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Snowden Granted One-Year Asylum In Russia
New submitter kc9jud writes "The BBC is reporting that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted temporary asylum in Russia. According to his lawyer, Snowden has received the necessary papers to leave the transit zone at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, and the airport press office is reporting that Snowden left the airport at 14:00 local time (10:00 GMT). A tweet from Wikileaks indicates that Snowden has been granted temporary asylum and may stay in the Russian Federation for up to one year."
Reader Cenan adds links to coverage at CNN, and other readers have pointed out versions of the story at Reuters and CBS.
Guess that gives him 1 year to plan and execute his trip to South America.
...aaaaaaaaaaand he's gone. Hopefully out of reach of all repressive regimes, including the USA.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/07/25/2135207/us-lawmakers-want-sanctions-on-any-country-taking-in-snowden
^_^
He'd better be careful. If he waits a few more months, he'll be snowed-in and unable to leave at all.
Since the CIA can't outright shoot him, they'll just alter a few videos to make it look like he's gay in Russia.
I'll think of it as forever.
But seriously. Think back a quarter century and ponder what someone would have said if you told him that a US citizen flees to Russia to beg for asylum because he's being prosecuted for telling the truth...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, since I've seen posts of this ilk that are completely serious...
Anyway, I'll take the bait -- the NSA can read your "private communications": http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/nsa-top-secret-program-online-data
It's not the government's right to know. Yeah your email goes through a service provider.. and they could theoretically track it.. the admins could read it.. sure and they probably do.. But they are not the government. I think you are trolling, but it's possible you are just insane.
"There may be a time where it would be constructive to try and meet and ... resolve this in a way that honors due process and the highest principles of fairness and civilization,"
Seems resolved to me. What remains to be sorted out:
* who is accountable for all of the laws broken by the NSA
* what programs they still have in place which are illegal
* when these illegal programs will be terminated
Let's not forget, if the NSA/US had followed the letter of the law, Snowden's claims would have been pointless.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
He would be thrown incommunicado into a U.S. prison and never let out again if he ever came back here. We all know his trial would just be a show trial.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
also.. the government is already VERY LARGE.. how is that working out exactly. Can you tell me how is this country going? It's not a matter of making it bigger... it's already big. Most of the socialized systems are bankrupt or nearing it. USPS, our school system, social security.. .How are those things playing out? Please explain how these systems are in great shape?
I know, if I would not have beleived that when I was a kid. Either things are changing, or my brainwashing is slowly wearing down.
That is because the Democratic party is vastly different from your dearly beloved Republican party.
I can tell, because in addition to the end of secret courts and the rest of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo closed, we left Iraq on the Bush timetable, and drone strikes have ceased.
Or did you think the Republicans were going to pass socialized health-care?
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Otherwise, it goes a bit too far, but is a pretty solid troll.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Note that he was at -1 before even being modded down.
You know why the left hates the libertarians? Because the libertarians are everything that the left wing used to be before they sacrificed their ideals to the alter of political correctness. Now they can't even be tolerant. Behold his hate.
"His name was James Damore."
I think you are trolling, but it's possible you are just insane.
This guy has several posts in this vein. I think he's serious about this. Looks like your second point about insanity was right...
Snowed in no longer airport!
Just tell the Russians he left his ballet/pole dancer girlfriend to be hang with Putin or something
Back then many of us were naive enough to believe the U.S. propaganda. But that didn't make it true, even then. Looking back, I realize that most of the "U.S. is so free, Soviet Union is so repressive" canards that I grew up on were mostly bullshit. The U.S. was never nearly so free or noble as it pretended, even in its heyday. All these post-911 revelations have done is just highlighted the hypocrisy.
how is that working out exactly.
For who? Seems to me it's working out just as intended for those quietly operating the controls...
Snowden gets one year asylum.
I also have a joke about a farmer. He doesn't have three lovely daughters and you need to share a bed with him.
It's a bit of both
You know why the left hates the libertarians? Because the libertarians are everything that the left wing used to be before they sacrificed their ideals to the alter of political correctness.
Supporting slavery has never been left-wing. By insisting that they be able to pay people whatever the market will bear rather than a living wage, libertarians are insisting that they should be able to keep slaves.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Looking back, I realize that most of the "U.S. is so free, Soviet Union is so repressive" canards that I grew up on were mostly bullshit. The U.S. was never nearly so free or noble as it pretended, even in its heyday.
While that's true, it's also never been so heinous (for the bulk of its citizens) as Russia. We may well be wending that way now; it certainly does appear so.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, when he got his security clearance he signed a legally binding contract that is valid through the rest of his life, and he broke that contract.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he blew the whistle, but he broke his contract by releasing classified information.
The difference might be that this isn't about a contract. If it was, the worst that could possibly happen is a cash fine, considering that contract issues are part of the civil, not the criminal, code.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. "We" had absolutely nothing to do with any of this, and the bluff you are talking about sure as hell wasn't "ours".
Do you not realize that every time you refer to the government's actions, words, or decisions as "ours" you are lending support to THEM, rather than yourself?
The 1 year asylum means they get to pump him for information for the next year and have an exclusive on any information he produces. What information he has is perishable and the US public will forget about this and he will be useless to the Russians by then. They will then decide not to grant permanent asylum and expel him from Russia. He will be right back where he is now but with no spotlight to protect him and a pile of useless information.
Then go Green, it's all the good parts of libertarianism, without the economic extremism.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
http://rt.com/news/snowden-entry-papers-russia-902/
Although it's almost the same as bbc/reuters .. still. Would think that russian news outlet would be included as an alternative.
Think you've missed some history of the Democrats there...
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Don't forget it took the Democrats to pass Nixon's healthcare plan (minus the liberal parts):
citations:
GOP-centric:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/16/ellen-ratner-obama-health-care-nixon-republicans-liberal/
DNC-centric:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/opinion/31krugman.html?_r=1&
Medical-Industry-centric:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
My first thoughts exactly. Who'd have thought, after just a few short decades, that the tables would be so profoundly turned? Not that Russia is any shining beacon of democracy and civility, but the fact that someone must seek asylum from the United States, in Russia of all places, is quite telling.
By insisting that they be able to pay people whatever the market will bear rather than a living wage, libertarians are insisting that they should be able to keep slaves.
Behold the left-wing argument, complete with no substance yet full of appeal-to-emotion bullshit like "living wage" and "slavery."
This is an appeal to people to hate the Libertarians. More hate from the left, and ironically the one thing this man didn't quote from the person he replied to was about the intolerance and hate of the left-wing.
Exactly.
"His name was James Damore."
Just for the sake of argument, let's assume Russia actually has some interest in abstract justice for Snowden. (Yeah, I know, they are probably more interested in being able to accuse the US of abuses so they can excuse their own - I'm sure we can paint the Russian decision in all sorts of unflattering lights - Hell, just claim it's really the third step in their nefarious plan for world domination and comes just after "build secret base in active volcano" and just before "kill Bond in elaborate but unsupervised deathtrap" if you want, but remember there are people assuming the same about ALL sides in this mess.).
A year from now, the Russians will know what sentence Bradley Manning got. They'll know if the hunger strikes and forced feedings at Gitmo drew any congressional support for finally cleaning up Gitmo. Some of the various less touted whistleblower cases now in the courts will have resolved. There will probably be other revelations about the NSA, the US will be mostly out of Afghanistan, and so on.
The Russians can judge whether Snowden's claims are objectively reasonable. And whether the US tries to paint the Russian's decision in as negative light as possible, or not, all those other nations will also be looking at what the US does more than just how the Russians responded. The next Asylum seeker will probably flee to some other country. The next public statement after the Manning sentencing will probably come from some other country. If the US dwells too much on Snowden, then every diplomatic action involving those other countries will be interpreted in the worst possible way by the court of world opinion, if only because the US will appear to be stuck in a rut and not learning from, or admitting to, its mistakes. These events keep starting in the US, and Russia and other countries are only reacting to what starts here - there's no way the US is going to convince much of anybody that those reactions are the big problem and not the initial actions.
Who is John Cabal?
Glad you got this one before me. Otherwise it'd be my karma being shot to hell...
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Well, when he got his security clearance he signed a legally binding contract that is valid through the rest of his life, and he broke that contract.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he blew the whistle, but he broke his contract by releasing classified information.
It was illegal for NSA to gather and to keep that information from the people. Contracts that require illegal acts are invalid.
After NSA decided to work beyond the law Snowden was no longer bound by that contract.
Sorry, you don't understand the definition of slavery.
The media will be hounding him. So file false reports to the press to confuse them. The more unseen he stays, the safer for him. Call your local news station, and tell them:
"I saw Snowden downtown flipping burgers next to Elvis!"
"Snowden just boarded a fishing boat in the Black Sea!"
"I just saw Snowden on the Trans-Siberia line!"
Let's all help keep Snowden out of sight.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You are deeply wrong and your understanding of privacy is very one dimensional.
Consider walking somewhere in New York city. You will be 'seen' by potentially thousands of people but noticed by none. Ask them 5 minutes later and show them a picture of you and you'll get no useful information. Yet you were in 'public' and were seen many times over. That is the privacy of being lost in a crowd that you can have even in a public space.
That privacy can be violated by following a specific person or (in the case of the NSA) by following everyone such that later you can know where the person came from and where they went.
I run a router in the internet. yes, I can see your IP headers. I could see yoiur email headers but I don't look. I know not who you are and I don't bother to do reverse lookups on the IP addresses. I don't care. I don't store that information. I don't care about it. You have the privacy of being anonymous in a crowd.
Ask me tomorrow if I saw any packets going to 192.168.201.192 and I won't be able to tell you one way or another.
So sorry, but as much as I would like to believe the Democrats are still fundamentally different from the neocons, I'm having a hard time buying it. I wish they were. I hoped they were.At this point, an old-school Republican like Eisenhower better reflects the will of a liberal than the current Democratic party. (I said Better, not necessarily well)
I'd like to see more actions against little brother (the corporate version of big brother) and big brother. I would like to see REAL healthcare reform, not an insurance mandate originally authored by the Republican opposition. I'd like to see the corruption swept out and abominations like NSA, TSA, DHS, and DEA disbanded.
Signed, a disgruntled left leaning libertarian.
What illegal activity has Snowden actually revealed? The leaked slides I've read so far indicate the NSA are:
Can someone please calmly and rationally clarify or illuminate evidence which suggests or proves the NSA are doing anything nefarious (e.g., hacking into personal computers, tapping databases containing private information, installing key loggers) with their alleged spying activities?
The excitement and emotion around this issue are running high, generating noise that drowns out sane analysis. If I go onto a crowded street and speak loudly, I can't complain if others overhear. Likewise, if I send information across a public network that's not encrypted, I can't complain if it gets intercepted. Nor can I bemoan the loss of privacy if I put private information in the hands of a third party that I don't trust.
Privacy only exists when protected. Lock it away, encrypt it, or take some measure to safeguard anything you consider sensitive. Otherwise, consider anything you put out in the open fair game for others to use.
I'm sorry, which programs were illegal and which laws were broken? I'm sure you missed the news that these laws were written and passed by the House and Senate, funded by same, and just recently re-affirmed in the House.
See, that's the thing about "laws" - they're written by the legislature and confirmed by the executive branch. Unless and until the judicial branch finds them to be technically inadequate or violating the constitution, they ARE the law. It's how a representative democracy works. Or would you rather have a dictatorship, a monarchy? Perhaps you hold up Russia as a shining light of transparency, liberty, and justice?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The first sentence of my post only contained five words....
Please wake up yourself and READ them.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
As an admin who could watch people's traffic and read their email, let me just say that I don't. I don't want to know and it would be unprofessional to pry like the town gossip. I'm not really sure why it would be interesting in the first place, just a bunch of people I don't know talking to a bunch of people I don't know about other people I don't know.
