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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 see your trick! Lure him into Europe with a free prize -- and then extradite him! He'll totally fall for it...
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!”
for The Freedom from Thought Prize. He has to pick it up at the Hague. He gets three for two if he brings Cheney and Rumsfeld along.
how a prize named after Andrei Sakharov is gonna go over with Snowden's landlord, a veteran of the KGB that tormented Andrei Sakharov.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
For those who wonder what this prize is about, a quote from the linked article. The question is who proposed him and if he makes a real chance.
Members of the European Parliament are officially nominating fugitive US leaker Edward Snowden for a prize celebrating freedom of thought, a parliamentary representative said Wednesday.
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.
More info about past winners on Wikipedia.
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.
"Bahnhof, a builder of futuristic-looking data centers" Has nominated Snowden for the peace prize.
I wouldn't expect those morally corrupt idiots to actually award him the prize. It would restore some of their credibility if they did though.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Let's take Obama's Nobel Prize away and give it to Snowden.
I agree 100%. He's done more for liberty in the USA than any politician has done in 50 years. he's actually managed to push surveillance as a topic of conversation at the average american's dinner table. That alone is an excellent achievement, nevermind the rest he has done.
That all being true, no matter what Snowden or any other activist does to try and roll back the fascist encroachments of absolute power - the peace prize world is off limits. Heroes of the people like Manning, Snowden will continue to be labeled traitors and excluded from all significant high profile peace prizes, Time Person of the Year, in large part due to the failure of our intellectuals:
The article is an attack on the intellectual culture in the U.S., which Chomsky argues is largely subservient to power. He is particularly critical of social scientists and technocrats, who he believed were providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the crimes of the state
Intellectuals have betrayed us all before and it will continue to happen until a groundswell of people start to shun, exclude and shine a bright constant light on these mostly unnamed behind the scenes policy setters who have corrupted their purpose blinding following the "party line" subservience to power.
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.
Because we in the west are not supposed to behave like that. By behaving exactly like what we're always preaching against we give countries like russia a carte blanche to do as they please.
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?
The price of life in Russia and especially in Moscow is very high. The government of RF does not assist E.S. in fear of further reprisals from the US government.
E.S. has to hire a protection from a private security company, an apartment, etc.
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.
The TL;DW version of Cold Fiord's video on Conservative policy think tank Hoover Institution intellectual Thomas Sowell and his book "Intellectuals and Society"... for those that are interested...
We must liberate Europe of its harboring terrorists leaders
The grass isn't any greener over here so yes please take all our politicians but don't you dare bring any of your own.
I thought the prizes were goldy or bronzy---not irony.
With the recent PR coup over Obama on Syria I'm now starting to question Snowden's true motives.
Instead of flying from Hawaii directly to a S.American country that, later, offered him asylum he flies to Hong Kong and stays at the Russian Consulate.
Then flies to Moscow, slums it in the transit area for a month, staying in the press headlines (including causing the forced landing of Bolivian president Evo Morales due to a rumor that Snowden was onboard). Finally getting a 1 year visa to stay in Russia.
Now don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the NSA, and allies, illegal activities have been brought to light.
However I'm looking at Putin and the Kremlin and thinking - nice PR work guys, you're playing the West at its own, old, game and beating them at it.
The question this leaves for me is; was Snowden really a Russian spy and rather than being exposed in the old fashioned cold war way they chose instead to make Snowden and paymasters look like the good guys through a well staged PR stunt?
It's criminal to tell people the government committed crimes, if you then give people proof when others had said so and were asked "Proof, please!".
If there were no proof, it would be all "Here's some tinfoil for you!". And now we see if there's proof given, it's "GET TO FUCKING PRISON YOU CRIM!".
Foreign snooping not domestic snooping.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
Freedom to other people's thoughts right?
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.
The US has The Fourth Amendment. That makes any domestic telco laws very interesting i.e. a real court, a real warrant vs self authorisation.
Other parts of the world are different, just add to a telco act/law and you can do 'stuff' until you need to ~arrest and its all legal.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes and no. Is the "secure" information actually a security risk or was it simply declared "secure"?
Many of the things released by Snowden point to the NSA blatantly disregarding controls on their operations and then knowingly and purposefully trying to hide and obfuscate their illegal actions, making subsequent information NOT "secure", as it was illegally obtained.
He doesn't enforce federal drug laws in states that legalizes weed. That alone is a drug-war breakthrough.
They've said that before, and it has been a lie every time. Let's see if it's true this time.
The fault is in the American public in electing the previous administration in the first place, and when you move forward, you fix the source of the problem by fixing the public's attention.
The People do not elect the President. You were victimized by the "America is a democracy" lie that you were taught as a child.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've never heard anyone who said that the Saudis were good kings. By all account, including yours, they are abusing their position.
If you want to understand the point, you need to look at the inefficiencies created by democracy (each side trying to create programs and shut the other one's down, the billions of dollars put into advertising campaigns for candidates, the wasted pork.....think how much better NASA could be if senators cared more about research than getting extra cash for their constituents).
It's still better than a monarchy for reasons stated above, but please at least try to understand the point before arguing against it..........
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We're having a celebration party in your honor! Come to the US Embassy in Paris for all the festivities!
P.S - There's cake!
- NSA
Exposing secret information that is evidence of crime (in this case, about 300 million violations of wiretapping laws) is in fact the very definition of whistleblowing.
I am officially gone from
And in this case the appropriate response would have been to offer him immunity from prosecution to back and testify at the trial for all the other criminals whose actions he exposed. We do that routinely in cases with real bad guys who have no extenuating circumstances or qualities other than their testimony. In Snowdens case, his lawbreaking appears to have been motivated by the highest and most admirable of motivations - a will to obey the oath he took to the Constitution.
Of course the fact is the last thing the powers that be want is to prosecute the other criminals he exposed, which is why they dont want him to come back and will do all they can do discourage rather than encourage his return.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's debatable whether Bush actually was elected in the first place.
Technoli
The shills really have gotten very lazy. They used to register accounts. Now they just paste their one liners as Anonymous Coward and run.
I wonder if some of these shills are even human. They're so repetitive, I think some of them are bots, recognizing key words and pasting the canned astroturf response.
Didn't anyone see the Bourne movies? Black Briar anyone?
Those are fiction. Snowden revealed real things. There's a difference. (The difference being, at the end of the Bourne series, the culprits were arrested and put on trial. In fiction, those who shred the US Constitution pay for their crimes. In reality, they don't.)
The fact you evidently can't distinguish between the two is very much part of the problem.
When his victims are not waiting for him anymore? I believe his victims are apex preditors.
Would they shield him from extradition to the us... Would the eu give him asylum in the eu.....
On one hand, this is too pessimistic. As hard as our situation looks like becoming, it's not nearly as bad as the situation of the ordinary person at the end of the 30-years-war (when entire towns were abandoned because there was no one left to live in them), the depths of the French or Russian revolutions, the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, and many other historical calamities. Still ...
What I find most discouraging is that WE caused it. It's the computer scientists, the network people, the algorithm designers, the academic consumers of NSF grants half a generation ago, who discovered the possibilities of, built, and made available the tools which will be used to suppress us.
The most frighteningly ominous comment I have heard recently was from a New York Catholic who objected to the government attempting to force Catholic organizations supply of contraceptives against their fundamental beliefs: "I expect to die in bed. My successor will die in jail. And his successor will die a martyr in the public square." Contraceptives are their issue. The mere desire to have independent opinions will soon be ours.
It will last as long as we do. (Thanks for the quote, Louie). After us, the deluge.
If you think we live in a free and open society then I can only assume you think that Windows is a free and open OS.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Actually, I was not trolling. I am seriously disturbed by Obama's warmongering. I did vote for him, but I am beginning to question that decision. His proposal to attack Syria is very disturbing. The Snowden revelations are just as disturbing. Obama has done more to disrupt peace than any Nobel PEACE Prize winner should ever be allowed to do. Snowden, on the other hand has done a great service to the planet, which really is worthy of a Nobel Prize. I'm sorry you thought I was trolling. That was not my intent.
The fault is in the American public in electing the previous administration in the first place, and when you move forward, you fix the source of the problem by fixing the public's attention.
*LOVE* how you manage to blame the public and Bush for Obama's failings there.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
The fact that you ignored pretty darned -- or don't know what it means -- is depressing.
What do you actually know about other countries?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I know that the absolute worst argument to make when trying to argue for the acceptability of something is to say "Hey, look over there! That situation is worse." It is constantly used to justify unacceptable situations of every sort. I really don't care if everyone else on the planet is eating potatoes; it doesn't make gruel good food.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I know that the absolute worst argument to make when trying to argue for the acceptability of something is to say "Hey, look over there! That situation is worse."
I don't think I'm arguing that restricted civil liberties and a panopticon society are acceptable.
This quote from Orwell about pacifism in 1944 correspondence with a British pacifist is relevant, I think:
You are wrong in thinking that I dislike wholehearted (criticism of state power), though I do think it mistaken. What I object to is the circumspect kind of pacifism which denounces one kind of (state power) while endorsing or avoiding mention of another.
I've substituted "pacifism" and "violence" for references to "state power".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Whatever you'd like to believe the Patriot Act, which affected many old laws, made everything that the NSA legal. Whether it is constitutional or not is irrelevant because it was never ruled on by the SCOTUS. To think that every packet that you've sent for the past 12 years hasn't been filtered in some way by some federal legal authority is naive. I can distinguish between Hollywood and the things that are happening around that. Art reflects reality. I suggest you read the Patriot Act and what is and what is not still in effect. You'd be surprised how far reaching it is. The Constitution cannot protect you from a law that alters it and hasn't been challenged. There are things SCOTUS is afraid to touch and the PA was one of them.