Photocopying Michelle Obama's Diary, Just In Case

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Conor Friedersdorf has a good (and humorous) read in the Atlantic about the analogy that President Obama has settled on to explain his theory of the NSA surveillance controversy to reporters. 'The question is how do we make the American people more comfortable?' Obama said. 'If I tell Michelle that I did the dishes ... and she's a little skeptical, well, I'd like her to trust me, but maybe I need to bring her back and show her the dishes and not just have her take my word for it.' The analogy has been widely panned, and for good reason. Friedersdorf writes that he has come up with a much better analogy. What if 'Barack snuck into Michelle's closet one day, dug through her belongings until he found her diary, and photocopied it. Then he replaced the original, locked the copy in his desk, and didn't think about it much until she found out months later and furiously confronted him.' Admittedly, it isn't a perfect analogy either says Friedersdorf, 'but it comes a lot closer than Obama did to capturing the actual stakes in this debate, and the reason so many Americans are angry at him.'" In related news, Snowden's father disagrees that his son isn't a patriot: "My son has spoken the truth, and he has sacrificed more than either the president of the United States or Peter King have ever in their political careers or their American lives. So how they choose to characterize him really doesn't carry that much weight with me."

Comments

Analogy needs one fix

[Sepodati]

The analogy would be better if the diary was left out in the open, but closed, mind you, for everyone to see. You still shouldn't open it, but it is sitting right there and not locked up.

Or everyday the diary was handed off to a random member of the public to hold on to... and not open, of course.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

This stupid story reminds me of the story on here I read last week where the dude said he read about it on SlashCOCK.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[khallow]

The analogy would be better if the diary was left out in the open, but closed, mind you, for everyone to see.

Everyone being everyone who can sniff on a internet backbone. That doesn't strike me as an appropriate analogy, because not everyone can do that, while most people can open a closed book.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[misexistentialist]

WTF kind of email system are you using? Do you transmit your email through Slashdot comments? Sorry if I just eavesdropped on a conversation you were having with your mom.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[howardd21]

Or even a bit more. Barak photocopies the diary as described and sets it out for all to see, and it has a lock and key, but not a very good one. And nobody except for Barak and a select few have a key. There is little accountability into when the key will be used, it could be a curious person who likes to feel power; or if they want to make it official, they go and see a FISA judge who is quick to agree, since he is part of the overall system fighting the enemy. A few months later Barak notes that a terrorist has popped up on the radar, and in the interest of national security he reads Michelle's diary from cover to cover. There is nothing in there about the terrorist, but he does note that she has a very close relationship with the gardner.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Sepodati]

Is this where the expectation of privacy comes from? Because only a subset of people have the capability to open the book, you expect it to be private?

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[jez9999]

The analogy would be better if the diary was left out in the open, but closed, mind you, for everyone to see

What about HTTPS or other encrypted communication? Do you think the NSA aren't working on decrypting that too? That IS the equivalent of a locked diary.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The analogy would be better if the diary was left out in the open, but closed, mind you, for everyone to see. You still shouldn't open it, but it is sitting right there and not locked up.

Or everyday the diary was handed off to a random member of the public to hold on to... and not open, of course.

No, the diary was locked. The NSA simply strong armed the diary manufacturer to hand over a copy of the diary's master key.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[khallow]

this where the expectation of privacy comes from? Because only a subset of people have the capability to open the book, you expect it to be private?

You could keep it in a locked safe, and there would still be a subset of people who would have the right combination of equipment, skills, and/or political power to get in and read that book. No, that's not the source of the expectation of privacy or nothing would ever be private.

The expectation of privacy comes from how email is used. You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence). You aren't CCing the NSA. No one can overhear the message in normal usage unless they happen to have an email address that gets the message (say because you sent the email to a huge list) or one of your recipients forwards the email on in some way.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[msauve]

It's more like if a football playbook (obligatory sports analogy) were to be copied, then left on the seat of an unlocked car (obligatory automobile analogy).

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[hairyfeet]

Why bother with analogies in the first place when you are talking about copying some of the worst traits of oppressive regimes? We have seen time and time again how well the chilling effect works, after all it turned out when the wall fell and access to the actual records came out the STASI were "only" watching 10% of the population but that was enough to keep them in line,why? Because everybody thought they were the 1 in 10 and thus thought everything they did was being recorded and this constant scrutiny kept them in line.

I would STRONGLY suggest everyone here watch The End Of America by Naomi Wolf and please note this was made in 2007, BEFORE all this extra bullshit came out, and also note how many examples of what she calls "the playbook" of oppressive and non-free regimes is being played here even as we speak, the same kind of shit used by Uncle Joe and the crazy Austrian is happening right here in the USA folks. Now I personally believe it is because the ruling class knows we are gonna have a worldwide collapse that will make the great depression look like a flash crash and want the system of oppression in place in the hopes of being able to scare the peasants in line. Now personally I don't think it will work, once the checks that keep the peasants from starving disappear and it takes a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread the peasants won't fear because honestly they won't have anything to lose, but in any case you watch Wolf's video and look at the other warning signs and its pretty obvious that somebody at the top is pushing REAL hard to bring fascist police state tactics here and whomever is pushing this? Is obviously winning.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I really want to start CCing the NSA into all my banal email conversations now.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this where the expectation of privacy comes from? Because only a subset of people have the capability to open the book, you expect it to be private?

If this was only between private individuals, you might have a point. But this is the government doing the snooping, and there is an expectation of privacy from the government

Expectation of privacy from government is that unless the government has demonstrated specific proof they need specific access to specific information (you know, like a warrant*), you are in control of what government can access to. If there's no consent (or warrant) then the government should respect your privacy and leave you alone.

*and there's also the expectation that there is due process in obtaining that warrant, not just a court that rubber-stamps everything

Really, even if there is a subset of private people with access to your information, you can still expect privacy if there is an agreement (contract) that those people would not share that info without your consent. Privacy doesn't mean no subset of people has access. It means you the owner has control over who belongs in this subset - people cannot increase the subset without your consent, you can remove people from this subset at will on your terms, etc

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

It is more akin to Obama placing a piece of software on Michelle's and her kid's smartphones to track what they say and where they go at all times, and then made it searchable. Actually, it is more like he did to the entire population of the WORLD!

But, let's be honest, most of the republicans are all for this themselves and haven't been outspoken about it, anything to stop the terrorists in their minds. I think it's because all of these systems of eavesdropping were put in place by Bush. If you watch Fox it is the only thing they haven't attacked Obama on. They'll tear him up for obamacare or Benghazi but they aren't touching him at all on the wiretap scandal. If they wanted to they could push hard on this NSA spying issue and get him impeached for it because the public is simply that angry, but they won't because they agree entirely with it.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[NatasRevol]

postmaster@nsa.gov

BCC them on the replies to the banal stuff.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been asleep for a few news stories. The NSA are FISA-ing their way into having as many SSL keys as possible.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The diary is locked with a key that is known by almost everyone everywhere to be unbreakable. (Without using a $5 wrench on the manufacturer.)

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[gmuslera]

Considering that the NSA is not just passive snooping, but that intrudes into private networks/computers, the analogy is incomplete. In this case, is more like the diary was put in a locked box, and Obama asked the manufacturer to make him another key to access that box whenever he wants, and from time to time go there and checks whats new in the diary. And the same with their children's diary, the maid's diary, and every single (or married, or whatever) person a mile away from the white house. mm ok, is too much people, so ask that friendly person that meet the other day, that in no way could had been accused of child molesting or rape ever, to recolect most that information, and only report to him when found something interesting.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think most people can open Michelle Obama's diary that she left on her night table. It might have been Malia, but Barack is a prime suspect. Of course it's easy for him to show that by the current interpretation of the Patriot Act, he had a right to read it and was legally obliged to lie to her about it.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Sepodati]

But you send it via a changing, unknown, public-industry network run by people you don't know.

In order to be proactive on anything, you need historical data, othewise you're just reactionary.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Sepodati]

Yes, I agree that encryption is equivilent to locking something up. A warrant should be required to decrypt.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[morgauxo]

Why. Do you think nobody is looking at all that ilegally obtained data?

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Will.Woodhull]

The better analogy would be if Barak sneaks a photocopy of Michelle's diary every day, and keeps them in a three ring binder that he cleverly hides in the open in a bookcase at eye height in one of the publicly accessible rooms of the White House.

Whether or not I have a personal concern about what the USA government might do with the information it has gathered about me, I have a very strong concern about its demonstrable inability to keep that information from getting into the hands of other persons. I do not want my potential employers, insurance companies, or funeral homes to know the contents of my email correspondence with Acme Cancer Cures Incorporated; I do not even want them to know that there is such correspondence. Yet Snowden has proven that the USA government cannot keep all this information secure forever and ever after. Nobody can.