See, the funny thing about a constitutional republic is that the legislature, executive branch, and judiciary do not have the authority to exceed nor violate that constitution. They have the ability to do so, but authority? Not even remotely.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
And still america isn't managing to come out better looking than them in this situation... how hard could it be for the "land of the free"
That said, I'm just going to note here that the bill to strip the NSA of these powers was supported by more democrats that republicans -- but the split was by no means a party-line vote. Here, left-right is not a good identifier. I
I'm definitely on the side that thinks the NSA program amounts to a general warrant, and is therefore unconstitutional no matter what FISA says about it.
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.
4th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
-GiH
The Americunt government just assassinates civilians and other suspected "terrorists" (including Americunt citizens).
As I said in a previous post, everyone hates the Americunts, because the Americunts export their shit. Russia mostly keeps it inside their own borders, as do the other oppressive regimes that the apologists (apologists for the ills done by the Americunts) love to harp on about. How many times has Iran invaded anyone in recent history? Was it none, or one. Now, how many times has the USA invaded anyone? Oh, just a few times in the last 20 years. Not many...
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
Hahaha... oh wait, you're serious?
In Wisconsin, the Greens are both economic AND environmental extremists. They are worse than just about everything else.
I run a router in the internet. yes, I can see your IP headers. I could see yoiur email headers but I don't look. I know not who you are and I don't bother to do reverse lookups on the IP addresses. I don't care. I don't store that information. I don't care about it. You have the privacy of being anonymous in a crowd.
Ask me tomorrow if I saw any packets going to 192.168.201.192 and I won't be able to tell you one way or another.
Nitpick: packets to and from 192.168.201.192 won't touch the Internet.
Democrats /= Left, Republicans /= Right. Parties are not constants - they are groups of people and their ideologies shift over time. The Republicans of the 50s and 60s were consumed by the southern democrats, there has been a complete flip in party politics over the last one-hundred years.
Last time I looked the USA didn't assasinate opposition politicians
I suppose that depends on whether you consider leaders of Hamas and Taliban politicians. Of course, I remember when the USA didn't assassinate anyone, and had several executive orders banning the practice.
Maybe that was before our leaders woke up, smelled the coffee, and got a grasp of reality.
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Medicare Part-D isn't healthcare, its a funnel for pouring cash from the federal coffers into the accounts of insurance companies - and very little more than that.
The major problem we have is the third party doctrine, which says you lose 4th amendment protection when you share info with a 3d party because you then have no reasonable expectation of privacy.
But that isn't really true. People share info with 3d parties all the time and expect and demand that information be kept confidential. It really is impossible to participate in the modern world without engaging in such transactions. But the Supreme Court has just gone off the rails on the notion that once you do this, you have no expectation of privacy.
If that theory was really the case, people wouldn't freak out when their email accounts get hacked and people snoop on their mail. People wouldn't go to jail for doing that. People would walk down the street handing out their credit card to everyone they meet. People wouldn't make their facebook pages private ... on and on.
There needs to be legislation that destroys this 3d party doctrine exception to the 4th amendment. The underpinning of all these NSA programs, is that piece of warped Supreme Court logic.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
No they are not and shame on your for suggesting it. Not all work is worth a living wage. Not everyone needs to earn a living wage either, millions of teenagers live with their parents, and don't need to be earning a living wage, for example. If someone is willing to do work for a given wage there is not reason to stop them, none.
If you need a living wage and can't earn it doing what you are doing, you need to do some other kind of work, or you know get yourself a bus ticket and go someplace where living costs less.
You don't have some god given right to live in NYC and support yourself serving coffee.
Cut the crap, stop calling people slavers, and try some self reliance.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The Obama Terror State, formerly the United States of America, is showing a 'crack' and his Disposition Matrix has developed a rather big hole.
But Obama's greatest flaw is himself.
I've got to level with you, U.S. propaganda acceptance is at an all-time high.
Kinda like NixonCare (aka ObamaCare)
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4041241&cid=44445867
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Well, Bill Haywood is sort of an example.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I used it like movies use 555.
You might also be surprised. Martians do show up from time to time though the University is mostly on 10/8..
Jozsef Mindszenty got to the United States embassy in 1956 Budapest. Mindszenty lived there for the next 15 years, unable to leave.
Now people protected in Russia for 1 year.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
So is the AFCA
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Medicare Part-D isn't healthcare, its a funnel for pouring cash from the federal coffers into the accounts of insurance companies - and very little more than that.
Sounds like Obamacare.
You MUST buy health insurance - from an INSURANCE COMPANY.
Oh, and BTW, insurance premiums under Obamacare are skyrocketing:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130718/BUSINESS/307180100/State-says-Obamacare-will-force-72-percent-increase-individual-insurance-plan-rates
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/313885-obamacare-premiums-lower-than-expected-in-maryland
Hell, just Google "obamacare rate increase"
I know, if I would not have beleived that when I was a kid. Either things are changing, or my brainwashing is slowly wearing down.
Things are definitely changing in many ways. Certainly the USA is getting a bit scary in the level of monitoring. However I don't think that's the thing that changed here. Remember though what was done to Charlie Chaplin and company. Snowdon is hardly the first US dissident.
What's new about this is the total level of apparent visible incompetence involved. The fundamental rule of being Russia and China is "never do anything you don't want to do if the USA states openly that you you have to do it". Their entire world power comes from the feeling of other countries that if you have one or both of them your side then you may be able to stand up to the USA and do what you want in your own country. The moment American politicians started threatening Russia and China about asylum there was nothing they could do to avoid helping him. Even weirder because think if the dissidents which the US embassy helps in China and used to help in the USSR.
Given everybody knows this, then the main thing was to get to him in Hong Kong and promise safe passage to a friendly neutral country like Iceland where there would be a chance to limit leakage of damaging material that didn't show illegal activity. They could probably wait a few years, give him an offer of a plea bargain (20 years?) and have the Icelandic winter drive him home. Why the hell drive him to Russia, the country most likely to know what to do with whatever secret information he has?
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
No country in their right mind would ignore a leak like this; Snowden was handling classified information, leaked it to the world, and promptly fled to two of the US's chief rivals (who ironically have programs about 10x more invasive than anything Snowden found). What sort of response were you expecting?
I guess your satire meter is broken.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
you fucking goatse doll -- who the fuck cares. The "they would have been worse" defense is just crap. Why do I care if the Russians might have been a degree or two worse? That's not my government. I'm concerned about the US, its spying, torture, cronyism etc. So just take this bullshit, grab your ankles, and shove it up that gaping authoritarian hole of yours.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Medicare Part-D isn't healthcare, its a funnel for pouring cash from the federal coffers into the accounts of insurance companies - and very little more than that.
Whereas Obamacare is a funnel for pouring cash from the citizen's wallets into the accounts of insurance companies - and very little more than that. Since the federal coffers are filled from citizen's wallets, it all looks the same from here.
No you and parent still don't get it.
And your selective quoting is a big hint.
I never said that Russia looks better as a whole. (Re-read those first five words again, better yet do it a few tims).
As for the sentence you qouted: it also contained the words 'IN THIS CASE' which you conveniently left out.
To make it a little bit easier for those who still don't get it:
-Russia bad
-Russia looking better than US in regard to Snowden.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Sir, I'd give you +5 on your Trollship skills. If there have ever been a wonderful homeland of Trolls, for example The Kingdom of Trollistan, you would no doubt be its emperor.
Except that by asking him to do something illegal, the NSA invalidated their own contract. Under U.S. law no contract may require a person to commit an illegal act, nor may it prevent them from reporting a criminal act so long as they have first attempted to report the criminal activity using internal policies. As long as Snowden tried to get his bosses to stop the illegal wiretapping and reported their actions to his supervisor, he should be protected under us whistleblower protection laws.
That said, this is the NSA, and they seem not to care about the law. Running away is smart, to keep them from doing something illegal to punish him for reporting the OTHER illegal things they did.
Back then many of us were naive enough to believe the U.S. propaganda....
Back then?
I believe many are still (and will always be) naive enough to believe the propaganda. It's not a US centric problem and definitely not a time dependent problem.
And it has little to do with being naive or not.
"Oh, those Russians!"
You joke, but the military is very quick and free to trot that idea out. "He did it because he is gay" as if being gay makes a person more likely to leak information, I mean, commit treason. Some of Bradley Manning's posts I ran across would seem to show he might indeed be gay. Then it occured to me those posts might be fakes.
The 1989 gun turret explosion on the USS Iowa was a classic. The navy put out this ridiculous hypothesis that Clayton Hartwig, a sailor who died in the disaster, was gay and so sexually frustrated that he was suicidal and deliberately caused the explosion. Under pressure, the navy dropped the gay part but clung on to the idea Hartwig was suicidal and did it on purpose. As the disaster was investigated further, it became even more painfully obvious that the navy was doing a cover up. The real reason was that they were using experimental mixings of explosives that if not rammed slowly could prematurely detonate. Strangest was that the officer the navy picked to lead the investigation was the same guy who made the experimental mix.
And remember, some of the most radical social conservatives advanced this absurd notion that 9/11 happened because America is too tolerant of homosexuality. Just the other day I stopped in at my insurance agent's office and heard Limbaugh on their radio, ranting about the possibility that Trayvon Martin might have been gay and tried to sexually assault Zimmerman. I don't expect any better of those retards, but we should have smarter military leaders than that. No General Boykins! May be hard to do. I suppose a military career is attractive to simpletons who think force is a good answer to most problems.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Makes sense. Nitpick withdrawn :)
Any contract that requires you to not report crimes is void.
Democrats /= Left, Republicans /= Right. Parties are not constants - they are groups of people and their ideologies shift over time. The Republicans of the 50s and 60s were consumed by the southern democrats, there has been a complete flip in party politics over the last one-hundred years.
Wrong! It has not been a flip, it's been a take over. There is no longer a left or right, or Democrat and Republican. It's one team that plays on people's desire to still believe a left-right paradigm exists.
All you have to do to validate my claims is to look at politician's records. Obama promised hope and change, and is a Democrat. Name something pertinent that was done differently than Bush. Go ahead and look, but outside of lies and fabrications you won't find anything. The Patriot act was strengthened, not dismantled. Gitmo was not closed, it's still used to torture people. A Presidential "Hit List" was made public, if the guy was anti-war it would not exist or would not have required a whistle blower. War in the middle east has been extended, not ended (Libya, Syria, Egypt, etc...). Surveillance has increased and the executive branch has attacked whistle blowers on a massive scale. I could go on, but believe I have shown my point to be more than valid.
The people in power are currently doing everything possible to keep you from looking at them. They push atheism vs. religion, ethnic hatred, gay vs. straight, and Dem. vs. Rep through a media monopoly which has not been bound to tell you a single truth for nearly a decade. If you don't believe that, compare the AP and what's on corporate owned media to independent reports anywhere in the world. They don't match usually, and on the odd chance that the AP publishes something in a light unfavorable to the people in power you will be inundated with celebrity news on corporate owned media instead of the pertinent "news".
I get that it is easier and more comforting to believe that things are not so bad, but that belief does not change reality. We must demand truthfulness in news and demand that the monopolies are broken up or the masses will never see any truths that are relevant to society. At the same time, we need to follow Socrates' demand and get rid of the political class which is keeping people in the proverbial cave.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I was not expecting anything else....
