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Snowden Gave 15,000 Documents to Glenn Greenwald; Obama Cancels Russia Summit
sl4shd0rk writes "The American journalist Glenn Greewald, who published much of the initial info on illegal NSA programs, plans to release more revelations on the NSA spying machine in 10 days. 'The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published,' Greenwald said on Tuesday. Greenwald further elaborated on public posturing which many nations are currently taking: 'The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government. All governments are doing this, even in Europe.'"
The U.S. decided to pull out of a summit with Russia next month, citing the decision to grant Snowden asylum as a factor: "However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship. Our cooperation on these issues remains a priority for the United States, so on Friday, August 9, Secretaries Hagel and Kerry will meet with their Russian counterparts in a 2+2 format in Washington to discuss how we can best make progress moving forward on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship."
"The US government telling other countries what to do and then throwing a temper tantrum when it doesn't get what it wants."
Congress clearly considers Snowden to be a whistleblower, or they wouldn't be voting on proposals to restrict the activity of the NSA http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/24/plan-to-defund-nsa-phone-collection-program-has-broad-support-sponsor-says/ Yet Obama continues to label Snowden's actions as espionage. He knows this bullshit, because apparently he's taken down from the internet his promise to protect whistleblowers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/obama-whistleblower-website_n_3658815.html Good thing we have the Way Back Machine, then, isn't it? http://web.archive.org/web/20090227184741/http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/
soylentnews.org
And in other other news: John Lewis has just said that he supported Snowden and compared his leaks to the civil disobediance during the Civil Rights era. I'll bet Obama is wishing that he didn't give him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and call him the "conscience of the United States Congress".
Reading into Glen Greenwald's comments and some of his other statements, it would seem that much of the spying is used not for security purposes, rather it's to give an edge to certain select US businesses.
Unless you can point to something firmer, you probably have that garbled. The situation is rather more subtle than that.
Why We Spy on Our Allies - By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central Intelligence.
Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort
Airbus' Presentation on Boeing 787 - Bad CI Ethics?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Yet Obama continues to label Snowden's actions as espionage
Snowden has been charged with two things- theft of government property (4 laptops) and giving classified information to a person without security clearance. The later charge was created by the Espionage Act of 1917. It is not "espionage" in any common use of the word. Nobody, including Snowden, has denied that he did those things.
It is Obama and the Executive Branch's job to enforce existing law. They're doing that. If the Judicial Branch rules that Snowden's actions were justified, then he'll walk free.
Snowden has been charged with two things- theft of government property (4 laptops) and giving classified information to a person without security clearance. The later charge was created by the Espionage Act of 1917. It is not "espionage" in any common use of the word.
I'm not expert on the Espionage act, but the Wikipedia tells me that the original Act made the following a crime:
1. To convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies. This was punishable by death or by imprisonment for not more than 30 years or both.
2. To convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States. This was punishable by a maximum fine of $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than 20 years or both.
Snowden hasn't done either of things and there is no basis for Obama to be pursuing him based upon the Espionage Act. He has not handed sensititve secrets to the enemy, either directly or by way of the media. So unless you are aware of another part of the Espionage Act, it seems that Obama is stretching its definition to pursue Snowden.
soylentnews.org
I don't know what Kool-Aid are you drinking or if Al-Qaeda got into you, but even with all its faults, the US still is a great country. Do travel to crappy places in the world to realize that the standard of living in the US is still way higher than in a lot of places. And last time I checked the US economy still leads the world by a very wide margin. And I wonder what makes you come to a US website if everything is so screwed up, LOL.
Do travel to crappy places in the world to realize that the standard of living in the US is still way higher than in a lot of places.
Being better than someone or something else is not the same as being good.
And I wonder what makes you come to a US website if everything is so screwed up, LOL.
The quality of a website that happens to be US-centric or hosted in the US has nothing to do with the quality of the US as a whole.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You say that as if right-wing politics is so much more successful.
Are you kidding? The whole world is engulfed in right wing politics these days. Our "socialist" president is a Reagan Republican. The Tea Party had huge successes, while Occupy was effectively suppressed. In Canada and the UK there's Harper and Cameron. The whole of Europe is pushing austerity instead of bailing out the little guy.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And last time I checked the US economy still leads the world by a very wide margin.
You must have checked a long time ago, because by many measurements the US economy does not lead the world:
- If you go by total GDP, then the US produces more than any single country, but produces less than the EU countries combined, and China is catching up rapidly.
- If you go by GDP per capita, US is somewhere around 6-8th in the world, so if you mean "We produce the most stuff per person". Places that have a higher GDP per capita include Luxemburg, Norway, U.A.E., Qatar, Singapore, and Brunei, and possibly Switzerland.
- If you go by median household income, then the US loses to Luxemburg, Norway, and Switzerland.
- If you go by median wealth, then the US loses to approximately 14 other countries.
- If you go by GDP growth, then we're not even close to the top of the list.
It's not clear that the US has the best economy in the world. It is doing a heck of a lot better than a lot of other places, but it's not doing exceptionally well among other First World countries.
I am officially gone from
That Woolsey piece is not really doing you any favors.
"My European friends, get real. True, in a handful of areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing ... Why, then, have we spied on you? ... because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot ... Why do you bribe? ... It is because your economic patron saint is still Jean Baptiste Colbert, whereas ours is Adam Smith ... you have much greater difficulty than we in innovating ... It's so much easier to keep paying bribes"
It's just paragraph after paragraph of jingoistic bullshit implying that the only reason that Europeans could be mad about US espionage is that it makes it harder for them to practice their endemic corruption in foreign markets. Later on he goes to say that sometimes the bad guys might use technology for bad purposes and that Europe cannot be trusted to keep that in check, so that makes us the Good Guys for spying on them.