How likely is it that Snowden was the one and only person who ever got his mitts on this data? How much more likely is it that others have done so as well but have preferred to sell it under the table (like good little capitalists) than to publicize their activities (at the tremendous personal cost Snowden is paying)?

The existence of these databases guarantees crimes will be committed. There are other ways to prevent terrorism. There is no need for the USA government to be an enabler of those who would commit crimes against citizens.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming they haven't cracked it, which is probably true, it's more like, the diary was fed-exed to random members of the public, but then the NSA made Fed-Ex send them a copy of every diary they send. Having ALL the email makes the email data far more useful than it would be to random members of the public.

And HOW is copying not reading? In order to copy something you need to read each bit and make a copy. 4th amendment ought to forbid copying and i believe it does. It would be like if you sent mail and the NSA opened each envelope, made a copy but didn't look at it unless they felt like it. Dude, they opened your mail!

I believe OCR is used in sorting snail-mail. NSA could make a note of the meta-data, the whom is sending to whom, from the addressee and the return to sections of the envelope. Sure the from section can be omitted, but still, people don't. I bet they already get a feed from UPS. FedEx, and USPS.

Google et al provide an easy to use service at the price of your privacy. A replacement has to be just as good, and not cost you your privacy. Perhaps aome form of anonymous micropayments to send email would work to keep spam to a minimum ( maybe enabling widespread peer to peer exit relay - you'd collect fees per message which could be spent to send messages of your own, or sellable for a profit to spammers ) A little junk mail might be a way to fund a decent service that is preferrable to loss of privacy. Of course filtering might make junk mail sending just not worth it at all. Then the price of a stamp would rise, but I can't imagine it would rise to anything like the price of a snail mail stamp.

Of course it should be possible to send/recieve conventional email, but also send email within the network with better privacy guarantees than conventional email can offer.

Encryption should be the default for in-network communication, and should be done on the client only.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[fuzzybunny]

And also, if you were to use a secret code to make sure nobody could read it, it would mean you're probably a traitor and we should read it anyway.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The information wasn't left out in the open. It was delivered to a specific recipient (Google, Facebook) with the expectation of privacy. The government then sized the information unconventionally.
If we are to develop this silly analogy, Michelle entrusted the diary to her daughter in an unsealed envelope. At which point, Obama demanded the diary from his daughter with a threat of detention and the instruction not to tell Michelle. He the proceeded to make the copy, and then to reseal the envelope and return it to his daughter.
After a while, his daughter came clean and the mother was furious...

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously don't understand how email works. Several third party servers between your mail server and your recipient's mail server will get copies of any email you send over the internet.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Barack. It's spelled Barack.

It's sad that you know what a FISA judge is, but not how to spell the President's name.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Gr8Apes]

I think creating a spam filter forward with a rot1-13 variable of the spam would keep them busy enough :)

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Demonantis]

Lavabit really tried to keep the diary in the open? The NSA has the legal system on their side. They can do whatever they want without impunity and press companies to do it for them.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[MozeeToby]

But, let's be honest, most of the republicans are all for this themselves and haven't been outspoken about it, anything to stop the terrorists in their minds.

This isn't a party issue. This issue splits almost every political demographic 50/50 down the middle. Barely more democrats than republicans voted to defund the mass surveillance by the NSA. The senate is split, the house is split, and the polls of average American citizens are split regardless of political affiliation.

I'm convinced that a good 50% of the people who support it have no idea what the actual programs are. The normal media channels have been horrible in explaining what is actually going on, burying many of the reports under headlines that make the articles look like they are simply about Snowden's asylum requests. That's why we need stupidly simplified analogies like this one, because words like "meta-data" and "IP address" simply cause a large number of people to give up and stop listening.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[hawkinspeter]

No, it's more like the car manufacturers provide an extra set of keys to the NSA who then use them to go snooping in your car when it's parked (and locked).

Re: Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't really know how e-mail work. For 99.9999Ã of all e-mail the message is exchanged by a maximum of two mail servers; yours and the recipients.

Very, very few mails will ever be sent between intermediates and when they do it's almost always inside either of the two sides.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[gtbritishskull]

Should they be allowed to collect it if they don't decrypt it?

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[squiggleslash]

The analogy would be even better if his predecessor was always running around peeking into people's windows, starting fights, and stealing people's diaries, and then Obama came along and said "This has to stop. I promise to change all this", and then when he gets into office he runs around peeking into people's windows, starts fights, steals people's diaries, and photocopies Michelle's diary and keeps a locked copy of it in his drawer, just, y'know, as a bonus eff-ewe.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[ShanghaiBill]

Or even better: He photocopies the diary, but his daughter, Sasha, notices and tells her mom. Obama then tries to convince Michelle that Sasha is a traitor and that they should disown her.

Re: Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you consider a password protected account to be like some closed book left on the sidewalk in Times Square?

It's alot more like wiretapping - listening in on private conversations.

Re: Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

And nobody expects a switch to have the prurient interest of a human postal worker. Switches can't even read English.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The FISA court is not a rubber stamp. Please don't insult rubber stamp courts. Even rubber stamp courts are allowed to keep records of their "decisions". FISA court is now allowed to keep records of their own "rulings".

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[bill_mcgonigle]

The analogy would be better if the diary was left out in the open, but closed, mind you, for everyone to see.

Once Michelle gave her data to the paper that she didn't make, she surrendered her 4th Amendment expectation of privacy per /Smith v. Maryland/. Barack just has to say he saw a Chevy Malibu drive by.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

s/now/not/

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[MrNemesis]

I'm at work so I can't see the video yet, but it sounds like it bears a resemblance to Adam Curtis' The Power of Nightmares which posits the idea that a great deal of the western world, without any Big Bad to fight against, has increasingly overblown things like terrorists in order to facilitate the transition to a more repressive society, a process which merely accelerated after the attacks on the world trade centre. That is to say, it's not just America that's potentially in decline. Recommended viewing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

It's occasionally visible on YouTube but can be downloaded in its entirety from archive.org (uploaded by Curtis himself I believe). Sadly you can't buy it because the way Curtis makes his documentaries out of lots of scraps of archive footage basically makes licensing impossible.

http://archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares-Episode1BabyItsColdOutside

Those of you who find these interesting might also want to see his other works in the same vein, most notably:
The Trap centring on the modern idea (and subsequent manipulation) of the concept of freedom
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace basically about the 2008 financial meltdown but approached from the angle of people putting too much confidence in artificial models of organic systems.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't often set up my own SSL keys.

...but when I do, I SELF-SIGN, baby!

Re: Analogy needs one fix

[Em Adespoton]

You don't really know how e-mail work. For 99.9999Ã of all e-mail the message is exchanged by a maximum of two mail servers; yours and the recipients.

Very, very few mails will ever be sent between intermediates and when they do it's almost always inside either of the two sides.

That's only at the SMTP layer. The data itself hops across many routers. Just traceroute the recipient's SMTP server to see how many routers it touches in transit. Of course, if SMTP-SMTP is encrypted, then you're limited to capturing the fact that one endpoint contacted the other endpoint at that time with that volume of data. Assuming you don't have a decryption key to MITM the data.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Em Adespoton]

I don't think most people can open Michelle Obama's diary that she left on her night table. It might have been Malia, but Barack is a prime suspect. Of course it's easy for him to show that by the current interpretation of the Patriot Act, he had a right to read it and was legally obliged to lie to her about it.

In my opinion, any time someone is legally obliged to lie, we have some laws that need to be reworked. Government employees should never be required to lie as part of their job -- avoiding revealing the truth, yes -- but if it gets to the point where they have to lie or break the law, something's already gone wrong. "I'm legally bound not to answer that question -- please ask my superior" should be the appropriate response, ans when it gets to the President or Congress, they can make the call without breaking the law.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[ogdenk]

The expectation of privacy comes from how email is used. You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence). You aren't CCing the NSA. No one can overhear the message in normal usage unless they happen to have an email address that gets the message (say because you sent the email to a huge list) or one of your recipients forwards the email on in some way.

Wrong. I run mail servers.... you can easily run a packet sniffer and read e-mail as it goes across the wire on the local LAN as well as at the ISP unless SSL or TLS is used. And at the ISP or mail provider the messages can simply be read by a server admin. Now that TLS is becoming more popular, the NSA is leaning on CA's to hand over keys so they don't have to get the ISP involved as much.

The raw SMTP protocol is quite insecure. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Especially if you are connecting to port 25 with no TLS and spewing plaintext.