But the mere fact that the US is affirming its own stereotype does not make it right.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
People don't want to see this for what it is. There is no need for Deep Throat, or Snowden, or Binney when everything is on the up and up. Whistle blowing isn't from foreign interests trying to harm us. They are patriotic actions that love this country for what it should be. When Putin is pointing out the irony about a US congratulating itself for not wanting to kill the whistle blower who is being persecuted for telling the truth, and it is lost on the bulk of Americans we have a problem. We have lost our way.
A big government is much better than a small government. We liberals know that, and intend to grow the power of government at the expense of private parties.
If by private parties you mean passing that expense off to the 200 million+ middle class Americans you are correct because that is exactly who will end up paying it in the end. The problem is we can't afford it and at some point someone will offer a way out and we will vote them into office, the question is how much worse will it get before it get's better and can silly stuff like this keep us occupied while we are spiraling down the drain.
My point is that even with the third party doctrine you cannot issue a warrant for "everything relevant in your possession" it has to identify particular things. The right isn't in the individual who made the calls / etc, but in the company that the warrant is served upon - they have grounds to contest the validity of the warrant under the 4th amendment.
This is just the beggining of the judicial battle. The next step will be Hon. Judge James Robart revoking his asylum.
I can tell, because in addition to the end of secret courts and the rest of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo closed, we left Iraq on the Bush timetable, and drone strikes have ceased.
So now the Dem's are just as bad as the Rep's because they haven't done enough to clean up the mess left by the previous administration? Seriously, did you criticize W for not cleaning up the horrible mess left by Clinton. Oh wait. There was no horrible mess.
You mean like the Medicare Part D that was passed by a Republican House, Senate, and President? You are right, that would never happen.
Otherwise, it goes a bit too far, but is a pretty solid troll.
Yeah, the Rep plans that guarantee even greater profits for the medical and insurance industries to the detriment of patients because basic meds and tests are not on the approved list. Yeah, wonderful health care record that.
Seriously, can you be more biased? I mean the Dem's are bad, but the Rep's are so much worse there isn't even a contest. If anything, the Dem's are just following the Rep's lead when it comes to being evil.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
he would get a disguise and sneak out of Moscow and head east and go in to hiding in the Ural mountains or east of the Urals or in Mongolia or Western China, somewhere where he wont be found by either the Russian Govt or the US Govt, maybe sneak in to Vietnam
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
True, but is this a "warrant"? It's an "order" for sure, and it looks like a warrant, but when dealing with this, we've left the realm of human language usage behind. The underpinning of this order is the 3d party doctrine which says the 4th doesn't even apply to such metadata. Eliminate that 3d party foundation, and I think this order goes away. That's not to say they wouldn't come up with some other twisted theory, but this particular order would be broken.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot; the drop-off is pretty steep once you get too far east of western Europe.
Your statement is a bit of a dodge and I guess you mean a fairly large group of countries when you say "one of" however it's still pretty misleading. It all depends what and how you try to measure, but the USA is no longer nearly at the top of most lists and it really isn't that free in practice. Look at the world press index and you will see the USA comes in 32nd this year, up from 47th (mostly because other countries did more bad things recently). Look even at the "Index of Freedom In the World" which seems pretty biased towards the kind of economic freedom the US is so famed for and you will see that the US isn't in the top five. Try sorting by "personal freedom" separately from "economic freedom" and you will see that it isn't even in the top 20.
The situation is not terrible and the fact that Americans still believe they are free and believe in freedom is actually a cause for hope, however if people don't start acting now to keep that freedom there is going to be a big problem. Most of all the fact that people just don't seem worried by giving up their freedom to big companies and their data to the government is really dangerous.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You need to think big like the NSA. Create a database, stuff all their searches into it, and sell it to the highest bidder. (Probably marketers, but maybe some government spooks too.)
No country in their right mind would ignore a leak like this; Snowden was handling classified information, leaked it to the world, and promptly fled to two of the US's chief rivals (who ironically have programs about 10x more invasive than anything Snowden found). What sort of response were you expecting?
Of course he went to China and then Russia. What fucking choice did he have? Go back and read what he himself said about why he went to China. You are an idiot. Recall the reason he was forced to leave China and flee to Russia, moron.
And you think the USA looks WORSE than a country that does this simply because they quite rightly want to arrest a traitor??
quote>
It's been said so many times, if you compare yourself favorably against the worst offenders, you're really only shooting for second-worst.
The man told us that the spying organization of our government was lying to those who represent us. That is not traitorous, it is commendable. I will be ashamed of this president and these congress-critters until Snowden gets a pardon for the details about domestic spying and those programs are shut down, or at the very least severely curtailed.
"Oh, you'll be ashamed. Boo hoo, I'll cry rivers." Right, I know that response is to be expected, but consider that this comes from someone that has never in his life felt that any other country could hold a candle to the US (Sorry EU guys, I like you, I always have, but yes I've always thought my country was the best.), and perhaps you can at least acknowledge that government actions that can affect that sort of reversal are... well, not good.
And still america isn't managing to come out better looking than them in this situation... how hard could it be for the "land of the free"
On the upside, when his one-year asylum expires, he will be back in the press as a political prop during an election year. It will be interesting how those that called him a traitor in the house and 1/3 of the senate wind up when the election chips fall.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Propaganda baby... The US feels everyone else does it, but unaware they are also a victim of the propaganda machines. Every time something like this comes up you can be sure some american will post the "one of the most free countries" line.
The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot; the drop-off is pretty steep once you get too far east of western Europe.
Feel free to name a few countries. Then put it in context.
The US is still more free than - name here -
Pakistan? China? Syria? North Korea?
I think you will have a hard time to find a country where it both is true and sounds good.
I'm a liberal and even I find myself in agreement with this principle to an extent. Some jobs are really only meant as a stepping stone for high schoolers to get experience, or college kids to get beer money. At least that was true in the past, certainly when I was getting my first job in the mid-80s.
The problem though, is that our job base is shedding its real jobs at an amazing rate. When real jobs are rare, and most employment is comprised of this "learning wheels" work, then it becomes important to ensure that if these are the jobs that are going to replace real economic activity, that they pay something people can live on.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Why does the programs of the "chief rivals" matter? Snowden produced reports that the NSA was potentially violating the US constitution. Is this a case of "hey, they do it too, look over there"?
Please stop wasting pixels and clogging up the internet with this gibberish.
More news coverage about the whistleblower, not about the crimes he uncovered. Journalism is dead.
What was the rank of Lonnie Snowden, Edward Snowden's father, in the Coast Guard? I cannot find this information neither in wiki nor in google.
Not all work is worth a living wage. Not everyone needs to earn a living wage either, millions of teenagers live with their parents, and don't need to be earning a living wage, for example.
Most of the people earning minimum wage are adults, but don't let the facts get in the way of justifying slavery.
Cut the crap, stop calling people slavers, and try some self reliance.
I am currently receiving no form of government assistance. The already-rich are receiving massive government assistance. Why don't you try cutting the crap, and just admitting that you want slaves and you think you'll be successful enough to have them, and not be one?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Only a casual news consumer thinks both parties are the same. We don't have a parliamentary style government that gives one party or coalition free reign. What gets passed, funded, or approved is often the result of a compromise. The middle grounds in each party are vastly different from each other.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
complete with no substance yet full of appeal-to-emotion bullshit like "living wage" and "slavery."
This is an appeal to people to hate the Libertarians. More hate from the left, and ironically the one thing this man didn't quote from the person he replied to was about the intolerance and hate of the left-wing.
You're funny.
Blinded by tribalism, but funny.
I don't think they are the same, but I do think that they are almost identical on any substantial issue. They differ considerably on "wedge issues" that get people fired up, but do not have first-order effects on most of society.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There are just no real liberal party in Russia - for example biggest opposition self-called liberal party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_Platform_(Russia) supports Evgeniy Royzman http://www.aintnecessarilyso.com/2012/07/more-on-rogue-russian-drug-warrior.html - head of anti drug center, that deny drug users any civil rights in the name of war on drugs, believes that it's normal to keep drug addicts in handcuffs and beat them into submission, and for even harder drug policy that it is now in Russia and it's like 8 years in prison for glass of ganja already. We are not talking about only heroin addicts here, he dos not make any distinction between heroin and ganja. This man now trying to get elected as Ekaterinburg major from this 'liberal' party! How crazy is this?
it's illegal for them to go around reading them.. in civilized countries. ability does not mean permission.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Oh, and BTW, insurance premiums under Obamacare are skyrocketing:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130718/BUSINESS/307180100/State-says-Obamacare-will-force-72-percent-increase-individual-insurance-plan-rates
http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/313885-obamacare-premiums-lower-than-expected-in-maryland
Hell, just Google "obamacare rate increase"
Lord help you if you smoke, or happen to be overweight.
Gotta love their fucked-up rationale: "Your freedom is likely to be someone else's harm" Yea, that sounds like what a Stasi dogfucker would say.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot
I am willing to bet that you have never spent more than a month living outside of the US. Otherwise you wouldn't say such stupid things. Let me list some of the things that many of those other countries don't have.
1. Suspicionless roadblocks/checkpoints on many major highways and secondary roads where you are guilty until proven innocent and must submit to interrogations or arbitrary testing to prove your innocence. If you try to stand up for your so called "rights" or so much as look at the thugs the wrong way you end up some combination of injured, dead, and/or in jail with serious contempt of cop charges against you.
2. Strip searches, electronic or real, and genital fondling and/or sexual molestation must be submitted to in order for the government to grant you the privilege of flying. In most other countries flying is treated as more of a right whatever they might call it on paper. In the US most rights have been converted to privileges kindly granted by daddy government. Even the supreme court refers to them as privileges now.
3. Angry, sociopathic, sadistic police who are just itching to beat you, strangle you, taze you, or even shoot you and kill you. These people have no oversight and are 100% above the law. They effectively even have a license to kill. This is far worse than nearly any country on the planet. I can personally vouch for the fact that it is far worse than Cuba (that's right), Laos, Colombia, or Malaysia. In most countries police are more like normal people just doing a job to get paid and have nothing to prove and are not so much like violent criminals with a badge.
Since the police are the most likely point of contact between citizens and a government representative the fact that the police are dangerous and see citizens as their sworn enemy and see themselves as above any law makes the US seem far less free than virtually any country I have lived or traveled in.
4. Harmless hacking as a major "crime". Ask Aaron Swartz about how free we are compared to other countries. Not many countries go after victimless hacking the way the US does. In the US you can go to jail for many years just for violating the TOS of a web site. Yup. Keep telling yourself how free you are. Ask the innocent people convicted of crimes with no victim being abused by sadistic prison guards and raped by fellow inmates how free they are.
In addition to that we have many harsh prison sentences for what are very minor, harmless acts where not a single person has been harmed. I mention this separately, because many other countries have the same problem. But we are no better than most of them in this respect. I think part of the problem is that Americans are such enthusiastic punishers. We love revenge more than most other cultures I think.
The fact is the US isn't all that free anymore. There is very little real freedom left around here. It has been reinterpreted and just plain stomped out of existence. Perhaps the most important point is that the actual people, the voters, do not value freedom even slightly more than most other countries. Given that none of the loss of our freedom is really very surprising.
Can you give even a single example of a freedom that Americans have that most other countries don't? Or better yet a single freedom that is unique in the world? In the US all of our freedom is on paper. Other countries may fewer paper rights, but more freedoms in real life. I would go so far as to say that most countries feel more free and on a day to day basis are more free than the US is now. A century ago it would have been a very different story, but that was before the government and the American people shat on the constitution, the bill of rights, and everything that the founders of our country believed in.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
So now the Dem's are just as bad as the Rep's because they haven't done enough to clean up the mess left by the previous administration? Seriously, did you criticize W for not cleaning up the horrible mess left by Clinton. Oh wait. There was no horrible mess.
They didn't simply "not clean it up", they actively renewed it. Clinton left some terrible messes, including the dot-com bust, Afghanistan, and Iraq. I can't think of a president that has left a completely tidy situation for his successor, nor do I think that is possible.
Yeah, the Rep plans that guarantee even greater profits for the medical and insurance industries to the detriment of patients because basic meds and tests are not on the approved list. Yeah, wonderful health care record that.
1/3 of Obama's plan does exactly the same thing by expanding Medicare. Another 1/3 drives currently uncovered people into private insurance, and then does free marketing and sales through exchanges. The last 1/3 consists mostly of college students (who cost almost nothing to insure) getting included on their parents' plans. I'd love to know how you think Obama's plan insures millions of additional people without enriching the people who provide health care for profit.
If anything, the Dem's are just following the Rep's lead when it comes to being evil.
If you want to play the "who started it" game, that's fine. I dislike them all.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, the normal response for the US is to judge Snowden, allowing him an attorney, probably sending him in jail for a few years.
The reason the US looks bad is that they cannot guarantee that, not after having legalised torture, not closed gitmo, or handle Manning confinement, ...
It does not make the US worse than China or Russia, similarly as a cop caught stealing an apple does make him worse than a child rapist. It is however a massive PR slap in the face.
The problem we have is people no longer believe in sticking to the letter of the constitution, which means we're sort of at a "whatever seems good at the time" mode of legislation. Unfortunately that leads to stuff that would never have been allowed by a strict reading of the constitution becoming enshrined in law for the long haul.
You cant start defending freedom by addressing bad laws after the fact; you have to start before. Unfortunately thats hard to do because it never looks popular to say "the federal government CANT fix X, because thats not one of its constitutional duties"; people will claim that youre only interested in money or whatever, and will demand that the law be passed.
So clamoring over what the NSA is doing now is a bit late; if it was problematic, it should have been halted at the outset on principle.
It was not my intention to selectively quote, and if I could edit my post, I would-- I did indeed misread your post as saying "but as a trully free ". The import however seems the same based on the previous line in your post: that we arent winning the PR battle because we arent that free in comparison with Russia.
I mean, when we talk of freedom, in some ways we are less free now than in days past, but discussions about freedom between nations will always be a relative thing, and relatively the US is still pretty high on that list.
Looking at America from a distance, it appears that it has a one party system with two factions - the Democrat and the Republican factions. The name of the party? The Business Party. The sole purpose is to distract the citizens of the USA away from what really matters. Included in the most accurate definition of "fascism" is a description of how corporate interests write the laws, provide the "politicians", and set the government agenda. The country has been taken over and is run by power-hungry monied-elites (a cleptocracy, me-thinks). It's from this perspective that I completely agree with the attached comment:
Wrong! It has not been a flip, it's been a take over. There is no longer a left or right, or Democrat and Republican. It's one team that plays on people's desire to still believe a left-right paradigm exists.
National Secrets "contracts" are really one way... You sign one to get a job, and Uncle Sam then is free to change the deal at will. Once you sign the oath to keep national secrets they own your ass. The CIA/NSA are legally defined levels above what normal guys like Manning are made to sign.
You are told, upfront, they can and will cut you into pieces and leave you in a ditch with no identifying marks (or worse, and to your family too) for breaking your oath to their agency. The minute Snowden got on a plane and checked in with a foreign power while carrying national secrets he committed High Treason... There's no "whistleblower" provision anywhere allowing you to run to an enemy government.
Boy is dead man walking... Putin gave the NSA several weeks to bag him at the airport before he was actually "inside" Russia... But again, the NSA/CIA are a failure because they are supposed to clean these messes up on their own... Or fall on their swords... That this got left at Obama's feet means they SEVERELY disrespected him. Obama needs to be "Darth Vader" -ing his security chiefs (and families if needed) and fast-tracking promotions till the Snowden problem is fixed... Note, I didn't SAY Obama order Snowden killed... Whatever NSA policies are for this should NEVER REACH the President to make that call.... If it gets in the open... NSA directors fall on their swords and accept responsibility.
The ability granted to spy on everybody comes with the expectation that the NSA/CIA Directors fall on their swords when their agency screws up. Why haven't those directors "terminated" their employment (and yes i mean killed themselves like men) so Obama can replace them already?
You are so clever, you listed countries with known problems as your comparison. By the way, these countries have never stood on the world state talking about their freedoms either.
Why don't you do something like grab the "world corruption results" and look at all the countries with low ratings. Now look at the "freedoms" of those places?
BTW, this also works in your case, the countries you list all have high corruption ratings.
Ask me tomorrow if I saw any packets going to 192.168.201.192 and I won't be able to tell you one way or another.
Since your running a router on the internet you know this would be a huge problem.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
By insisting that they be able to pay people whatever the market will bear rather than a living wage, libertarians are insisting that they should be able to keep slaves.
You know? I was reading Jewish Wisdom by rabbi Joseph Telushkin. In it he refers to the requirement for rabbis to be able to prove that lizards are kosher. The idea is not that lizards are kosher. The idea is that rabbis must be able to construct specious arguments so that they'll be able to discern when an argument is not cogent, but merely specious. I've seen arguments that bald people are hirsute, that ham sandwiches are better than perfect happiness, and that ignorance is strength. The rest is left as an exercise for the student.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
As someone who has also traveled a fair bit and lived in the US/Canada and China you are pretty close but a bit "enhanced".
My personal fav was reconciling the US "freedom of speech" with censorship. Say some "bad words" on the radio/tv (which you own a licence to broadcast on) and observe your freedom to get a fine from the FTC.
who made these words "bad", and why can they enforce a fine when you have a "free speech" right?
Actually, the position Clinton left the banks in directly contributed to the housing bubble...he pushed through repeal of Glass-Steagal. And the economy doing so well under Clinton, the internet bubble inflated the economy to produce that great economy (and the spending for y2k helped too). And the stock market started to crash when it looked like Kerry was going to beat Bush in the spring of 1980. So you cannot even blame that on Bush.
What Bush did was not puncture the housing bubble (and neither did the Fed. Reserve under Greenspan). Bush also didn't raise taxes to fund the wars and he pushed through ill-advised tax cuts instead of using the surpluses to pay off the debt. Bush also relaxed regulations on banks further and more or less failed in oversight. Bush also relaxed SEC enforcement over Wall Street which also helped cause the housing mess.
First Lenun !! Then Stalun !! And Putun !! Now Snowdun !! See the connections !! The similarities !! All Commie Bastards !!
Let this be a lesson, kids: Say NO to Crack.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The "evidence" is all on the net. Well, I keep reading those slides. Where do those slides say Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Google (or anyone else) are sending data to the NSA?
The situation is not terrible and the fact that Americans still believe they are free and believe in freedom is actually a cause for hope
The fact that many Americans still believe they are free is anything but encouraging. To me it seems to imply that no matter how much of their freedom they lose they will still believe they are not only free, but the freest country in the world. It means that many Americans simply don't understand what the word 'freedom' means. If you start talking about John Locke or 'Natural Rights' you might then get some honest answers about how much these Americans still believe in actual freedom, as opposed to the pseudo-freedom thing that they seem to have in their heads. Maybe they are thinking freedom is about being able to wave a flag with red and white and blue?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I don't even know for sure if that's literally true but it damn well is worth reminding people: a contract has terms for both parties. We know Snowden violated his terms, but do we know he went first?
Was his consideration purely his paychecks? I know a lot of people go into various branches of government service (everywhere from the mundane office work, to the "glory" of being a warrior) merely as a job, but if you ask people why they work where they work, that's not what all (or even most) of them say. I've never talked (knowingly ;-) to NSA people, but I've talked to 19 year-old-army recruits, 40 year old unemployment insurance workers, a few cops (though it's been a long time), etc and damned if I haven't heard some idealism and oldschool civics from time to time. Do you think those people are lying about why joined the organization? Some, maybe, but not most of them.
There's an expectation that the service has a purpose, and that it's a good purpose. I don't give a flying fuck whether or not "the government shall act in good faith to promote the interest of its citizens" is explicitly written in ink on the workers' contracts or not, because if you get that anal about it, then the very idea of any contracts every having any validity itself becomes nebulous.
Whose place is it to decide whether or not the government has violated its contracts? Everyone's. If you don't believe that, then ask anyone their opinion about Nazi war criminals, to get a better explanation within the context of an easy black/white example. Sure, today's examples are harder and blurrier, but the responsibility hasn't moved.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There is no really left party in the US as far as I can see. The two largest are very right wing (democrats) end extremist right wing (republicans). I don't know how left the American socialist party really is, here the party who calls itself social democrats and even the combination of green and former communists have also embraced the economic aspects of neoliberalism.
And the US Constitution and bill of rights are restored.
All this crap goes away as it should. (Ya Listening NSA?)
It really is that simple.
Because the Rule of Law becomes restored.
Your dual Israeli citizen can't hold office with the Constitution as the law of the land. They have to have their secret courts to kill the goyem in, they have to have control of the monetary system, they have to have control of the security clearances. It's no coincidence--go LOOK who is in control! Oh and I bet you didn't know they have a RITUAL to UNBIND their OATH OF OFFICE..
It isn't I hate Jews, I Have Jewish in my FAMILY, in my BLOOD (along with even an early president), I mean god damn it, I have an "old Bessy" that I love. it's that I hate zionist oath breaking scum. Ya know? When I got my security clearance it was a big deal, I had hell of butterflies in my stomach--have I ever done something wrong? I wondered.. See because when I SERVE I MEAN TO SERVE JUST LIKE THE OATH I TOOK SAID. I stayed drug free I upheld the Constitution whenever I saw problems. And I did see problems. I saw sexual battery in the Military, I saw theft, I saw Drugs, I saw people denounce the Constitution and helped get their ass rolled up to Ft Leavenworth. This isn't a game. It's what makes our country great, it's why I served even after listening to my Uncle tell stories about tailgunning in S Africa. It's why my dad taught me how to build a fire and keep it from burning the whole fucking forest down, it's why before he left, he taught me to shoot, and keep firearms. My dad was US Army, My mom STILL works for the government goin on 55 years now! The banksters in that light are a disaster, what will they be allowed to destroy the (voluntary) TSP, and the (grandfathered) GOVT PENSION as well? IT Looks headed that way... Contrast my family to that of Feinstein. All of us gave it up. All of us did. Feinstein is a war profiteer, inside trader, oath breaker, and not really a naturally born citizen. There seems to be an unlimited supply of oath breaking pieces of shit who are not naturally born inside the US.
The deal is this, that bitch sworn an oath, and she broke it. Fuck anything she says.. FUCK ANYTHING.
There's more senators to go after, but this one needs to have her fucking inside trading hands bound to Ft Leavenworth for longer than the threat of time for Manning!
This bitch broke the public trust. Secret Courts deciding Secret Law. WHat the FUck is that?! Sure the fuck isn't the US Constitution and the bill of rights. The people don't even know what the LAW IS ANYMORE! because their corruption, insolence and treason the people do not know what the law even is.
And that wasn't by accident. I mean why do you need a LAWYER to translate LAW to ENGLISH?
This country is either going to say fuck this Military Corporate Dictatorship or a lot of people on Earth are going to be SLAVES, OR DEAD.
The NSA database as it currently exists needs an extra helping of mARBLECAKE.
Starting with CUTTING OFF THE FIOS SPLITTERS, AND THE CABLES GOING OUT, AND TEARING THE VAULTS DOORS OFF.
Then DESTROYING ALL THOSE HARDDRIVES WITH SHIT ON THEM. ALL THE BACKUPS. AND ANYONE CAUGHT WITH A COPY GETS DEATH ON THE SPOT, ALSO PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAD THEIR DATA EXPLOITED GET TO CHANGE THEIR NAME AND NUMBERS!
The US Constitution get's restored, and if you want to SPY you get a fucking warrant. Mano y Mano
The alternative is SLAVERY AND DEATH
Actually Iran/Persia has not attacked another country since 1798. Pretty impressive record of peace. Those Persians are definitely not war mongers.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Underpaid workers are MUCH better than slaves from the employers perspective: slaves are expensive property, you have to provide sufficient food and medical aid if they become ill. Cheap laborers are easily replaced by others and are much cheaper.
You're a coward...
You want the government to hold your hand and tell you what's right and wrong because you are too stupid and fearful to decide for yourself. Fear... everything, fear me, fear snowden, fear slashdot, fear till it kills you...
Also,
We prefer to control private parties so they don't gain too much power.
Do you think you're the Illuminati or something?
You're either trolling or are bat shit crazy, either way take your idea of government and shove it.
Back in the '70s a Soviet general told Farley Mowat, "The difference between Soviet propaganda and American propaganda is that we don't believe ours." A big difference between then and now is that when we tortured people or detained them without trial we pretended it was our ally (South Vietnam, Iran, Israel, etc.) that was doing it and we made polite objections. When we gratuitously invaded other countries we at least had the grace to have one of our puppet government's ask us to do so. We pretended not to be developing biological and chemical weapons and ABM systems contrary to treaties that we had signed.
Today they're not even pretending. They just openly torture prisoners, arrest and murder people without trial, invade on the flimsiest of blatantly false pretenses, and baldly send in taxpayer-paid mercenaries to massacre people resisting corporate theft of their lands. Perhaps the most appalling thing to me is the easy acceptance of all of this by my fellow citizens, most of whom are well aware that the government is doing these things in their name and don't care.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Well... he certainly brought change. Just not the kind he was voted in for. Perhaps we should start making over presidents sign contracts like the lesser folk stating here's what we need and here's what you'll deliver.
Looking back in recent history, US had segregation and lynching. Civil rights for women and people of color is a fairly recent thing that was accomplished fairly recently. Anyone who believes US "never been so heinous as Russia" is exactly the type of dimwit that bought into the beacon of freedom bullshit.
prepare to be Japanized then.
I'm not sitting on the sidelines. I'm opposed to government invading my privacy, but I'm insisting we have rational discourse rather than "OMFG NSA SPYING LOL!!1"
I am asking for an interpretation of specific data on specific slides, leaked by Snowden, that demonstrate, unequivocally, the NSA are committing egregious acts. I can't find that evidence in those slides, and I don't think anyone can without making huge leaps of logic. Instead, what I keep reading are vague, hand-waving reactionary assumptions about spying and philosophical distractions about the limits of government powers.
The retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies is horrid. We should have a specific goal of trying to bring down that law. As we should for the USA PATRIOT Act. Both define policies and produce outcomes that definitively violate the Constitution. As for these leaked slides, all we've got is aimless uncertainty of what constitutes spying in a public space where nobody has a legitimate expectation of privacy. This doesn't lend to actions that produce results. Right now, people who are up in arms are only making motion and generating waste heat.
Under these conditions, people who are "engaged in a discussion about changing the law" will find a lot in common with the Occupy protesters--that they're a bunch of angry people who can't point out exactly what they're angry about, can't articulate any specific changes, and can't describe a meaningful outcome they can measure as improvement.
>Ask me tomorrow if I saw any packets going to 192.168.201.192 and I won't be able to tell you one way or another.
Maybe you should turn on netflow then, and then you'll be able to answer that question.
We liberal socialists do NOT want private parties to have unlimited powers. We prefer to control private parties so they don't gain too much power.
So....how's that working out for ya?
Under US law, high treason is possible only in wartime. Nobody around here (Beijing) is treating me as an enemy national, so if we're at war with China, somebody needs to tell the Chinese.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"just telling the truth"...
telling us operational details of classified programs we knew existed in 2006: http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
just accept that what is happening does *not* fit your reductive narrative
doesn't mean that it's ok for the government to violate its own surveillance laws, and it doesn't mean that Snowden is evil...but it's harmfully wrong to take such a oversimplified view of what's happening
Glen Greenwald should have published this *anonymously*....it just doesn't fit...anyone who has worked in journalism knows this could have been leaked in a way that protects Snowden's privacy (Greenwald would have to risk some jail time though...), just look at Deep Throat and the Pentagon Papers leakers
there is definitely other criminal or illuminati types involved here and Snowden is a pawn who got taken advantage of by larger forces
Thank you Dave Raggett
...No you don't. It depends upon how much the slaves cost vs the course of treatment for whatever ailment infects them. Slaves sent to work in the swamps in South Carolina, for example, were basically being handed an early death sentence. http://www.sciway.net/hist/chicora/slavery18-2.html
Even with the extremely high "turnover rate", they were still able to make profits. Just another cost-center.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Whether you call it "The Business Party" or follow some interesting conspiracy theories and call it "The Lucifer Party" makes no difference. The end result becomes the same and is what we must be focused on. With bad people in power, the true motives for what they are doing will never become available until they are gone. The end result is a lost society and potentially much more.
Labeling or trying to guess at the motives at this point is a grievous mistake. It gives the people in power enough ammunition to focus on a possibly incorrect point and distract from the problem. To an extent, they don't even need it (see the countless media circus shows betraying OWS as simply a bunch of freeloading pot-heads) but there is no benefit in helping them with a distraction.
The truth about where we are and where we are going is what we currently need, in addition to warning people about the use of agent provocateurs by the administration and a corrupt propaganda system in broadcast media. Hence, we all need to look out for people trying to get the truth out and report all suspicions and wrong doing by the Government and Media.
Some people are foolish enough to believe that Rush Limbaugh, Piers Morgan, and their ilk, are working for them instead of the corrupt people in power. Boycott! Which means not just to stop watching yourself but grass roots get others to follow your lead. If the issue is simply money, the problem will sort itself out economically.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's actually quite a good troll, the ending sums it up well.
Anyway, metadata is useful to corrupt governments, too. Interested in who the next presidential candidate is talking to, to 3 people deep? That is incredibly valuable to strategists setting up counter-measures.
Hence there should be warrants to get it. The old King of England would have quickly rounded up the revolutionists.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I do agree with a lot of what you said. Not all. There are many countries where the police seem nearly as bad as ours, starting in southern Europe.
"Can you give even a single example of a freedom that Americans have that most other countries don't?"
Yeah, the right to bear arms. A very important, fundamental right, that other countries uniformly disrespect. The first amendment is also much stronger here than any other country I am aware of, at least in theory.
In practice... we're in deep trouble. But the rest of the world is not in such great shape as you make it sound.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
If that was the case, then libertarians would be communists. Communists talk as if they'd prefer no government (this is the Marx view) but that never actually happens because communism ultimately fails without having somebody to bullwhip people into working (instead of playing world of warcraft) and making sure they don't leave the country. Slavery by definition.
The favored economist of liberals (Paul Krugman) doesn't believe in the concept of a living wage, by the way. He too believes it should be what the market will bear. In fact I can't think of any liberal economists who strongly support strict wage controls - they all know better.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Well put. It is going to take a court, legislators, and a populace who all have a much better grasp of the issues and the technology than now exists in order for this to change. Meanwhile, we go further down a dangerous path; a path from which we might be able to return.
Maybe after an 1 year there he be begging to do time back in the usa.
The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot
I am willing to bet that you have never spent more than a month living outside of the US. Otherwise you wouldn't say such stupid things.
It's not so much a "stupid" thing to say as an, oh, "accurate" thing to say. If you would like to see an (as nearly as possible) objective way to look at the relative freedom of countries you might refer to The Heritage Foundation's annual survey. It says pretty much exactly what LordLimecat said, listing the US at 10 freest out of 177 countries ranked.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Whoa! Don't lump the NSA with the official rent-a-cops like DHS and TSA.
NSA is signals intelligence. They're supposed to be monitoring the communications of other countries. And they're supposed to protect our own communications from their foreign counterparts.
That they've been turned into a lackey of the FBI is not their fault. If you want to find where the fault lies, look higher.
A significant populartion of the whistleblowers over the past ten years are from the NSA. I would (like to) think that there are still some patriotic people working in there.
Now, if you had said FBI, you'd be closer to the truth. An organization founded on corruption (wiretapping everybody and anybody with power, and then using their dirt against them to do your bidding), and continued to do so for nearly sixty years (more than half it's lifetime), can and will never be clean.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Finally someone that can see and articulate how this was a joint eff up.
There hasn't really been that much compromising done in congress recently.
The US is one of the most free countries as long as you stay within the guidelines of it's government. As soon as you blow the whistle on any of it's corruptions, you're going to be just as free as you would be in China or Thailand. Will you die? The chance is high in either country. The fact that the US isn't more overt than say China or Russia about what happens to their constituents that don't remain in-line doesn't mean that it's more free.
The US is far from the most free country in the world, in fact on several scales it barely even enters the top 10:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Those are two uniquely American rights that I as a Canadian certainly do not have.
Speech has exceptions here.. lots of them. We put people in jail for saying things - ugly things, but we still put them in jail.
It is also practically, or effectively, impossible to own a handgun and use it for it's intended purpose - defense of one's person - in Canada, and most of the world.
There's two, some some might argue, the most important two to keep. Without those you have no tools to fix the rest of the problem.
..don't panic
At this point, the corruption has infiltrated the NSA and spread. We need some sort of signals intelligence, but we'd need to disband the NSA and re-form it to get back to that now. You're quite right about the FBI.
What's funny is that you mention Deep Throat. Deep Throat in actuality was a very product of this corruption. Someone got passed over for a promotion, and that someone used some dirt to take out the guy responsible.
Deep Throat wasn't a whistleblower. He was a self-serving asshat out for revenge. And if you want to push the conspiracy a little further, he did it to show everyone else what a "lowly lieutenant" could do if they crossed him, even if the boss is dead.
Look up who Deep Throat is. And look up his old boss (hint: it's the guy who killed a president and had Congress cover it up for him).
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
That's interesting. I see two left wing parties.
What you are REALLY decrying is Disinflation.
The prices of goods are rising, while the rate of wages remains constant, or slightly decrease with time. At the same time, improvements in production make fewer "high demand" (high pay) jobs available, as companies seek to offset the difference as profit.
Insisting on "Living wages or else!" is one possible solution to disinflation, yes, but is not the best one, since it does NOT resolve the issue of job scarcity while population slowly rises. You WILL eventually reach "Peak McDonalds" in terms of market demand, after which point, hiring more McDonalds people for (by then) 20$/hr is not sensible, and will cost the company money. Result: they just stop hiring, and unemployment rises.
This disinflation is a result of the globalist economy model. American pay is overinflated in comparison to the pay in China, or Bangladesh. Free trade to "bring up" those countries is working-- But at the cost of economically disadvantaging US and other 1st world economies.
As much as I really hate the dirty spectre of nationalism, trade tariffs are a tried and true method of keeping this disinflation from happening, while continuing foreign trade. The tariff for a particular good needs to reflect the difference in cost of production incurred by the foreign production, and the difference in inflation, of the two participating economies.
"Bring up the 2nd and 3rd world", VS "Keep the 1st world." You may pick *ONE*.
There is no constitution, but there IS the right in a large minority of countries in the world to have and maintain a firearm.
The Heritage Foundation is based in the US. That doesn't prove anything. And Singapore is rated 8 steps above the US. Singapore, which has an actual dictator and all kinds of crazy laws. And Chile beats the US in terms of freedom? Well at least they are not aiming high. In any case your whole post is basically an Argument from Authority. You are saying, "This is what the Heritage Foundation thinks." Try actually making a real argument to support the view that the US is "one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot".
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
No horrible mess? For REAL?
Perhaps you should more closely look into what actually initiated subprime mortgage crisis.
The prevailing theory is that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall, and the implementation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
Taken from this source, Then president clinton officially stated publicly that Glass-Steagall was no longer appropriate, and began measures to repeal it.
Later, After doing so, then president Href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000">Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 into law.
So, what mess indeed!
You seem to be confusing things that sometimes happen in the US with things that always happen in the US.
1. I've seen a dui roadblock once in the US (another one in Canada). The officer asked a couple questions ("had I been drinking?" "no") then let me on my way. It's not like the Iraqi style checkpoints where the whole vehicle gets searched over.
2. That's a generalization. Some airports just have metal detectors. If you're flying on a private plane you won't see any of that. Pretty much the same in other countries.
3. That may be true for some police officers (the ones you see on youtube), but you're not going to read about the millions of friendly interactions that happen. I bet you could find similar bad apple officers in other countries.
4. There are very few cases of this. The Swartz case was terrible, there are others like it that shouldn't have happened either, but lots of countries prosecute computer crimes.
We do have problems with our drug laws and sentencing, but that doesn't make us a Police state like Syria.
As for an American freedom most countries don't have - out first amendment rights are a great example. Now I know you're going to say "OMG but Bush's freedom of speech zones and that time a police officer silenced someone!" but the reality is we have much more protection to say what we want than other countries in the world. Just look at the KKK and Nazi parades that are allowed.
You seem to think that there are all these perfect countries outside of the US, but failed to list a single one of them (aside from the ones with friendly police - Cuba, Laos, Columbia, and Malaysia). Is that because they're all imaginary or because you wouldn't want people to find similar counter examples for those countries?
Well, so none then. Helps my point. The current government might be a right pack of bastard scum cunts, but at least they don't go around exporting (unlike, say, the Saudis that spend money to promote their shitty variation of Islam).
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
The US is still one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot; the drop-off is pretty steep once you get too far east of western Europe.
America? Free?
In the US, you are free to:
Work a drudgy job
Pay taxes, deducted weekly from your pay, and levied higher if they think you didn't pay enough over the course of the year.
Pay taxes at the fuel pump
Pay taxes at the grocery store
Pay taxes when you buy alcohol or tobacco
Pay taxes when you somehow manage to buy a luxury item
Pay taxes on your property anually
Pay taxes on your vehicle
Pay levies for public scools
Be assaulted by police, who illegally confiscate any recording devices you have.
Speak publicly and exercise your right to assemble and address grievances in authorised "free speech zones"
Be subjected to brutal beatings if you exercise those rights anywere else
Be subjected to brutal beatings if you exercise those rights in the designated areas, if the message is controvertial or inconvenient
Be innundated in outright lies and yellow journalism 24/7 during election years
Choose which political dick you want up your ass for the next 4, 8, or 10 years (depending on level of govt)
Buy legal immunity if you are wealthy enough
Get totally shafted in the legal system if you aren't
Get enjoined as a spurrious "john doe" in a copyright case with flimsy evidence
Have your internet unplugged through mere allegations.
Get presumed guilty until proven innocent in matters involving copyright via the DMCA
Be arrested for spurrious offences only tangentally related to interstate commerce
Be detained indefinately without evidence or council if even suspected of engaging in terrorism
Be detained indefinately if you are the wrong race.
And so much more!
Just look at all those freedoms!
The USA is a GREAT place to live!
(oh don't get me wrong. the usa is ok. but we're a long long LONG way from that whole 'land of the free, home of the brave' thing people DIED to make happen. We should all feel great shame at how far we have fallen.)
You are correct, however these laws have not been found unconstitutional. You may, if you wish, view it as being a Schrödinger's Cat law - neither constitutional or unconstitutional until such time as the Supreme Court rules. However, enforcement will carry on as if it is constitutional until such time as it is found otherwise.
By your logic, every law is unconstitutional until affirmed to be constitutional. Except that's not the way our government works -it's an opt-out system, not an opt-in one. It's worth noting that the representatives who actually get the classified briefings are not running to cancel these programs, and - unlike corporate regulations - there's no money changing hands between the NSA brass and congress. That doesn't absolve the NSA, of course, but it's not quite a damning.
I have no love for the NSAs methods, but having grown up within a half-hour drive of Ft. Meade, it was no secret what the NSA did. I figured it was actually probably a lot worse given the size of the data center they were building in Utah (and, who knows - it might be). They've been doing this for decades, it's just more efficient with digital records.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
About thirty years ago when I was working at Disney World and had free rein to go anywhere in the park I wanted, I spoke to a fellow who had just gotten here from China to work in the EPCOT Chinese pavillion. He was praising the US and praising Reagan and I started ranting about how that God damned Reagan and his lowered capital gains taxes started an orgy of hostile corporate takeovers that forced Disney to cut our hours from 40 to 30, which meant that for a while we were earning 3/4th of what we should.
The poor fellow actually started sweating and looking around as if he thought the FBI would be jumping out to drag me off somewhere like what would have happened if he'd spoken about the Chinese government like that in China.
This is not the America I grew up in. This is more like the Soviet Union was when I was growing up.
Without clear evidence, we can't bring reason to bear on any problem. Without it, we act on gut instinct. When we do that we often replace one bad arrangement with an equally bad (or worse) arrangement. Imagine, for a moment, what it'd be like if all the excitable zealots clamoring to overthrow our government had their way? Do you think these people who aimlessly accuse our government of being too big, or taxing us too much command the same thoughtful, even-handed reasoning as the framers did over 200 years ago? Hardly. If they succeeded in "freeing us" we'd only be under a different yoke. We shouldn't follow their example by acting like knee-jerk reactionaries.
I see in PRISM slide six that the NSA identifies two companies--Google and Yahoo!--as "Providers". And then there are a collection of logos scattered across the top of the frame. What's the interpretation? What does "Providers" mean in this context? Does that mean they send data in bulk to the NSA? Does it mean the NSA queries those two search engines? The diagram seems to illustrate a bureaucratic workflow. Where does it indicate the NSA specifically mines data directly from these sources via non-public means? Is part of that bureaucratic process the invocation of the courts to compel the companies listed in the masthead to surrender information?
Do you see now how you can draw no straight-forward conclusions from that slide? And do you understand how all this excitement in absence of knowledge may generate misguided action?
In the US, evidence can be suppressed if it was seized without a search warrant. In many other democratic nations, the police can later be disciplined, but the "tainted fruit" is not suppressed in court.
You are told, upfront, they can and will cut you into pieces and leave you in a ditch with no identifying marks (or worse, and to your family too)
Seriously? Do they actually say this sort of thing? Your family too? Sounds like joining the mafia or some kind of organized crime group. Of course I would imagine that people who join the NSA because they read a lot of cold war spy thrillers will eat this stuff up and ask for seconds.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The Heritage Foundation is based in the US. That doesn't prove anything.
First, I'm going to try to prove that you're wrong. I'm going to do that by showing that your argument is flawed, and can be rejected on that basis. Following that I'm going to try to prove that I'm right. I'm going to do that by showing that Argument from Authority is a valid inferential technique. Here's why your argument is flawed. You're saying that the US isn't free because the entity stating that it's free is based in the US. You're arguing against an argument because of some attribute of the entity making the argument. That's flawed because arguments stand on their own. To argue against the entity making the argument is a fallacy known as argumentum ad hominem, which can be translated as "argument against the man" and is sometimes colloquially called an ad hominem argument. You've just committed the ad hominem fallacy. Since your argument is fallacious it can be rejected.
Second, Argument from Authority is a valid inferential technique. In fact, that's the reason authorities exist, to deliver us conclusions that are too difficult for people not schooled in the art to reach. Now, to be a valid Argument from Authority, it must meet four prongs. The first prong is that the Authority must be an actual authority. You can find information about their authority here. Second, the authority must be an authority in a relevant sphere of inquiry. You can find information about relevance at the same site. Third, if the sphere of inquiry is well established then there must be general agreement in the field, and if not then the authority must have a reputation of having made correct predictions. You can find information about agreement at that same site. Finally, the authority must explain, so far as possible, the reason he reached that conclusion. You can find information about methodology at that same site. Therefore, I have made a valid appeal to authority and the conclusion I stated may be relied on with some confidence.
And Singapore is rated 8 steps above the US. Singapore, which has an actual dictator and all kinds of crazy laws.
You can find the reasons Singapore is rated so highly here.
And Chile beats the US in terms of freedom? Well at least they are not aiming high.
You can find the reasons Chile is rated so highly here.
In any case your whole post is basically an Argument from Authority. You are saying, "This is what the Heritage Foundation thinks."
The actual fallacy is called Argument from Inexpert Authority. An Argument from Inexpert Authority is an argument from authority that does not meet one or more of the four prongs I outlined. Since the argument I made meets all four prongs it's a cogent argument.
Try actually making a real argument to support the view that the US is "one of the most free countries in the world by a pretty long shot".
You can find the reasons the United States is rated so highly here.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Their dilemma is that if Snowden is just making it all up then he hasn't broken any US law and their attempts to extradite him are just harrassment (sic).
Or, perhaps, the US is going after Snowden because he broke the law in releasing classified documents.
Name something pertinent that was done differently than Bush. Go ahead and look, but outside of lies and fabrications you won't find anything.
- Obama ordered US citizens killed with a drone strike. Bush merely locked up US citizens without charges.
- The Bush administration leaked classified information intentionally as a way to push the case for war and to punish political opponents. Obama severely punishes anyone who leaks classified information.
Those are changes in policy. Probably not the changes that citizens who are paying attention wanted to see, but changes nonetheless.
I am officially gone from
Can you give even a single example of a freedom that Americans have that most other countries don't?
How about the right to bear arms? You didn't really think too hard before ranting, did you?
There is no longer a left or right, or Democrat and Republican. It's one team
Sorry, this is just flat-out incorrect. People who keep parroting this line tend to be either single-issue voters (where neither party agrees with them) or willfully ignorant. There are very much two parties, and they do want very different things. For example, the US is in the middle of the largest restructuring of its healthcare system ever, and whether you agree with it or not you can't reasonably say that it would have happened had the other party been in power.
Both parties would like to initiate a lot of change, but you're not seeing any because there isn't a supermajority for either party in the Senate to overcome fillibusters and push through anything really controversial. If you ever one party or the other get 60 solid votes in the Senate, boy will you find out fast just how eager they have been for a long time to show their differences and initiate significant change.
It's sad that both parties toe the same line when it comes to national security vs. civil liberties... but please don't try to pretend that both parties are the same. It inspires apathy among the poorly informed and perpetuates the myth that voting doesn't matter.
"95% of all Slashdot
Uh. I am one of those people. I believe that the only way to stop sliding down this slippery slope into tyrannical police state misery is to start forming a rebel army and maybe in 50 years or so start a second civil war. This time the slaves that we want to free are ourselves. I'd settle for say Wyoming and Montana and maybe Alaska seceding from the union and resetting the timer back to 1776 and resetting the version number of The Freedom Experiment to 2.0. It would be nice if we could get Oregon or Washington State so that the new country within a country would not be landlocked.
That's scary. You're the type of person who roams around with weapons, seeking to replace the old lot and ultimately wind up being more of the same. Study the political affairs in certain northern African countries to get an idea where you're headed. And here's a helpful hint: the American revolutionaries didn't want to be revolutionaries. They wanted freedom without violence. If you're pedaling violence in hopes it'll lead you to freedom I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm also afraid that, if you succeed, you'll find life's a lot more difficult than you expected without the social, economic, and political advances of the last 200 years. You'll also find that the world has changed a lot since the Constitution was ratified, and I hope you'll enlighten yourself with much evidence that suggests the Framers never intended for us to live with the law exactly as it was written in 1787.
Actually I'm now convinced that your protest is not genuine. I suspect you of being either a shill or otherwise having an agenda. Those slides are so obvious. They are not in the least bit ambiguous. Either you believe them or you don't, but their meaning is quite clear.
Notice how you didn't even attempt to legitimately answer a single question I made about the slide? You just launched into an ad hominem attack, and willfully assumed the slides say what you want them to say. If Edward Snowden had leaked General Alexander's mother's recipe for chocolate chip cookies, you'd be convinced it was a government conspiracy to spy on you. Sorry, bub, but you're not that special to warrant much interest (even with your rebel yell). And neither am I. I'm no shill and I have no agenda. I'm just an ordinary guy (who writes software for a living, trying to start a business) who prefers using evidence-based reasoning to guide his actions.
Except that you have a problem. Those jobs aren't worth what it costs someone to live on. This is a big deal. From a pure economics view, that difference has to come from somewhere. Someone has to make it up. And if you say the gov't does, then you better make sure it's a minority of people that live in that situation or your country is insolvent.
Getting an asylum is not the same thing as immigrating. The asylum by it's nature is a temporary status - until the situation that forced you to seek the asylum has changed (i.e. you were fleeing the war and the war is over). However, if you determine, and are able to convince the authorities, that the situation is still bad or got worse (i.e. the bad guys won the war and will kill you the moment you come back) you may ask for a residency in the country that gave you asylum. In most civilized countries, and in most cases it's just a formality. From there on, you might ask for a citizenship.
That said, I'm just going to note here that the bill to strip the NSA of these powers was supported by more democrats that republicans -- but the split was by no means a party-line vote.
The split can be attributed to a major disparity in campaign contributions between the sides, with the "no" votes receiving 122% more than the "yes" votes.
You can thank SCOTUS for enshrining corruption as "free speech."
If you could go back in time and tell someone that in twenty five years we'd have a black President that folks insisted was a Muslim who wasn't born here, that we'd be holding prisonmers for years and years without trial, that the government would be looking at everything you do, that you couldn't fly an airliner without being frisked, a US citizen would flee to Russia to beg for asylum because he's being prosecuted for telling the truth, and that many people would actually be ok with it, you'd wind up in a rubber room... and the time travel bit would be the least crazy part of your wild fantasy.
I'm actually not sure if your post is sarcasm, or if you are one of the most seriously-warped armchair fascist-wannabes I've yet encountered.
I'm hoping for the former.
Wow. You're probably insane and should seek psychiatric care.
Putin could decide he'd like to see Snowden's buddies release his failsafe leaks. All he'd have to do is make it look like the CIA offed him, his buds then release all their secret info. And Putin can pretend he had nothing to do with it...
The entire cold war was a lie, and the UNITED STATES were the bad guy the whole time.
YES the entire cold war was a psy-op - Russia and the USA were actually allies the whole time.
Yes the Russians are more "American" than the current incarnation of "America" - and are throwing in our faces what kings and queens we've indeed become.
I'm a liberal, and the only thing I can reply to such a preposterous thing is, "fuck off". You do not represent me or the majority of liberals. We do not like the NSA spy program, and yes, what it does is a huge violation of people's natural right to privacy - and there's nothing exclusively libertarian about that view, it's just basic common sense.
The problem is that you generally agree to allow 3rd parties to expose your confidential information to the government if the government can legally compel them to do so. The 3rd parties may be bound by laws or self-interest to protect your data from unauthorized snooping by hackers and identity thieves, but that is a separate matter.
You say "It really is impossible to participate in the modern world without engaging in such transactions". This is incorrect. It would be inconvenient to try to avoid transaction confidential information through 3rd parties, but it would not be impossible. Or at least, any constitutionally protected behavior could be done. Renting a car or getting on an airplane might be impossible and you would face serious hurdles in securing a place to live or even a job.
You may feel entitled to privacy when you splash your spending habits and personal communications all over myriad 3rd party controlled networks and databases, but you are kidding yourself.
You are entitled to envision rights that you think should be guaranteed and work towards those guarantees, but if you fuck with the world as it is, as Snowden did, you better be sure that the internet kudos are worth forfeiting a lot the real rights that you may currently take for granted.
Gitmo is only used for foreign combatants captured in a theatre of war. Surprise, if you were an american citizen but fought for the Axis during WW2, you would have ended up in a military prison the same as any other combatant.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. So basically you're saying that because someone says they are an authority, that makes them an authority.
While I'm not going to defend the other guy's argument, I am going to say that your reply was equally poor.
All the Heritage foundation gives are numbers and some general information. I'm sure they probably know more about it, but how do they quantitatively rate this stuff? What's a score of 100 mean? Perfect freedom or a perfect system (in their eyes) - not that I bothered to look, but the scale is sure relative. If the scale is a survey of how people felt then... well, they sure didn't ask for MY opinion.
I'm sorry, but you are willfully being ignorant. While I would agree that there are a couple really honest and well intentioned people holding political offices, the Democrat and Republican players have become invalid. When someone claims they will do something, and does the opposite, we call them a liar. The majority of people in office spouting Democrat themes or Republican themes are acting, and liars. Look at _facts_ regarding what they do, not what they say.
And no, it's not a one ticket issue. This is everything from maintenance and upholding the Constitution, to foreign policy. The Republicans and Democrats both denounced and bashed (illegally) Snowden, they both want war with Syria, they both want to spy on us, they both back DHS and TSA expansion even when their parties say that they should not.
Facts do not back what you believe, but you are happy living in an illusion. Goody for you!
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Behold the left-wing argument, complete with no substance yet full of appeal-to-emotion bullshit like "living wage" and "slavery."
It's not something limited to left wing. Libertarians also love this kind of BS, with slogans such as "taxation is theft" and "public healthcare is slavery for the doctors".
My country enforces arbitrary drug testing and arbitrary searches through sniffer dogs.
While not enforced procedure, the police can perform strip searches. Airport guards can search baggage and they were 'searching' footwear several years ago. This year, all international airports have installed body scanners.
Recently, an immigrant mugger was tasered 28 times which combined with probable drug use, resulted in death. The media thankfully are making an example of 2 instances of police officers beating prisoners this year.
While not an outright danger, here the police have always been an elite 'boys club', willing to punish outsiders for contempt.
In the last few years, the USA has been quietly re-writing the copyright/surveillance/terrorism laws of other countries. Look at the Kim Dotcom debacle.
Thankfully, my government doesn't want to spend more money putting people in cages, so the incarceration rate is constant. Actually, since a lot money is now being spent servicing the indigenous population, the incarceration rate for minor crimes will drop in ten years.
Ironically, as a Russian citizen, I am in fact concerned about US, too. Because whenever your government persists in fucking you in the ass, our government uses it as an excuse to do the same. "See, you are talking about freedom and stuff, but Americans are doing it, too - and you've always said that they are a model of a free country."
What the first guy said. It's only one party with two faces. Very much conservatives and A just plain conservatives. It was long ago that the land of the free was no more.
Gitmo is used for a new category of people made up because it was convenient.
This isn't even close to the military prisons you refer to.
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Wierd_w you nailed it!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You seem to be confusing things that sometimes happen in the US with things that always happen in the US.
I don't recall claiming that any of my points always happen. They do however happen with sufficient frequency that it is a fair criticism of freedom in the US.
1. I've seen a dui roadblock once in the US (another one in Canada). The officer asked a couple questions ("had I been drinking?" "no") then let me on my way. It's not like the Iraqi style checkpoints where the whole vehicle gets searched over.
You were simply lucky and you probably were willing to be interrogated. I am not willing to be interrogated by them when I have done nothing wrong.
2. That's a generalization. Some airports just have metal detectors. If you're flying on a private plane you won't see any of that. Pretty much the same in other countries.
They are fair generalizations. It is true that some of the time you are allowed to simply go through a metal detector, but not all of the time. Many people have been abused due to this insane system that no other country has had. And I wasn't referring to private planes. I was referring to commercial air travel which is what the vast majority of people use to travel long distances.
3. That may be true for some police officers (the ones you see on youtube), but you're not going to read about the millions of friendly interactions that happen.
Again I didn't mean to imply that 100% of police officers are abusive sociopaths, but I do think that in the US the majority of them are.
I bet you could find similar bad apple officers in other countries.
Not nearly as often. At least that has been my experience. I have never actually met a (male) police officer in the US that did not have that sort of angry, aggressive, bully kind of personality. In other countries I have found that such people are the exception rather than the rule. And youtube seems to bear this out. Search for "police brutality" and see how many of the resulting videos took place in the US.
As for an American freedom most countries don't have - out first amendment rights are a great example.
I don't think this is true. You may think you have more free speech rights on paper, but in the real world you do not.
In the US we have may have free speech compared to China or Cuba or Russia, but not compared to most Western European countries. There is a long list of countries with equivalant free speech rights to ours. We are not so special in this regard. As someone has pointed out probably the only freedom we have that is unique to the US is our freedom to own a gun in certain states.
You seem to think that there are all these perfect countries outside of the US, but failed to list a single one of them (aside from the ones with friendly police - Cuba, Laos, Columbia, and Malaysia)
There are no perfect countries and I never claimed there were. It's generally only Americans who think their own country is more or less perfect. Compared to the US, Cuba, Laos, Colombia, and Malaysia all have police who tend to be relatively normal human beings who don't have an aggressive mililtary war-like mentality toward citizens. This is based on my personal experience living in these countries and interacting with actual police officers on occassion compared to my experiences with US police.
You seem to think that there are all these perfect countries outside of the US, but failed to list a single one of them
I haven't listed a single one because I don't think there are any perfect countries. Most countries overall are just as bad as the US when it comes to freedom overall. I wasn't arguing that there existed some great free society that we could all move to. It doesn't exist. Some
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
As I like to point out liberals and libertarians used to be allies when it came to personal (non-economic) freedoms. Back in the 80s. Maybe early 90s. At least that's how I remember it. Was it 9/11 that changed that? The police state seems to truly have bipartisan support now.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
This disinflation is a result of the globalist economy model. American pay is overinflated in comparison to the pay in China, or Bangladesh. Free trade to "bring up" those countries is working-- But at the cost of economically disadvantaging US and other 1st world economies.
The disparity between the wealthiest and poorest in the USA continues to grow. I call shenanigans.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
LOL: They got freedom now and we got B. O..
I agree with your diagnosis, but not your prescription. Forcing employers to pay people more than they're worth is just - stupid.
The more appropriate solution is (a) for state welfare to provide a minimal "living wage" to everyone, and (b) for this welfare to be given to everyone, all the time, regardless of what other income sources they may have.
The "minimal living wage" level can be pretty low - it's not unreasonable that people on this level of income should have to make compromises in how and where they live, e.g. sharing a house or apartment with several other people, or moving to North Dakota - but it should be 100% reliable and paid automatically, with no fuss, no paperwork, no qualifications of any sort beyond citizenship and a pulse.
Absolutely disgusting. Hope he rots and eventually pickles himself in vodka like the MI5 spies. Traitor, thief, and felon will have blood on his hands when the enemy makes use of his disclosures. Never mind the gigabytes of secrets he has given to the Russians and Chinese to sell to Hezbollah and the Iranians.
That heritage foundation index that you linked is a poor source to quote as evidence in this discussion, as they clearly are only measuring economic freedom (it's clearly mentioned in every page of that index), or, in other words, how free you are to rake in the money, and how much the country's economic system facilitates that.
