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Snowden Nominated For Freedom of Thought Prize
First time accepted submitter DigitalKhaos23 writes "Snowden is a candidate for the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, which honors people or organizations for their work in the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. The article adds: 'Edward Snowden risked his life to confirm what we had long suspected regarding mass online surveillance, a major scandal of our times. He revealed details of violations of EU data protection law and fundamental rights.'"
Let's take Obama's Nobel Prize away and give it to Snowden.
It wouldn't be a problem to have the NSA spying and snooping if they never abused that power, but we know eventually they will. And indeed, thanks to Snowden we know that they already have.
That's why we don't want the NSA to have this power. Because as far as we can tell, the abuses have been more harmful than any benefits for catching terrorists (and really, the programs don't seem to have caught many terrorists).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Something about the irony of these prizes:
They're awarded to the people who are still going to be destroyed for what they've done for humanity while the monsters perpetrating the obscenities against us all are going completely fucking unscathed. The villains are allowed to continue their gross abuses while we give the human equivalent of a gold star sticker to the guy who couldn't not scream.
I want to hear about the medical experiments being performed on prisoners, the serums and electrodes and soft pillows and comfortable chairs
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Considering the last 50 years, I rate Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center very highly, though a big percentage of his good work has been done after his political career ended in 1981.
Finding out global networking encryption is junk is not "political turmoil, infighting, and disruption".
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
The same way that landlord can live with an avenue in Moscow name after Sakharov.
Or... you think that avenue is under risk of being tormented too?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
European Parliament may be "officially nominating" - but their respective countries have all denied Snowdens asylum requests. Sure sounds like a consolation prize and even if he wins it, it does not let European countries off the hook for their crime. History will judge their actions very poorly - they have done the world a disservice and revealed their deep rooted hypocrisy.
Sometimes the law needs to be broken.
Wasn't the US founded by a bunch of rebels who violently rose up against the lawful authority of the time?
I do not think you understand the ramifications of what has been done.
In your defence few do, even here on Slashdot. I saw someone begging for 1984 instead of what we now have which is both far more insidious and far more subtle as well as far more totalitarian. That person is on the right track of understanding; “we” have essentially doomed the future of humanity.
Nothing less. A fait accompli, a done deal, inescapable.
We have to fight it but we can never win because winning is now impossible no matter who your are or what one might believe or whatever one claims allegiance to.
It will never go away now. Widespread ability is too sophisticated to remove it and its seductive allure as a fantasy of control will only grow stronger.
This is what fate looks like. Fight it not in delusion about winning but to potentially be able to claim ownership of yourself. If nothing else out of pure defiance and spite or even enlightened self-loathing.
Everyone has already lost but will you choose to lose in style? That's the only real choice left for every human being.
Sometimes a law being "broken" isn't a law at all, but spin by the thugs who run government.
If anyone is a traitor in this, it's the US Congress, the US Senate, the US President, the Canadian Prime Minister, the Canadian Senate, the Canadian House of Commons, the UK Parliament, and so on.
They're the ones who authorized the creation and growth of these abusive letter agencies in violation of the laws of their lands.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Whistle blowing is not a crime. It's a service.
And when the entire government you could report to is corrupt, one has no choice but to whistleblow to the media and the public who own the government.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
On any issue of importance he's either agreed with them, or folded without a fight. I'd give him a "hamstrung" thing if he'd taken a number of fights to the republicans, lost each time, and has to start compromising to get anything at all done. However he hasn't done that. He's never even stood up and fought. It isn't even that he's rolled over, he's just never shown up in the first place.
This blaming the republicans is really silly. While the republican party by and large is not being helpful, they do not have any sort of control. They have a narrow majority in the house, a minority in the senate, and of course don't have the presidency. If President Obama wanted to stand up and fight on things that mattered, well he'd have a shot at least. It isn't like they could just ram legislation past him. However he hasn't, not once that I can think of.
That's the problem.
Your evidence supports that, not disproves it. The problem is the Saudi monarchy is massively corrupt, as all monarchies tend to be. That doesn't mean that a theoretical perfect one, that is unattainable with real people, wouldn't be a great system.
I mean look at a system like the US has, it's mix of democracy and republic. There is a lot of infighting in government, bureaucracy, dead weight, and so on. It is slow to respond and rather bloated. This is by necessity, and also by design. Spread the power around and create checks and balances so that nobody can abuse it. That is needed because we deal with real people, but it is inefficient.
Now imagine a system where it is a dictatorship, or other situation of absolute power, but we have a theoretical perfect being (an AI maybe) as the ruler. It is incorruptible, cares for nothing but the welfare of its citizens and nation, and makes the best choice it can, all the time. Well that would be a hell of a lot more efficient. Shit would get done. When things needed to change, they'd just change by immediate decree. No games, no pork barrel spending, no holding the budget hostage.
The problem is, we can't have that perfect ruler. Humans are imperfect and put them in a position of absolute power, they get corrupted, generally very badly. Even if you got real lucky and got one that didn't, sooner or later you'd get one that did.
Hence the need for a more complex, and inefficient, system like what we see in modern free countries. However that doesn't invalidate the theory that with a perfect ruler a system of absolute power would be more efficient.
It's debatable whether Bush actually was elected in the first place.
Technoli