If you are concerned about people viewing the content of your e-mails, use GPG or another alternative. Anything but e-mail encryption certs from Verisign or another popular CA.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[kwbauer]

Yes, you do have a reasonable expectation of privacy from the legal standpoint. People are not naive for expecting that people at all those companies have better things to do than sniff packets and read the contents all day long as that is not why those companies exist.

You may be correct that people should not expect it in actuality but they most certainly should be expecting it legally and even more so should be expecting that the government isn't doing any looking.

It is attitudes like yours that promote the erosion in the first place.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[s.petry]

Almost, but not quite. Change the analogy to being where Obama and every Police agency in the USA has access to the diary. Yeah yeah, we all know the "if you have nothing to hide it's no big deal" fallacy. But we all _do_ have things to hide. We have uncomfortable thoughts, we have disagreements with relatives and friends, and many other things that could easily be misunderstood viewing select statements without context.

I can easily imagine Hillary Clinton's diary saying "I was so mad at Bill I wanted to kill him!". I think that would be a reasonable thing for her to write on many occasions. An FBI agent not knowing the persons involved or circumstances may wish to investigate a potential homicide being planned. The other party in control of DHS may wish to use her obviously violent statement against her when she tries to run for office. The CIA director may want a nice fat cash bonus and threaten to release her diary to get it.

We have known for thousands of years that this type of information is very powerful. This is why our founding fathers made sure to list privacy as a basic human right in the 4th amendment of the Constitution.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[ogdenk]

It's not JUST the government you should be worried about. I've been trying to make people aware of exactly how insecure SMTP is for a really long time.

I don't "promote" reading everyone's e-mail but I certainly know exactly how easy it is to intercept e-mail. I know they legally aren't supposed to but face it, we are dealing with a corrupt government that is willing to break every law that protects its citizenry from them.

Yet these bastards expect us to follow the law to the letter because they have the bigger guns. If they can ignore our 1st, 4th and 5th amendment rights.... when do we get to start ignoring THEIR basic rights? Such as their right to liberty at the VERY least.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[GoogleShill]

Configure your browser/MUA/etc to only use ciphers that use ephemeral Diffie-Hellman for key exchange. The encryption key is then not associated with the private key of the server.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[gmanterry]

I really want to start CCing the NSA into all my banal email conversations now.

That was my first thought also. Flood the bastards with email to where their email is slash dotted. What a wonderful idea.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.... nice one.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[Sepodati]

If you're handing the data over to the "public" Internet, then yeah... they should be able to collect it. How else do you do analysis, investigate and/or learn trends without a pool of data? Analysts shouldn't be able to just browse and see what they can find, though. There's too much noise for that, anyhow.

I know I'm in the vast minority here with seeing "less" wrong with this. With my job, I've never had any expectation of privacy for my entire adult life, so my opinion is obviously skewed.

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[khallow]

The expectation of privacy comes from how email is used. You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence). You aren't CCing the NSA. No one can overhear the message in normal usage unless they happen to have an email address that gets the message (say because you sent the email to a huge list) or one of your recipients forwards the email on in some way.

Wrong. I run mail servers.... you can easily run a packet sniffer and read e-mail as it goes across the wire on the local LAN as well as at the ISP unless SSL or TLS is used. And at the ISP or mail provider the messages can simply be read by a server admin. Now that TLS is becoming more popular, the NSA is leaning on CA's to hand over keys so they don't have to get the ISP involved as much.

Wrong? In what you say, where do you contradict what I wrote? Packet sniffers on a LAN or ISS? Those aren't part of SMTP.

Arguing what should be allowed based on technologic capability is fundamentally flawed. Large governments like the US have the power to near completely break you and learn whatever secrets you have to reveal. That is, they have the technology to learn what you know, just as a person with a packet sniffer has the technology to read emails surreptitiously. Should that mean then that I should have no more expectation of privacy in my own thoughts than I should have in my emails?

Re:Analogy needs one fix

[RyoShin]

after all it turned out when the wall fell and access to the actual records came out the STASI were "only" watching 10% of the population but that was enough to keep them in line,why? Because everybody thought they were the 1 in 10 and thus thought everything they did was being recorded and this constant scrutiny kept them in line.

Country-wide Panopticon, bordering on global.

Peter King

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter King's new found love of all things counter-terrorism is refreshing news, considering his well known support of the IRA.

Re:Peter King

[Trepidity]

His defense for that seems to be that the IRA never attacked America. I guess that's true, but they did attack one of our allies. I wonder if King would apply that argument to mean that any other terrorist group is fine as long as they don't launch attacks in the USA (or against American embassies, maybe). For example, the Kurdish PKK has only attacked Turkey, not the USA.

Re:Peter King

[Pi1grim]

Well, you can recall the USA used to finance some of those organizations to fight USSR in Afganistan. After the USSR dissapeared the organization turned on it's former master and went from freedom fighters to terrorist in a blink of an eye. So yes, it's pretty much the definition.

The reason that Michelle found out

[TheP4st]

He used a Xerox

Re:The reason that Michelle found out

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you by any chance use Google running on Microsoft while posting that?

Patriotism

[bfandreas]

PATRIOTISM, n.
Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Be wary when the word "patriotism" is being used. Whatever precedes or follows usually clocks in very high on the bullshit scale. It feels like it's being used to trigger a killswitch in the human mind.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously. Patriotism, as anyone knows, only applies to folks APPROVED of by the NSA sock puppets.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

Patriotism as in Patriot Act?

It does seem that the better sounding the name of the bill, the worse it is.

Re:Patriotism

[Tr3vin]

One country's patriotism is every other country's nationalism.

Re:Patriotism

[niftydude]

"And remember sports fans, patriotism is a form of racism!" - Mephisto

Re:Patriotism

[QuietLagoon]

he has sacrificed more

A bank robber who gets killed during the robbery sacrifices a lot, he lost his life and his future. Does that automatically make the bank robber a Patriot? Of course not.

Re:Patriotism

[Sockatume]

U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act. Never forget that they added insult to injury by giving that awful act a horribly contrived acronym as a name.

No, the U.S.A. doesn't stand for United States of America.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

We in The Netherlands at least of my age (41) associate the word "patriotism", hanging of a flag (outside of king's palace, military bases and on public holidays), and pledges of allegiance with Nazi Germany. We can't help it, patriotism and everything associated with it is scary.

Re:Patriotism

[Jason Levine]

I'm convinced that you could pass any legislation if you were good at coming up with the right acronym. "Well, sure the C.U.T.E. P.U.P.P.I.E.S. act would mean anyone who criticized the government would get locked up for 10 years, but do you really want to be seen as being anti-Cute Puppies?!!!!!"

Re:Patriotism

[smillie]

he has sacrificed more A bank robber who gets killed during the robbery sacrifices a lot, he lost his life and his future. Does that automatically make the bank robber a Patriot? Of course not.

The difference is that the bank robber is doing his thing for his own benefite whereas Snowden gets no benefit, all the benefit goes to his countrymen.

Re:Patriotism

[stabiesoft]

I actually think the guy got exactly what he wanted, he is famous, so no I don't think he sacrificed anything. People do strange things to get famous.

Re:Patriotism

[timeOday]

Baloney, a sacrifice is volunary, and a bank robber certainly doesn't go in hoping to get shot. Snowden DID come forth volunarily, and never stood to gain much personally in the first place. Completely different.

Re:Patriotism

[Sockatume]

Conversely I'm sure any protection-of-privacy act would be called P.U.L.S.I.N.G. B.A.L.L.B.A.G.

Re:Patriotism

[Killjoy_NL]

Please don't speak for me, I see patriotism as love for my country and defending it when it is attacked.
This however does not mean we can not ridicule or criticize or complain about our country. That is the only way to improve bad situations.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

So, bank robbers don't go robbing voluntarily?

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

It feels like it's being used to trigger a killswitch in the human mind

Not here in Germany. It just triggers the "Warning: Nazi" switch.

I guess it takes at least 0.8 Hitlers to do that.

(I'm sorry. With us Germans, Occam's razor is always just around the corner. ;)

Re:Patriotism

[QuietLagoon]

Baloney, a sacrifice is volunary, and a bank robber certainly doesn't go in hoping to get shot. Snowden DID come forth volunarily,...

Both the robber and Snowden took risks, risks that have possibly severe consequences. Completely the same.

.
Snowden ran away, and is now hiding in Russia. Like a coward.

Re:Patriotism

[Rockoon]

Humans have evolved a tendency towards tribalism.

The problem of course is that a nation is not a tribe. They are a collection of tribes.

But this is why leaders do not call the thing that they are exploiting tribalism. Nationalism is sometimes what its called, but thats only once removed. The term patriotism on the other hand is twice removed.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we know there are *a lot* of Nazis in the Netherlands.

Mostly at Gabber festivals and sports events in Rotterdam. :P

And love for a sports team is about as sensible as love for the random spot where you happened to be born: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN1WN0YMWZU

-- A German.

Re:Patriotism

[X.25]

A bank robber who gets killed during the robbery sacrifices a lot, he lost his life and his future. Does that automatically make the bank robber a Patriot? Of course not.

If you are comparing a bank robber to Edward Snowden in talk about 'patriotism', I feel really sad for you.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

Still more brave than the cowards who didn't stand up and told the public that the government committed crimes.
And more brave than the cowards who now knows that the government commits crimes and do nothing.

Re:Patriotism

[bfandreas]

It feels like it's being used to trigger a killswitch in the human mind

Not here in Germany. It just triggers the "Warning: Nazi" switch.

I guess it takes at least 0.8 Hitlers to do that.

(I'm sorry. With us Germans, Occam's razor is always just around the corner. ;)

Agreed. A flag is what you break out when there is a football(the proper one that's played with your feet and an actual ball) championship on. Interestingly most windows show a couple of flags.

Fighting for patriotic reasons is a foreign thing here. They tried to sell us the Afghanistan war by calling it "defending Germany at the Hindukush". We told them to pull the other one because it's got bells on. Begrudgingly it went through parliament when they showed that our troops would help rebuild civilisation.

Flag-waving, unquestioning patriotism is for people who slept through history class. It's like a dullards clit: rub it enough and they shout in extasy.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

what if the bank robber intended to give the money to charity? is he a 'patriot' then?

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

George Washington ran away from Long Island when the British invaded due to overwhelming numbers. I suppose you think he's a coward as well?

Your knowledge of tactics seems to be greatly lacking.

Re:Patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think the motivation and effects matter?

One person removes money from another for his benefit.

The other informs the public about abuses of power and illegal activity committed by the government.

Completely the same?

Hitler took risks, risks that have possibly severe consequences. Completely the same?

Re:Patriotism

[Zero__Kelvin]

Yeah. I say the same thing about fire fighters. They don't want to stop fires or save lives. They could care less about that stuff. They just want the fame.

Re:Patriotism

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Both the robber and Snowden took risks, risks that have possibly severe consequences. Completely the same."

Only if the robber's name happens to be Robin Hood".

"Snowden ran away, and is now hiding in Russia. Like a coward."

I agree. Robin Hood was a coward. He should have stopped hiding out in the forest like a pansy and turned himself in to the Sheriff of Nottingham the way a real man like you would, were he ever to get up the courage to leave his mother's basement!

Re:Patriotism

[Killjoy_NL]

That's why I want justice where I live, it is something I will fight for politically and if push comes to shove (which I doubt) in other ways as well.
Since I am not a sports guy, that remark does not apply to me.
Sincerely,

A dutchman

Re:Patriotism

[bfandreas]

What kind of metric does one use to determine ones patriotism? At times decibel seems to be adequate.

Another analogy?

[hcs_$reboot]

Obama requests a sworn person to have a look at Michelle's diary + contacts etc..., then make a copy kept in a private and secure place for sometime, and only report to him if there is something suspicious. Looks closer to reality...

Re:Another analogy?

[misexistentialist]

Of course Obama doesn't do anything himself, he doesn't even hold his own umbrella, but I doubt she'd find it better if his assistant was prying, unless he deputized Oprah.

Re:Another analogy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that both the President and I would benefit greatly if the analogy was reformulated using cars.

Re:Another analogy?

[OzPeter]

Obama requests a sworn person to have a look at Michelle's diary + contacts etc

Except that the sworn person is likely to say to his (sworn) buddies .. "hey man, check this out".

Re:Another analogy?

[Sockatume]

Except they're also reading the diaries of everyone who visits the White House, too. Especially the ones who are just tourists.

Re:Another analogy?

[TWiTfan]

More like a 30,000+ sworn persons at the NSA alone, not counting the 4 million+ currently holding Top Secret clearance. Not that any of these good people would ever dare abuse these privileges of course.

Hey, that reminds me. We should probably install surveillance cameras in the President's bedroom, bathrooms, daughters' bedrooms, etc. just in case he should break the law there. I mean, he probably won't break the law or do anything terrorist-related, but just to be safe I think we need to monitor, record, and save every aspect of his personal life (again, just in case). I'm sure he'll be perfectly cool with it, as long as it's entrusted to the noble men and women of the NSA.

Re:Another analogy?

[Bigby]

Don't forget that the sworn person indexes the copy to make it searchable.

Re:Another analogy?

[Znork]

And forward any interesting business intelligence or gossip to anyone who might want to know.

Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

George Washington was declared a "traitor" by the British Crown and Government.
George Washington is considered the "Father of his country" by properly educated USA citizens.

See any correlation?

As a USA citizen (at least until this is posted), the younger Mr. Snowden did us a favor. The display of the Federal Government's illegalities and corruption is always a good thing. Without Mr. Snowden's release of this evidence of illegal activity, we would suspect the Federal Government's unconstitutional and illegal activities. With this evidence, we now know of the corruption, illegalities and immorality of the USA Federal Government and its Directors.

Thank God for Pvt. Manning and Mr. Snowden.
Regrettably, whistleblowing always (and everywhere) carries a heavy price for the whistleblower.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing either of those despicable human beings to George Washington is an affront to this country, and anyone with an IQ above room temperature. Not every traitor is a hero in disguise -- most of them are just traitors.

Snowden may have been able to recover his reputation /and/ mount a credible defense on moral grounds, had his first course of action after his theft and betray /not/ been to renounce his American citizenship and seek asylum primarily amongst American's best/worst frenemies. Those are not the actions of a brave man standing up for the rest of us; those are the actions of a disloyal coward.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[bluefoxlucid]

George Washington believed in slavery and thought there should be a poll tax because poor people are too stupid to vote. The only people in this country qualified to self-govern are the rich and the politicians; all the poor white trash and city blacks should go collect their food stamps and stay out of it.

George Washington is one of the worst human beings to ever live. He conceptualized the ideal of the Party, the Inner Party, and the Proles long before Orwell.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet he was a great man ,.much more than you will ever be.
And he wasnt as far off...most people are too stupid to be voting.

I give you the U.S. Government as the proof that most Americans are just too stupid to be given that kinda power.

A good example of this is all the people walking around with smart phones that dont have any savings.
if you can manage your own resources why should you be able to vote. People like you are the problem....oh we let everyone vote even those so stupid that they will vote for things that are unsustainable.

People like you are why. cant have nice things. Race to the lowest common denominator.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[mjr167]

The difference between patriotism and treason has always depended on which side wins.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's an affront to the country.

Look how poorly the country was misbehaving! The country is like a child who gets caught kicking cats and then blames it on the kid who pointed it out.

And you're the moron supporting the cat kicking.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thank God for Pvt. Manning and Mr. Snowden."

God has nothing to do with it.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the moron beating a strawman. You know, it is possible to despise what Snowden did and what the US Government is doing, but you go right on fucking that chicken, microdick.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly. Napoleon was a traitor to the throne, ultimately lost the war and was imprisoned till his death; but is largely hailed as a patriot of France.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Killjoy_NL]

Says you :P

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

it is possible to despise what Snowden did and what the US Government is doing

Only through some horribly twisted (il)logic.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

I just asked and he said he did. He's also seriously considering giving you hemorrhoids.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you assert that one must subscribe to litany of beliefs, defined by you, if they accept just one, and it's me employing the twisted logic. This was a colossal waste of time.

Re:Snowden is a Patriot--his Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

Says you :P

^-- On the losing side

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does anyone care what the unapologetic father of a traitor has to say on anything? There was a day when we would have ostracized the family of this pitiful excuse for an American. Maybe the conservatives are right that we should turn the clock back a bit: a good tar and feathering would go a long way to helping this loudmouth recognize the error of his ways.

Re:Who cares?

[Sique]

If telling the truth about illegal activities is treason, I wonder what lying to the American public is in your book.

Re:Who cares?

[coinreturn]

If telling the truth about illegal activities is treason, I wonder what lying to the American public is in your book.

Unfortunately, it's called "The American Way" and is steeped in a very long tradition.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like how he told the truth when he swore an oath to protect national secrets? How about when he abused his access rights by accessing protected information without authorization? Do you mean to say that he /knew/ what was in the files he stole before he stole them? He was a fecking tech... he had no business even putting eyes on that material, and having done so suggests ulterior motives. His is not a difficult track to follow.

Heroes do not renounce their citizenship and seek asylum amongst foreign intelligence communities. Cowards and traitors do that.

Re:Who cares?

[johanw]

Traitor to a repressive regime like the US is hero to most of the free world (and even to most of the not so free world).

Who cares anyway wether you are a "patriot" (whatever ones definition for that is) or not? Is that such a big deal in the US? I couldn't care less wether my government called me "unpatriotic" and most people also wouldn't give a damn.

What they report here in Europe about American petriotism is something I would not want to be anyway.

Re:Who cares?

[JustOK]

Please to provide details as to the oath that he swore.

Re:Who cares?

[Sique]

Heroes do not renounce their citizenship and seek asylum amongst foreign intelligence communities.

Heroes do. It's called asylum. And it's considered a human right.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's really a surprise to you that one must swear an oath and sign a contract to maintain a TS/SCI clearance, then explaining it probably won't help, but, believe it or not, you do have to promise to keep secret data secret before being granted access to that data.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking the constitutional laws isn't 'national secrets'. Hiding those acts are for cowards and traitors.

Only a moron can't see that.

Re:Who cares?

[hairyfeet]

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

- Thomas Jefferson

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching; corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

- Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21 1864

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heroes stand up for what's right, even if it means staring down a tank on an otherwise empty street. Snowden ran away like a child who knew he'd done something wrong. He's a coward. To call him a hero does a disservice to every real hero in the world.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

He gave up everything he had to fight a far more powerful aggressor who operates in the shadows, tortures people, and targets schoolchildren with killer robots. That's the very definition of hero.

Re:Who cares?

[RulerOf]

Unfortunately, it's called "The American Way" and is steeped in a very long tradition.

I would have gone with "Campaigning for Public Office," but yours works too.

Re:Who cares?

[rwise2112]

I wonder what lying to the American public is in your book.

Unfortunately, it's called "The American Way" and is steeped in a very long tradition.

Actually it is politics, and is, unfortunatley a worldwide problem, not just American.

Re:Who cares?

[JustOK]

He was a contractor. He signed a contract. He did not swear an oath.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean illegal implicating data?

Criminals won't share with you unless you swear not to tell the cops?

Seems like there's a parallel there.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." -- Edward Abbey

Re:Who cares?

[dunkelfalke]

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Augustine Washington really say that about his son's traitorous actions against the crown?

Oh, wait. Wrong traitor. I get my centuries mixed up sometimes.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've looked this issue up and found the following information. Government employees must swear the following oath:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

There is also the following part of an executive order for government employees:

Employees shall disclose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption to appropriate authorities. (from Executive Order 12674)

This implies that Snowden would have been obliged, by executive order and in order to defend the Constitution against domestic enemies, to disclose an unconstitutional surveillance programme had he been a government employee at that time. However, he wasn't a government employee but a private contractor at that time, so it seems he breached his work contract and an NDA to defend the Constitution.

Re:Who cares?

[johanw]

Maybe it works, but in some countries it probably works better than in others. The US and Turkey are 2 examples I know where people are extremely nationalistic. In The Netherlands, most people consider those kinds of nationalistic behaviour seriously overdone and are only nationalistic when the royal family has something to celebrate or the national soccer team is playing.

Re:Who cares?

[Em Adespoton]

If it's really a surprise to you that one must swear an oath and sign a contract to maintain a TS/SCI clearance, then explaining it probably won't help, but, believe it or not, you do have to promise to keep secret data secret before being granted access to that data.

I believe you also swear to uphold the constitution, and a few other things that in this case appear to be in conflict with keeping data secret. Snowden didn't pull a Manning and dump a bunch more data than he could possibly have vetted himself; he has kept all data secret except that which he felt was not in the national interest to keep secret. He shouldn't be allowed to work for the US government again, but he does seem to have done a decent job of upholding all his agreements and promises to the best of his ability, in order of priority.

Re:Who cares?

[Sique]

So according to your definition, a suicide bomber is a hero, but a soldier seeking cover is not?

Re:Who cares?

[Em Adespoton]

Heroes stand up for what's right, even if it means staring down a tank on an otherwise empty street. Snowden ran away like a child who knew he'd done something wrong. He's a coward. To call him a hero does a disservice to every real hero in the world.

In this case, standing up for what's right involved ensuring that select information (not all information) was available to the US public. Protecting that information is required in such a case, as is protecting the method of distribution. This means protecting himself from being silenced.

It's not like standing in front of a tank; it's like being the one to run back through enemy lines to deliver a message. The fact that the person left the battlefront isn't cowardly; their entire goal is to get the message back home despite the odds. Of course, such people are rarely painted as heroes either, or even remembered.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

So according to your logic, a strawman argument is not a logical fallacy?

Re:Who cares?

[ogdenk]

Heroes stand up for what's right, even if it means staring down a tank on an otherwise empty street. Snowden ran away like a child who knew he'd done something wrong. He's a coward. To call him a hero does a disservice to every real hero in the world.

MARTYRS don't care about fighting another day.... heroes can.

He ran because it would bring a force that no one would have a chance of single-handedly defeating down on him and a propaganda machine that would successfully destroy any credibility he had after he was "accidentally shot" by a SWAT team. To stay and stare them down means either suicide or secret prison. He might have gotten a show trial eventually if he was lucky. He did the right thing.

To be a hero does not necessarily mean to be stupid and martyr yourself.

When is the last time you ever fought a speeding ticket much less espionage charges? Let's see how brave you are in that situation. But then again you probably wouldn't have the testicular fortitude to do the "right thing" when put in his situation. You would probably just STFU and hope the programs were never turned on you. THAT is a coward. Or a criminal accomplice. Or both.

BTW, Tienanmen-guy got disappeared most likely. Martyrdom might have been pretty successful for that Jesus guy, but it hasn't worked out well for most.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, you knew exactly who I was talking about based upon a pretty vague description and no relational backstory. That's the real difference between heroes and cowards that none of your hand-wringing bullshit will ever erase: in twenty years, everyone will still "remember" Tienanmen Square, even the ones who weren't alive to experience it; Snowden will be a footnote, at best, for even those of us who are living through it.

Standing up to the opposition is admirable, even when you cannot win. Running away to hide beneath the skirts of powers at least as bad, if not worse, only casts your motives in a bad light.

Snowden is no hero. He's a pawn, at best; a self-serving traitor at worst. There is nothing admirable about either.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also a fair bit in there about obeying your superiors and protecting national security interests to which you've been entrusted. But, hey, what do I know... I've only had a TS/SCI for several years, now. I mean, it's not like there are regular reviews and weeks of training every year on the subject, with increasing frequency whenever some disloyal twat like Snowden comes along.

But yeah, let's see how far selective reading of his obligations gets him in a court of law. Oh, wait... we can't, because he ran away to hide under Putin's skirt. Putin -- the former KGB agent whose country poisons foreign nationals with radioactive isotopes and locks up its own citizens for personal lifestyle choices. Yeah, real hero, that one.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see if a judge can appreciate the distinction.

Oh, wait... we can't, because he fled the country.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although Jefferson put pen to paper on the first draft of the Declaration, there were so many people involved at that time, and so few minutes recorded, never mind pursuant revisions, that it is impossible to attribute any particular line from the document to him specifically with any degree of certainty.

The Lincoln quote is a debunked myth. According to Thomas F. Schwartz’s Spring 1999 article “Lincoln Never Said That” in For the People: A Newsletter of the Abraham Lincoln Association Vol. 1, Number 1, Page 4, Abraham Lincoln's own son, Robert Todd Lincoln, denounced the quote as a fake.

Of course, that won't stop idiots from modding you up. Propaganda has always been more popular than truth.

Re:Who cares?

[JustOK]

Why did the judge flee the country?

Re:Who cares?

[ogdenk]

If our government had the balls to use tanks and bullets on its own people to get their point across, you may have a valid comparison.

Our government doesn't.... because they know what martyrdom can bring. They saw the video of the guy standing in front of the tank too. And really? That guy accomplished nothing but that video brought a lot of attention. Even if it got him stuffed in a death van. Snowden's actions got him one thing..... publicity. If he had waited for the SWAT team, he would have simply joined 10% of our population giving free labor to the state. Assuming he wasn't killed outright.

Sometimes waiting to be run over by a criminal organization you pissed off is NOT the best way to do business. Especially if said criminal organization has been "elected".

How did he photocopy it?

[OzPeter]

Did he use a Xerox photocopier?

And if so, after looking at the copies he made did Barack later confront Michelle over discrepancies between things that she told Barack, vs what he read he read in said copies? Or did he convene a secret panel that just charged, convicted and sentenced her (queue drone strike), without her getting a chance to defend herself?

(man .. I was going for funny, so how the hell did I end up in such a dark place?)

Re:How did he photocopy it?

[NatasRevol]

There's really only one path that this leads. And it always ends up in a dark place.

We just keep hoping that there's a light afterward. But given the lack of general outrage over all this, I doubt there will be.

A better analogy

[Pollux]

This is like when the NSA illegally spies on US citizens.

My point: some things don't need an analogy. This is one of them.

If I were to give it an analogy, I believe this would be the most fitting...

The NSA's surveillance program is like Soylent Green. Both are just so, so wrong.

Re:A better analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do vile libs love bringing up Soylent Green? It gets old dude.

Re:A better analogy

[jkflying]

Why do vile libs love bringing up Soylent Green? It gets old dude.

Because it's delicious.

Re:A better analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do vile libs love bringing up Soylent Green? It gets old dude.

Because it's delicious.

It is like human pate.

Re:A better analogy

[MozeeToby]

What I find funny is Obama's analogy.

If I tell my wife that I did the dishes and she's so distrustful of me that she needs to take the time and effort to physically go and check something is seriously fucked up in our marital relationship.

We don't need an analogy at all.

[rolfwind]

Analogies are valuable teaching tool to visual complex mechanisms by relating them to a hopefully familiar form. This situation needs none. It's not very complex and everyone who reads up on it should know what's going one. In this case, the analogy ceases to be a teaching tool in this instance but a propaganda weapon in how it is cast. And worse than that, it's a propaganda weapon on the 4th grade level. If that is the average level of the electorate, forget about having a democracy or a democratic republic.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Thanshin]

And worse than that, it's a propaganda weapon on the 4th grade level. If that is the average level of the electorate, forget about having a democracy or a democratic republic.

That is the average level of the electorate.

Democracy is still better than dictatorship, even when the population is composed of uneducated monkeys.

If you have a suggestion of a better system to govern masses of retards, please do present it. For an educated minority, pushing to reach it will be easier than educating the masses.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[mrclisdue]

Very well-worded and insightful comment. No mod points, just letting you know.

cheers,

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[gsslay]

An analogy isn't needed because this isn't similar to taking a copy of someone's private documents. Someone who should be able to trust you. This is exactly the same thing.

If someone has a hard time understanding why NSA might anger people, then they're not going to understand the "diary" analogy explaining it either. It's hard to imagine anyone that stupid, but I think it's easier to picture it not as a case of ignorance, but of vastly inflated sense of self-importance and disregard for others.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the biggest problems with current democratic process:
"... then elect a 3rd party."
"Well you voted for A."
"No I voted for B."
"But then why didn't you vote for F?"
"Not enough other people were going to vote for F, and my vote would have been lost."
"But if we keep voting for A and B we'll keep getting more of the same."
"True but if I as an individual vote for F and A gets in instead of B, the world will explode on its axis."
"But we just agreed that A and B are the same...." .........

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Bucc5062]

I disagree with this thought. NSA, emails, PRISM...these can be esoteric ideas to people who do not live in or around a digital world. For those who don't use these systems all the time, who can't grasp what an email is, a text message, or how "open" a broadband call can be there is a need to put the issue into a context they can connect with at first.

The use of Michelle's diary is more inflammatory, I agree, but an analogy that makes it personal would do much to put into context how important this topic is to all American citizens. So what I might say is

Every American citizen has a right to privacy as guaranteed by the 4th amendment of the Constitution. The NSA, a government agency sworn to uphold the constitution, is spying on all Americans whether they have committed a crime or not. It is like if you have a diary or journal and you keep it locked. It does not matter what is inside, it is your private writing. Some stranger figures a way to open that book and can read what you wrote without your permission. The NSA has read your diary and what ever you wrote in there can now be made public and everyone can read it. Do you still want the NSA to be allowed to do this even if you have not committed any crime? That is why it is very important for them to not only get permission, but do so in a way that is accountable to the law, the 4th amendment.

(or words to that effect).
I don't like the view that most American's are stupid, 4th grade level zombies without the ability to understand issues. That's insulting to people. I have come to accept that people (myself included) do sometimes need an abstract idea put into concrete terms first so it is relatable to experience. Once they "get it" then the extension into other more esoteric thoughts can occur.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy is still better than dictatorship

No, democracy is just another form of dictatorship. The Founding Fathers didn't create a democracy, but a Republic (at the very least they tried to).

Democracies are better at governing uneducated monkeys, but that doesn't say anything about freedom (for either the masses of monkeys, or individuals, or you). If the majority wants it, democracies can vote away freedoms

If you have a suggestion of a better system to govern masses of retards, please do present it.

It was presented long ago, again by the Founding Fathers.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[camperdave]

... or to put it another way:

[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]

"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, "take me to your Lizard."

Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.

"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"

"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."

Ford shrugged again.

"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[hawkinspeter]

I agree - as Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

My suggestion is to continually increase the education of as many people as possible and eventually we might be able to move forwards as a species. Educating the masses is the only thing that really increases wealth.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[nedlohs]

Iran is a Republic. Iraq was and is a Republic. The USSR was a republic. Any form of government other than a monarchy is a Republic.

The Democratic part of the US system of government is just as important as the Republic part.

Those Founding Fathers presented a Democracy. Hint: the people vote on who makes up the government. Sure a Republic as well, but still a Democracy. Time will tell if their system is really better - right this second it doesn't seem better than the various British style Constitutional Monarchies.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[ShanghaiBill]

The Founding Fathers didn't create a democracy, but a Republic.

A "republic" is any nation that is not a monarchy. It is completely orthogonal to democracy. USA, France, North Korea, Germany, and China are examples of republics. Some are democracies, some are not. Japan, Britain, Canada, and Saudi Arabia are examples of countries that are NOT republics. Again, some are democracies, and some are not.

The word "republic" does NOT mean "representative democracy" or anything else other than "not a monarchy".

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is completely orthogonal to democracy.

Which was my point. The GGP I was replying to was saying "if you have a suggestion of a better system to govern masses"

Republic is the system. Democracy is a concept that can be applied to any system. The two are like you said orthogonal.

And as I said, having a democracy does not do much for actual freedoms if the democracy votes them away.

The problem is not a lack of democracy.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you have a suggestion of a better system to govern masses of retards, please do present it

There are three known systems for managing human societies: religion, government, and markets. They can be stand-alone or hybrid.

In the first, almost nobody gets a say in terms of how things are run. People who don't play "go to hell" and fear is used to convince them to behave. In the second, everybody has a say, though that's largely for show. People who don't play are forced into rape cages or executed. In the third, everybody makes very small decisions all the time and the summation of those decisions exhibits emergent properties that sway how things go and that tends to correct back and forth over time. People who don't play live as agrarian hermits.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[gsslay]

I wasn't referring to Americans as stupid. The diary analogy was a response to the analogy by the US Government (personified by Obama), who apparently don't understand what the fuss is all about. And they aren't stupid either, they just think they know best and everyone should just shut up and trust them.

I don't think anyone in the public (American or globally) needs it explained to them what "they are taking a copy of all your emails, just because they can" means, or why it should make them uncomfortable.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are three known systems for managing human societies: religion, government, and markets.

Markets are a system for managing economics, not societies. Economics are only a part of society (a big part, but still only a part), but it alone is not enough to manage society.

A society managed only by markets will find itself turning into one of the other two systems. Those who don't play by the market do not necessarily become hermits. They could become the religion or government who takes over.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

And worse than that, it's a propaganda weapon on the 4th grade level. If that is the average level of the electorate, forget about having a democracy or a democratic republic.

That is the average level of the electorate.

Democracy is still better than dictatorship, even when the population is composed of uneducated monkeys.

If you have a suggestion of a better system to govern masses of retards, please do present it. For an educated minority, pushing to reach it will be easier than educating the masses.

You know, I hear this a lot, I'm not really convinced it's true: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems.html

He makes a convincing case that China beats the US on a very large group of metrics. We've always been told democracy is important and magical, but it turns out there are a load of nigh unsolvable problems with democracy that resemble the magical thinking that people often blame communism and libertarianism for engaging in "if only people weren't people my system would work fine!" I'm not saying I agree with this criticism for both systems, merely that it's a frequent statement/belief by those systems' critics. It appears that functioning democracy also suffers from such magical thinking.

Do I know the answer? Nope. Do I think I could do better as dictator of the world, yeah I probably do, along with a good portion of the world. That doesn't make me right or wrong, I don't even know the truth. I do know we're pretty broken in the US and we're not the only democracy with this problem.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - as Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

My suggestion is to continually increase the education of as many people as possible and eventually we might be able to move forwards as a species. Educating the masses is the only thing that really increases wealth.

A quote by a politician that really wasn't a particular expert on the matter. He said it in a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947. In 1947 he was pretty clearly talking out his arse on communism, because no one knew how that would turn out, only that Russia was a juggernaut and much of the west were peeing their pants over it at the time.

Seriously, this quote is from a Ra-Ra, go democracy speech given by a politician, if you're going to appeal to authority, could you at least find an actual authority to use for said appeal?

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[hawkinspeter]

I really like that quote and I don't care that it was Churchill that said it - I'm not a fan of his but he came out with good one-liners.

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[oreiasecaman]

Any form of government other than a monarchy is a Republic.

*head explodes*

That's a whole new level of stupid right there!

Re:We don't need an analogy at all.

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

I really like that quote and I don't care that it was Churchill that said it - I'm not a fan of his but he came out with good one-liners.

Very little of what is attributed to Winston Churchill ever passed his lips. He wasn't really that witty in public.

Quotes Investigator: Winston Churchill

There was even one uttered by his son Randolph that was attibuted to his father.

There will come a day

[Anonymous Coward]

When people like President Obama, Eric Holder, and every member of congress who have allowed gross violations of our civil rights are held accountable for their actions.

Re:There will come a day

[Anonymous Coward]

That day is a long way off. I doubt any of those people, or any of us, will be around to see it

Also, don't forget to include all the past presidents too. And heads of the DOJ/DOD/DOE/etc/etc

And future ones. Which is the worst part.

An analogy seems a good idea, maybe a better one.

[Anonymous Coward]

The President's dishes story seems more a web blanket than something addressing the issue.
    But the basic idea of an analogy to get the idea accross seems good.

The Diary thing seems in a better direction,
      but hopefully is a stretch past what they are actually doing.
          (Well except maybe in spirit.)

Perhaps something with the Exec branch gaining leverage from watching politically incorrect text messages from Congress or Scotus.
      That seems plausible with a bad apple doing a search he's not allowed/supposed to.

Who gives a shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucker lied to you all, and still does.
Hes just a wolf in black sheep clothes, what did you expect?

In the long run...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Ed Snowden will go down in history as an accessory before the fact to all of the future successful terrorist murders which would or might have failed if he hadn't "outed" the surveillance program. I rate him a scumbag.

Re:In the long run...

[NatasRevol]

You can rate him whatever you want. Your opinion is meaningless.

If exposing illegal activities that our country did rates him a scumbag by you, then you're not worth much to the country anyway.

Re:In the long run...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Ed Snowden will go down in history as an accessory before the fact to all of the future successful terrorist murders which would or might have failed if he hadn't "outed" the surveillance program. I rate him a scumbag.

I, and everyone else with a brain, rate you a brain-dead white trash subhuman piece of shit.

Re:In the long run...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess your opinion is meaning less as well, not sure how you rate over someone else.

Re:In the long run...

[aaaaaaargh!]

For a start, he's not posting as an anonymous coward like you. That makes his opinion much more valuable already.

Re:In the long run...

[johanw]

That doesn't matter, the NSA knows who he is anyway.

Re:In the long run...

[fuzznutz]

It must be an awful life to wake up every morning pissing in your boots afraid that those eeeevvviiilll terrorists are going to come and blow you up in your home. ...so afraid that you will let your elected officials and their minions violate the very Constitution they swore to protect and defend. ..so afraid that you will denounce your betters as scumbags. ..so afraid that you repeatedly post as an anonymous coward all over Slashdot to avoid your betters' (I can't really say peers') condemnation over your ignorance and cowardice.

Those of us that are educated enough to remember Watergate know what life was like when Americans had the backbone to rein in governmental excess. And those of us educated enough to remember McCarthy know what bogeyman witch hunts do to the civil rights and liberties of the people. I wouldn't expect your education level to be high enough to understand either.

Car Analogy

[Quick Reply]

It would be like Obama completely bugging his wife's car, not because she is under the protection of the Secret Service, but because he wants to watch everything that she is up to without her knowledge. GPS Tracking, Sound, Video, the works - he can watch her every breath.

And then when she realises that he has been spying on her, he would say "Well you wouldn't mind if you have nothing to hide! I'm just cleaning out the dirty dishes!"

Re:Car Analogy

[Jason Levine]

Well, the NSA seems to "only" collect meta-data (unless I've missed some further revelations). It would be sort of like one spouse secretly having motion detectors secretly set up in their house to tell who is in which rooms and for how long for the purposes of making sure the other spouse isn't having an affair. "Gee, Sally. You're spending an awful lot of time in the bedroom when I'm at work. Is there anything you'd like to confess?!!!"

Re:Car Analogy

[turp182]

There's a good song about this: "Every breathe you take, I'll be watching you."

And by The Police, the irony has no limit.

regarding Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama really just has not lived up to my expectations. He hasn't fucked things up completely like W. Bush and his friends, but Obama is certainly no visionary leader.

Re:regarding Obama

[HiThere]

I think you overrate him. The best I can do is "I guess he was better than Sarah Palin".

An even better analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama photocopies Michelle's diary and locks it up in a safe. All of Barack's friends, family, 'well-wishers', 'protectors' and a few random people have access to the safe. And the key is not very good either.

Re:An even better analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama photocopies Michelle's diary and locks it up in a safe. All of Barack's friends, family, 'well-wishers', 'protectors' and a few random people have access to the safe. And the lock is not very good either.

FTFY.

Email is like sending a postcard

[sjbe]

You write it up, it gets sent only to the addresses you specify, and there's no third party that gets a copy of the email (it's not like speaking in a room with a third party presence).

The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card. Sure, it's intended for only one recipient but a bunch of people and/or organizations have to handle it along the way to get it there. Only someone who is quite naive would believe that none of the people in the delivery chain would ever read the post card. Most won't care but there is no reason to presume that the "privacy" of the message will be respected. Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.

Don't get me wrong, I think the actions of the NSA are clearly illegal and a violation of our fourth amendment rights but I think people are pretty naive about just how private emails really are in practice. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[mjm1231]

No, postcard is a an equally poor (and in some ways much worse) analogy. Letter in an unsealed envelope is closer. Neither of these non-virtual objects would routinely have copies made while being transmitted.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[Anonymous Coward]

I read and get your point that if you expect email to be private it isn't....

But there is a expectation of privacy, a postcard is sent with a simple "hey, were having a wonderful time" unless you want to f**k with the postal workers and any other ogling eyes then you write it in code, no privacy is expected.

The whole point of email is the same as standard mail, if it is enclosed and meant for that address it is expected to be private, or secure from prying eyes. Of course thats not the case either as we have found out..

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[Immerman]

You might be naive to expect that nobody would ever read a postcard in transit, but realistically it's pretty unlikely - your card is one among tens of thousands, and these people have a job to do.

On the other hand I think we would be justifiably irate if it turned out that the Post Office was photographing every single postcard and processing the information it contained into a permanent database. We might even stop using postcards altogether. One could only hope - why isn't PGP more widely supported again?

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the USPS scans an image of every piece of mail that it processes, which is then stored in a database that law enforcement can access. So in effect, sending a postcard is very similar to an email, with regards to how the message is intercepted and stored by federal authorities.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[TheCarp]

Um...last I checked a postcard is usually written on the same side as the address, and we know the USPS is photographing all mail. So actually, they are, in fact, already doing this.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[Attila Dimedici]

On the other hand I think we would be justifiably irate if it turned out that the Post Office was photographing every single postcard and processing the information it contained into a permanent database.

Except that it turns out that the Post Office is actually doing that. It is photographing EVERY piece of mail and processing the information and putting it into a database. I did not examine the articles closely enough to be sure, so I do not know if that includes evaluating what is written on postcards. I suspect not, but I also suspect that the information contained in the article would not have answered the question of whether they do or not.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[pr0fessor]

You are correct they should not be, it is a clear violation of the public interest and trust no matter how they spin it legally. They are using tax payer money to do this and since it is secret... we have no idea how much they are spending for how many results and I am guessing that at this point it is a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[kwbauer]

The original intent of the framers of the constitution of the US most definitely would have included email and remote electronic document storage to be no different that the US Post or a safe deposit box.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[Anonymous Coward]

It does evaluate what is written but only the address. though as said before the address and body of a post card are on the same side, so they could very well evaluate that too. but that is unlikely.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[vux984]

The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card.

No. The closest analogy to sending an unencrypted email is making a regular phone call.

As a society we do have the expectation that the phone call is private, and that others aren't listening in. We know that its very possible for the carrier to tap a line though, should they choose to do so, or be ordered to so by the government. That is why we have laws requiring them to get a warrant.

And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.

I have an expectation that unless someones has a very good reason to be listening to my phone calls, and that someone got a judge to agree to a warrant based on that reason, then there should be nobody listening into the call.

This should not be considered 'naive'.

. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.

I wouldn't send my credit card information on a post card, but I order things over the phone regularly.

Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.

Pretty much this. But the problem is that people rightfully expect email to be treated like a phone call. And instead legally its treated with less respect than a post card.

This represents a massive failure of congress. They are supposed to represent us. They know what we want. They just don't care.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[WhiteDragon]

On the other hand I think we would be justifiably irate if it turned out that the Post Office was photographing every single postcard and processing the information it contained into a permanent database.

Except that it turns out that the Post Office is actually doing that. It is photographing EVERY piece of mail and processing the information and putting it into a database. I did not examine the articles closely enough to be sure, so I do not know if that includes evaluating what is written on postcards. I suspect not, but I also suspect that the information contained in the article would not have answered the question of whether they do or not.

Postcards are *supposed* to have a designated address area, and a designated text area. That being said, people write all over the whole thing. It can lead to some mis-sorted mail if the address recognition software happens to recognize some of the text instead of the address. The post office does indeed collect images of the front (address side) of all mail, that's how it gets sorted. (OCR, and if the computer can't read it, it goes to a graphical display for a human being to decipher).

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[WhiteDragon]

Except the USPS scans an image of every piece of mail that it processes, which is then stored in a database that law enforcement can access. So in effect, sending a postcard is very similar to an email, with regards to how the message is intercepted and stored by federal authorities.

My experience working for the USPS was that the images were kept for a very short time (a day or two max) and then deleted. It is possible that law enforcement would be able to get a copy, but they'd have to be quick. In addition, the Postal Inspection Service is pretty serious about postal employees not accessing the mail except as part of doing their jobs, but I don't know whether they give access to law enforcement.

Re:Email is like sending a postcard

[rtfa-troll]

please look up "Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program"

If it were an electronic diary

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the copy seems quite plausible.

Analogize this: Obama the tyrant

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit beating around the bush. Only the dumb Americans don't know what Obama is: the yes we scanner traitor and tyrant. Bush was bad and Obama's been worse. He's rallied the anti-male anti-white anticapitalist Americans coast to coast behind him who cheer as he takes their liberties and destroys their nation just like Germans did for their Hitler. Obama has thrown men and black especially under the bus to gain American popularity and gain it he has while the rest of the world wakes up to his lies and propaganda.

The valid comparison:

[Anonymous Coward]

* Start spying on your wife's diary and get caught, she will no longer trust you unless she's brain dead stupid. The very best you can hope for is promise it will NEVER happen again and do everything in your power to re-earn her trust.
* Start spying on the innocent citizens of this country and get caught, no citizen will trust you unless he/she is brain dead stupid. The very best you can hope for is DELETE all existing information, reform how you collect foreign intelligence data, and do everything in your power to re-earn the trust of the citizenry.

* The diary is your WIFE's, not yours, that she uses to prove things to herself, and you have no moral right to photocopy her diary.
* My Internet traffic is MINE, and you have no reason to take a copy of it without proper warrant.

And Mr. President, you will continue to have a total fail on the trust issue until you come out and say, "We had the best of intentions, we are really trying to do good for you, BUT WE WERE TOTALLY WRONG TO DO WHAT WE DID ON MANY LEVELS." Then prove how you're throwing this system away and tell us what the new one will be. (Because nobody will believe for a second you will not attempt to electronically eavesdrop... and many of us are fine with that if you do it within the commonsense meaning of the Constitution.)

PhotoSHOPPING Michelle Obama's Diary

[Anonymous Coward]

There, fixed.

Comfort will increase when Obama leaves office.

[Anonymous Coward]

I voted for the scumbag, but it is abundantly obvious that he is a lying
sack of shit.

Fuck Obama and the lies he rode in on.

Why would comfort increase?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the new guy is simply someone different with the same policies? As for lies, what did he lie about? He said he'd end Iraq. He did. He said he'd get OBL, he did.

Also you've demonstrate extreme naivete in being surprised a president didn't do everything you wanted him to. Your own mother won't do that, your own father won't, your own boss won't, you yourself won't even achieve everything you want to do in life and yet you expect someone who has as their responsibility of over 300 million people to do all that you hoped for?

Absurd.

Re:Why would comfort increase?

[johanw]

He said he'd stop the illegal prison in Guantanamo Bay. He didn't even seriously try to.

Thoughtful fact-based debate?

[Ioldanach]

"I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference - and I think the American people's preference - would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws; a thoughtful, fact-based debate." - Obama

Mr. President, how are we supposed to have a thoughtful, fact based debate about programs which are so secret nobody knew about them until a whistle blower revealed them directly to the public. About a court who's orders are so secret that entire companies shut down when the thread of an order looms, and they can't even say what the threat was.

Without transparency, there can be no debate. Without Snowden, there would be no transparency on this issue.

On the subject of privacy

[kheldan]

Plain and simple, I want to point out who else, traditionally, does not enjoy privacy:

• Small children
• Criminals in prison
• Livestock/property
• Slaves

Are you not one of the above? Then you deserve to not be spied on in your home, on the internet, in your telephone calls, emails, or physical mail. Period. The government needs to bugger off.

Surveillance - It's how the info is used!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody has their underwear in a bunch about their privacy and they are blaming Obama! This is so ridiculous!

First of all, I am not reading or hearing any alternative method for catching terrorist or enemies of the state! Should we just do nothing? What if it is you, your family, a friend, or someone you love that becomes a victim of a terrorist attack? Terrorist are using any means necessary to inflict damage to our people and our nation. You cannot effectively combat this type of intent with one hand tied behind your back!

I would never argue that our freedoms should be taken away. However, this issue is not about taking away anyone's freedom! Stop worrying about having your communications monitored! Worry about how the information is used! What everyone should be asking is for assurance that any information collected by the NSA/CIA/Home Security organizations can only be used in a court of law regarding terrorism. What this means (and I'm sure this will get people upset for other obvious reasons) is if any information is captured about someone growing marijuana, collecting child pornography, or any possibly illegal activity, that is NOT an act of terrorism, then that information is not admissible in a court of law, nor can it be used to initiate any action by any law enforcement agency (it's up to the FBI, State and local police to use their own resources)! Most likely, there is already something on the books like this and savvy lawyers out there would be all over this like white on rice!

The conversation should not be on whether or not surveillance should be used, but how the information is used and who has access to it! So, PLEASE, if you have a more effective idea on how to catch terrorist, then post it. Otherwise, stop complaining about someone listening to your phone conversations and/or reading your e-mail!

Re:Surveillance - It's how the info is used!

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are of course correct. No terrorist was ever caught until the NSA captured information on private citizens in a database. For the thousands of years before that there simply was no way to catch them!

The next headline..

[akpak]

This just in: Obama violates wife's copyrighted work, impeached and imprisoned for 50 years.

Re:An analogy seems a good idea, maybe a better on

[Zero__Kelvin]

Any analogy Obama makes is by definition broken, since it will be designed to show how everything is A-OK with the NSA, when nothing could be further from the truth. So in this case an analogy is a bad idea (so long as he is the one making it.)

Legal issue of privacy

[sjbe]

And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.

Expectation of privacy has a VERY specific legal meaning and it has little to do with your (or my) subjective opinion about what should be private. Emails do not enjoy a strong expectation of privacy in the legal sense and you should behave accordingly. I remain convinced that to act otherwise is naive. That said I happen to agree with your argument that our representatives have failed us but let's not confuse the legal issue at hand with the moral one. The laws as written do not protect email communications to the degree that they should.

Who cares about intent of the framers?

[sjbe]

The original intent of the framers of the constitution of the US most definitely would have included email and remote electronic document storage to be no different that the US Post or a safe deposit box.

Who gives a crap what the framers thought? These are the same guys who said all men are created equal WHILE OWNING SLAVES. They also intended for women to be unable to vote. That was CLEARLY their intent. If it was not they would have written a different document. Any argument that starts "the intent of the framers" is broken right from the start. You cannot possibly divine what the framers would have thought about email.

Of course no one cares. That's the point.

[sjbe]

You might be naive to expect that nobody would ever read a postcard in transit, but realistically it's pretty unlikely - your card is one among tens of thousands, and these people have a job to do.

I think that was my point. It's quite unlikely anyone will care about what is written on a post card but you would never be dumb enough to presume no one would ever read it and you act accordingly. Email communications are VERY similar. The vast majority of the time no one cares what is in the email but it's quite easy for certain people to look if they care to do so. I suggest you behave accordingly. If you have something requiring more privacy then chose a different means of communication or take steps to encrypt your message.