The index does not measure, and has nothing to say, about the main topics at hand - civil liberties and human rights - so it doesn't refute the binary guy's claims even one bit. In fact, it's almost completely unrelated to his claims.
so which is it?
he can't be a 'hero' either...by your logic at best he's a sad sucker for the military/industrial complex
see, no matter how you slice it Snowden bungled this whole thing and you can't switch your argument mid-stream b/c I made a valid point about the NSA programs info released in 2006
however, Snowden still released **operational** details and that **is** a crime!
in 2006, the existence of the program and the type of data they collected was announced
Snowden released powerpoint slides about its usage including its name, processes and procedures, where it is located, what staff use it, and opertational details of actual use cases
That's different
it's the same as the US knowing that the military is hunting terrorists with drones vs leaking a copy of a dossier on a specific mission that says what time the strike will happen...broad strokes vs operational details
same...yes we knew the **existence** of the NSA programs in 2006 but not **operational details** and that matters...one is open info the other is secret
so you have to conclude his plan to 'leak' the documents was, at minimum, a pointless risk of his entire future for little to no **actual** gain
and as far as starting a 'national conversation'...Snowden could have done all kinds of things that would start a 'national conversation' without breaking the law
No way around it...Snowden bungled this
Thank you Dave Raggett
I kind of think that is going to have to happen in the future because there will be so much surplus labor. It just doesn't seem that there is enough work to go around anymore.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Consider walking somewhere in New York city. You will be 'seen' by potentially thousands of people but noticed by none. Ask them 5 minutes later and show them a picture of you and you'll get no useful information. Yet you were in 'public' and were seen many times over. That is the privacy of being lost in a crowd that you can have even in a public space.
That is a terrible analogy.
If you take a walk through London or NYC, you'll be captured by potentially hundreds of cameras (a lot of businesses in NYC will have security cameras, same with London). If someone wants to find where you've been they can find a way to search those cameras (pretend to be cops, public cameras would be subject to FOI). The information can be retained for some time.
"Getting lost in a crowd" depends on no-one looking.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Boy is dead man walking... Putin gave the NSA several weeks to bag him at the airport before he was actually "inside" Russia... But again, the NSA/CIA are a failure because they are supposed to clean these messes up on their own... Or fall on their swords... That this got left at Obama's feet means they SEVERELY disrespected him. Obama needs to be "Darth Vader" -ing his security chiefs (and families if needed) and fast-tracking promotions till the Snowden problem is fixed... Note, I didn't SAY Obama order Snowden killed... Whatever NSA policies are for this should NEVER REACH the President to make that call.... If it gets in the open... NSA directors fall on their swords and accept responsibility.
The airport would have been too public.
You've got to be a fool to think they wouldn't have planned it though.
Now he's inside Russia there's a chance he can disappear down a dark alley. The problem any would be "disappearance" would have is that Snowden made himself a very public person. So if he stops being seen all of a sudden people will notice. So any potential assassinations need to wait until he's disappeared from the public consciousness. If any three letter agencies or politico's thought that they could get away with killing him, it would have been on the news moments after it happened.
After he's gone from the public consciousness, there's no point in killing him either. At this point you need to put him in front of a judge, a good show trial to make an example of him (a la Manning). The NSA/CIA et al are not tin pot dictatorships concerned with petty revenge, rather they are concerned with their effect on others so killing them quietly does not send a message to anyone who thinks of doing the same thing and that is what they really need.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Is this that much worse than locking someone in a dark hole and pouring water over his face for the rest of his life? Because your country doesn't define that as torture. If you don't, then I'd quite like to spend an evening doing that to you, and we'll see how you feel about it after a couple of hours of it.
A) what the fuck does that have to do with my post? Its not a rebuttal to go "well here is an even shitier program" does that mean you think Medicare part D does something positive, or are you just such a knee jerk partisan that any alight to Bush requires an insult to Obama?
B) I do not think the mandate is a wise policy (or frankly, moral) but, those articles are so carefully parsed it is insane. Yes, if you currently pay for catastrophic coverage only (e.g 10,000 deductible plans) then your cost is going to go waaay up, because the minimum plan provides a lot more coverage - but if 100 to 200 dollars a month sounds expensive to you for healthcare - dude, my group plan is almost 2000 a month - that's just my contribution, my employer picks up the rest. Note: that's a high deductible plan, the cheapest my firm offers, and the rate is the same for all group members. 240 a month... shit. Sign me up.
Which sort of person that calls themselves a libertarian are you writing about? The anarchists that like the label, the millionaire worshippers who want to be run by a strong authoritarian warlord or somebody in between?
It's now an utterly meaningless label which makes the comment above both hilariously wrong and spot-on correct depending on who has wrapped themselves up in a flag and stuck a badge on that says "libertarian" to hide what they really are.
Bush, and preceding Presidents from both parties, was a weasel and just pretended that killings happened without orders - there was some informal bullshit so that a leader could pretend that a rogue agency was at fault. However Bush was on vacation so much that the agencies effectively did go rogue with no oversight most of the time. Consider if Bush was not approving the killings, extraordinary rendition for torture and the rest and just ignoring it all and letting everything get out of control would that make him fit to be a leader - to me it sounds worse than what probably happened, which was the weasel deniability but still some effort at running a nation.
We know from history that Clinton ordered an attack on Bin Laden, but it was blocked, since that example has been used to justify a lot of actions since. It's very likely that Clinton ordered other strikes of some kind and that all those ones under the more recent Bush didn't just happen without himself or Cheney being aware of it. There were plenty of incidents during his father's rule that would have justified shutting down the CIA entirely if they were against the wishes of the President - so do you think he was a wimp that cowered in the corner or somebody that approved such actions? Reagan is quite a special case as well - if North and Poindexter were acting without his approval they'd be dead or locked up next to Charles Manson even today unless Reagan was an utter wimp. Hezbolla had killed over a hundred US marines, plenty of other soldiers and quite a few civilians in an attack less then a year before North and Poindexter did the deal via Iran of all places. A President that hung traitors involved in such an action would be remembered forever as a good example - yet Reagan went as far as pardoning them for everything, which makes it look like they were not technically traitors but instead doing something in the interest of the President if not the nation.
So there you go, a long tradition of such orders but unfortunately what seems to be a long tradition of being a weasel and pretending that such orders were not given. Obama is just bringing it out in the open.
I did read them , perhaps you should learn to WRITE if you didn't intend it to come across as yet another go at apparent freedom in the US.
*yawn*.
Get back to me when you've grown up.
He's misunderstood the complexity of US government and instead seen it as a simplified movie dictatorship and then mentioned the far side of crazy as shown by some early web weirdness of a guy that thought many very powerful figures in the world have been replaced by lizards. That web page with images of the Queen of England and many others modified to look like lizards is probably still out there somewhere.
I have no problems with one person being followed or a group of people being followed by authorities that have reasons to suspect something. But being able to see and know in a few seconds what everyone one has gone to or is going now, and then track whom might have gone to somewhere slightly suspicious plus everyone he interacted in 3 hops, without needing a court order? Recording all this actions in the mean time...
It's not libertarian, is common sense. You freedom is in jeopardize, adding the fact that this could be easily exploited to nefarious interests of a few top dogs and is freaking scary.
Your metaphor as mine is not even ideal to represent this, because in all history nothing has ever happened like this.
The closest i can remember is in dictatorships where the state has sponsored snitches and they report to the state suspicious people that can later disappear, so people in public couldn't do/say something remotely against the state, or be unlucky to get in a discussion/fight with one of those snitches.
Actually, it's just you noticing the way that 'authorities' are eroding privacy and hiding behind the same one dimensional definition as OP.
Having lived in Indonesia under Suharto for a year when I was 7 years old, I would say that the US is far less paranoid and repressive. One freedom that Americans have compared to Indonesians is freedom of religion. In Indonesia, there are six state religions. If you are not Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucianist, you are a blasphemer, and could be legally tried for your religious status. My family was Buddhist in Indonesia, but shockingly converted to what is effectively atheism when returning to the US (it was only much later that I actually explored Buddhism in any depth). Now that is not to say that in practice this is enormously well enforced -- but the doctrine of religious freedom that is present in the historical context of the foundation of the US is replaced with the idea of monotheism in Indonesia, and some of the minority religious groups continue to face persecution. There are many, many other problems with the Indonesian legal system from 1997 that I could bring up, that were are entirely non-issues in the US (well, for freedom of religion, perhaps only in some parts of the US -- but even so). But you asked for one, so there it is.
The index does not measure, and has nothing to say, about the main topics at hand - civil liberties and human rights - so it doesn't refute the binary guy's claims even one bit. In fact, it's almost completely unrelated to his claims.
And here is Freedom House's 2013 annual survey of freedom. In it you'll find the United States rated as "Free" (most free of three categories) in freedom status, "1" (most free of seven categories) in political rights, and "1" (most free of seven categories) in civil liberties.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Even the supreme court refers to them as privileges now.
There are good reasons why the Anti-Federalists rejected the original Constitution. They didn't trust the rules in this document to be sufficiently clear as to prevent the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Courts from acting individually or collectively to destroy individual freedom. It should come as no surprise that the Supreme Court sometimes completely ignores its responsibilities, both in big matters (look at how long it took to get rid of race based discrimination) and in small matters (perhaps we might better say, in matters affecting large numbers of people and in matters affecting -- on the surface -- smaller groups).
Privilege: (definition) A word the government uses when it is taking away a fundamental right to try to deceive the public as to what is actually going on, see also "propaganda".
The distinction between right and privilege, as it is commonly expressed by people, is meaningless. The Bill of Rights was written to be an open-ended document, that's why we have rights "retained by the people" (9th Amendment) and "reserved to the people" (10th Amendment). This means the commonly heard claims of the form that "the law says nothing about a right to do X, therefore X is a privilege not a right" have zero information content.
Typically people making a statement like that are either ignorant, or ethically incompetent, or both.
Anything an individual (i.e. a real, live, person) does that is reasonable conduct, under the prevailing circumstances -- where reasonable is defined by the people, not the legal profession, not the courts, and not the government, is protected as a right by the Bill of Rights. Such protection is an example of one of the more fundamental rights "retained by" and "reserved to" the people. Anything else ultimately ends up being unethical practice of law, for reasons that have been discussed at length on Slashdot in the past and need not be repeated here.
Individual rights can be limited, but only where the rights of one individual run up against the rights of another. For example, a person's freedom to wave their fist around can be limited when that fist comes into contact with another person's face (the limits that can be imposed are subject to a variety of considerations, for example defence of self and others).
Similarly, a person's freedom to make noise or sound can be limited when another person has to hear that noise, and a person's freedom to operate a machine can be limited when doing so is extremely dangerous to others. This does not turn a right into a "privilege", a different word that apparently means the government gets to decide who can do what, without regard to whether or not it is reasonable in the eyes of the people and thus protected conduct.
Under the Bill of Rights, as part of the rights reasonably asserted as arising under the 9th and 10th Amendments, the individual has the maximum freedom consistent with not directly causing problems for others.
Businesses, and individuals carrying out actions as part of working for a business, need not receive the same degree of protection as individuals doing stuff outside the scope of a business transaction. There is always overhead to doing business, so some regulation is expected, and history has shown that having some limits on business is better over the long term for both the businesses and for society. We don't need rats in our peanut butter, or toxic waste buried under our homes, or shrink wrap licenses, or patent trolls, or abuse of copyright law, or abuse of tort law, and other inappropriate practices people in various businesses have historically attempted to engage in to the detriment of society, and reasonable regulation to prevent this is a good thing (the key word here being "reasonable").
The problem is getting government and the legal system to recognize all of this. Recognizing the open-ended nature of the Bill of Rights is required by the oaths ever
Anna Chapman's place.