speak out.
Regards,
Gordon Humphrey
Carter was a complete disaster for the US.
Only by people who think Reagan was the second coming of George Washington. If you were dumb enough to vote for Bush the Lesser you might actually believe that Carter was a bad president. Carter was a mediocre president who served during a period of rather bad economic problems that were not his fault. His record is mixed but isn't especially bad overall. I'm old enough to actually remember when he was in office and there hasn't been a president since who I feel was substantially better and one who was considerably worse.
Looking back on history, I never got the dislike towards him.
It's mostly scapegoating from the right. Presidents who serve during tough economic times usually get a disproportionate amount of blame for problems that they weren't responsible for creating and often can't do much to fix. Since he wasn't exactly beloved by his own party, Carter is a fairly easy target by the conservatives. Their criticisms of him are rarely fair or accurate but the tactic has worked in the past.
mod parent "neo-con shit-for-brains"
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
No President is better described by those words than Jimmy Carter. He really has been a good person to a fault.
One of the criticism I most remember about him was his selling the Presidential Yacht. He did so to try to set an example of austerity, and of course save money. But he was criticized, perhaps justly, because that yacht had been one of the better tools for the President to influence congress. Apparently it was a big deal to get invited on a yachting day with the President and all that one on one time would allow the President to influence votes.
Carter however felt that Congress should just vote for things because they were right. He was always trying to appeal to the better part of human nature. In some ways Obama is similar, he doesn't really schmooze with congress well, certainly not in the way Ron, George, Bill and George did!
I have come to feel we get the leaders we deserve all too often.
As a President, I really disliked him, as he ramped up the military, when it really wasn't necessary, and played into the hands of the Republicans....
On the other hand, he's the greatest ex-President this country has had in my lifetime, standing for, well, what the US is *supposed* to stand for, and *claims* to stand for.
mark
Carter put solar panels on the Whitehouse.
Reagan took them down
Here we are 30-some years later still jacking off over renewable energy...
If anything, Carter was way ahead of his time.
Every president since has been under heel of the carbon extraction industrial complex.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Much like Clinton, who looks great when compared with anybody else post-Eisenhower, but that's only because the field's so weak.
Kennedy was okay. He had a great looking wife and mistress.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Wow, there's a lot to go through here.
How is the Watergate break-in worse than bugging the campaign office of Mitch McConnell?
Unlike with Nixon, there's no evidence that Obama had anything to do with that. The Watergate scandal, in comparison, involved people from Nixon's presidential campaign (Liddy), the US Attorney General, and Nixon's personal Presidential Council. It's most likely that Curtis Morrison acted independently. He was a member of Kentucky liberal advocacy group that had no connections (that I'm aware of at least) to Obama or his Presidential Campaign. If you have evidence that says otherwise, I'd love to read it.
Just because Obama is a Democratic President doesn't mean that he's actually directly in charge of every Democrat or other liberal.
How is creating an "enemies list" worse than targeting your enemies through the IRS, the EPA, and other federal agencies, and have the NSA spy on them and on reporters?
Well, first of all, the IRS scandal was mischaracterized in its early stages by the media. The IRS looked at a broad spectrum of 501(c) groups. Conservative groups were targeted (groups that mentioned "Tea party," "9/12", "patriots," etc.). So were liberal groups (ones that mentioned "occupy," "progress," "equality," etc.). So were groups interested in Israel, constitutional issues, the integrity of elections, and several other nonpartisan issues. Of those groups, the only one that was denied 501(c) status was Emerge America, a liberal advocacy group. No conservative groups were denied.
Now it wasn't completely non-partisan. Conservative groups were delayed in receiving their approval. There's indication that the National Organization for Marriage had its 2008 tax return deliberately leaked. Some chicanery was going on there.
But did Obama know? Signs indicate that he learned of it about the same time the public did. (He was aware of an ongoing investigation but not the contents of it.) No evidence has arisen that he did know ahead of time.
As for the EPA FOIA fee thing, I'll admit that's kind of shady. I don't believe it comes from the top, but it's a black mark on his administration, I think based on the facts I currently have. I think the effects of being on Nixon's enemies list was a bit more harsh: tax audits, denial of federal grants and contracts, etc.
For the last, I hate the NSA spying programs, but is there any evidence they've specifically went after reporters? I'd love to hear it. (More fuel for the fire on that subject, as far as I'm concerned.)
Nixon never orchestrated a false flag kidnapping at a consulate, and then tried to cover it up when it went south.
Neither did Obama. That's full-on crank territory if you want to claim that's what Benghazi was. Nixon did however orchestrate a burglary at the Chilean embassy, which is far closer to what you're accusing Obama of than what actually happened.
He never sold weapons to drug cartels.
True, you'd have to wait for Reagan for that. Of course, he was straight up selling arms to terrorists and using the money fund drug trafficking contras to fight communists. (Yet another episode in a long, terrible history of covert US actions to support terrible people just because they are the enemies of our enemies.)
Obama's ATF, at least, was selling the guns to try to track down criminals with an intent to disrupt and arrest them -- not to deliberately support them. Still, a pretty colossal screw up considering how many arms weren't recovered.
He didn't target children with drones, either.
Only because he didn't have them. The carpet bombing of Cambodia, which killed tens of thousands of civilians was a far greater atrocity than Obama's drone program (which I think is unconscionable too; just on a far different scale of "collateral damage," aka negligent mass murder).
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But we've had a long history of selling weapons to pretty much anybody. Except Iran, DPRK, and Cuba, of course.
Cross Iran off that list, given how much we sold to the Shah before the revolution (which how they still have American aircraft in service), and the arms we sold them during Iran-Contra affair.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
When he spoke about spying on Americans, he was a whistle blower. Had he been smart, he would have stopped right there.
Sadly, that idiot carried it into treason and has not only harmed America's interest, but his own: his life.
Are you referring to the badly sourced, unsubstantiated allegations made in the The New York Times smear piece? If not, can you please provide a source that backs up your claim that he committed treason, along with what actions of his constitute treason?
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan