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Hillary Clinton: "We Need To Talk Sensibly About Spying"
dryriver writes "The Guardian reports: 'Hillary Clinton has called for a "sensible adult conversation", to be held in a transparent way, about the boundaries of state surveillance highlighted by the leaking of secret NSA files by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. In a boost to Nick Clegg, the British deputy prime minister, who is planning to start conversations within government about the oversight of Britain's intelligence agencies, the former US secretary of state said it would be wrong to shut down a debate. Clinton, who is seen as a frontrunner for the 2016 US presidential election, said at Chatham House in London: "This is a very important question. On the intelligence issue, we are democracies thank goodness, both the US and the UK. We need to have a sensible adult conversation about what is necessary to be done, and how to do it, in a way that is as transparent as it can be, with as much oversight and citizens' understanding as there can be."'"
"as transparent as it can be"
"with as much oversight and citizens' understanding as there can be"
Just fucking words. From the mouth of a presidential hopeful. I can't think of anything more meaningless.
The level of abuses - both the spying itself, subsequent known abuses of the data, and countless likely unknown abuses - has already done enough damage to the fabric of the ideal of democracy, that an open and straightforward conversation is not enough. When there are very real threats that people will be tortured to preserve government secrecy about this...
It's too late for the straightforward sensible conversation. Heads need to roll. Figuritively or literally. I stopped voting when Obama broke his 1 year GITMO pledge. I thought I would make an exception if Hillary was the only female top spot on one of the two main parties. I think this slashdot troll headline will make me give up on that. It'd be nice to see a non-male president of the U.S. But Hillary Clinton is day by day demonstrably failing to live up to the kind of standard which I would use if I could muster the belief that voting could help this in the same sensible fashion she is after. Things are *messed up*.
She really means that the unwashed masses have to "educated" to shut up and accept it, which will take large amount of scare stories and perhaps some *cough* carefully engineered incidents to bring home the point that the function of government is to spy and watch over all aspects of society. For "It Takes a Village" Clinton to use the term "Adult Conversation" should fool no one.
The story, is without a single suggestion from either the British authorities or Clinton, that the spying should be reined in. Rather, everyone seems to suggest simply placed under more "political oversight" is the answer. But Politicians are the LAST people we would trust with oversight. They are the ones that got us into this mess.
And, at least in the US, the Judiciary can't be trusted either. We have judges who took oaths to defend the Constitution, approving whole sale monitoring of phone metadata of every person in the US,yet again.
Why should judges, entrusted to protect us, be above the law? Why can't they be prosecuted or sued?
Is there anyone surprised by Clinton making obscure coded statements about a spying program that she would redouble? This is a very corrupt woman, who is politically ruthless. She left her minions twisting in the wind in Egypt, and if she gains a position from which she perceives the rest of us a "her children" she will assuredly not do a single thing to remove her parental control.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I don't think that's what she meant. I read no promise to do better in that statement at all.
We have a surveillance program for the Brits. One if by land, two if by sea.
Two L's. H-i-L-L-a-r-y.
Wrong. We elected the current turd sandwich because at the time it wasn't apparent that he was a turd sandwich, but it was apparent that the alternative was a double-turd sandwich with a douche chaser.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The world is not a perfect place. The West does need spies and it does need an infrastructure to support them and gather intelligence.
However, we should remember who we actually need to be spying on. Nation states, failed states, and yes terrorist training camps and what not.
What we should not be engaging in is dragnet surveillance where everyone is entered in to some giant database. This is a really bad idea for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the databases are not really likely to be that useful. Prism didn't stop the Boston Marathon bombers. You might have every text, every phone call, every e-mail but if you can't spot the connections it doesn't help you.
Second, the massive database is a security risk in its own right. The NSA might think the Snowden leak is bad but it's child's play compared to what would happen if somebody leaks that database! You can bet your bottom dollar a shit-storm a 100% times the size would ensue. It might even threaten the agency's continued existence.
Third, the database could be hacked by a foreign governments. This in itself is a giant risk that dwarfs the one outlined in the second paragraph. China getting access to wiretaps on US businesses? Does no-one in the security community see what a giant hole they're making in the West's security?
This leads nicely to my fourth and final point. I do get the impression from the Snowden leaks that the competency of these organisations is being called in to question. It's clear they don't know what Snowden took; they don't know what he knows and what he doesn't. This is why he's catching them at so many lies. They make one statement, he leaks another document that shows them they're full of shit.
This final point is perhaps the most damning. They've built a giant system they can't audit! If they don't know what he took when he's just a fairly junior contractor, we have to assume other nation states have thoroughly penetrated the system and already stolen Western secrets!
They're clearly not competent enough to run such a system and it should be shut down on grounds of national security.
Sorry, 15 yard penalty, bullshit on the field. We elected Obama because the right ran Thurston Howell the Third and Lovey and just like on the show they couldn't help but keep opening their mouths and showing the world what rich spoiled clueless dumbasses look like.
Which was YOUR favorite "See I'm rich, he heh" gaffe? I'd say the "47%" gaffe wouldn't even make the top 5, my personal favorites were from him "I had to drive an ugly car in High School!" Oh poor baby, didn't like the BRAND NEW LUXURY CAR that daddy gave you for your 16th BDay Mitt? And from her "We were so poor in college we had to live on our stock dividends!"...yeah, you are breaking my heart, it must have been soooo hard to live in that mansion daddy gave you and have to live on the piles of cash you were getting from the shitload of stock you and Mittens had before you had even graduated college. BTW want to know how many mansions daddy had given them before they graduated? FIVE, Mittens was stupid enough to brag about it at one of the fund raisers,just like he marveled about how them Chinese would practically kill each other to work for nothing. Smooth move rich retard.
So I'm sorry but the reason the right lost in 2008 and 2012 is the same reason they'll lose in 2016 and 2020, because they keep running candidates so fucking out of touch it hurts. You went from McSame, singing "Bomb Iran" while our troops are deployed in harm's way like its a fucking joke, to Thurston Howell the Third, and you watch in 2016, while the economy is in the crapper no less, they'll run....drumroll for dramatic effect.....Bobby "Fuck them poor bastards!" Jindal, guaranteed to let any dem just waltz right on in there.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
For the first 36 years of my life I lived in the USSR. It was un-free country, but many of us valued freedom and learned to love it more than the state religion - "Communism" that the government preached. When Bush started his war in Iraq as a retaliation to the 9/11, I noticed that with Patriot Act, "security" in the airports this country started to grow more and more similar to the failed state - Soviet Union. Some features that I believed to be unique trademarks of the totalitarian states sneaked in the everyday life of Americans. There was a government slogan in the USSR - "to catch up with and pass the USA", but now it seems that the USA is trying to catch up with the KGB-ish nature of the USSR. It is sad for me to see that many born-Americans believe that Freedom is given to them by God, by their brave predecessors or just by the Land they are born on. Freedom has to be fought for by every generation all over again, citizens have to prove they deserve it.
I would never vote for Republicans - for me they share much more with Soviets than just the red color, but when Obama (whom I voted for) calls Snowden a "traitor" (instead of a hero), I'm thinking that Putin in his place would do exactly the same. Putin, who's main enemies are Russian citizens.
Dude,
The state department doesn't order the NSA around. It doesn't order the CIA around. It feeds the CIA intel, partly in the form of reports from State Department staff and partly in the form of reports from the governments they're working with; and uses Intel and tools from both, but it doesn't have any control over FISA.
Is it just me, or is "sensible adult conversation" rather condescending? Why is it that when a whistle blower identifies where the law has been violated, rather than a immediate and far reaching criminal investigation to identify and punish those responsible for breaking the law we see excuses and calls for "sensible adult conversation". There is no need for a negotiation. If I were to spy in this manner there would be no discussion; I would be prosecuted, imprisoned and possibly killed.
National Security is a weak cover for the abuse of power and gross violations of the highest law of the land. How can senior people get away with lying to Congress and not get thrown in jail for life? What does it say when people can lie like this, break the highest law, and face no consequences? No. Instead the whistle blowers are facing life in prison.
I didn't believe all the campaign promises of Obama, but to actually be worse than Bush takes some doing. The US is stuffed. Your 'democracy' was sacrificed many years ago; welcome to the Police State. What other country has tortured people for more than ten years - and now can only keep people alive - people who have not been charged much less given a trial - through forced feeding. The US is a grotesque parody of what it once stood for.
Indeed, I find her interest in discourse on the subject frightening because she's the official that ordered spying, including theft of credit card info, on UN officials.
Citation for the curious: Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats
No, we elected a black (well, sort of) president because the republicans couldn't mount a response better than either an old white guy with his batshit insane girlfriend or another old white guy who can't think his way out of a paper bag.
If the republicans keep coming up with total losers, then the democrats, with only partial losers are going to win.
Remember, the votes necessary to win are the swing voters, the ones that really don't like anybody.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Clinton, who is seen as a frontrunner for the 2016 US presidential election, said at Chatham House in London: "This is a very important question. On the intelligence issue, we are democracies thank goodness, both the US and the UK.
Huh, a democracy, eh? Mind showing me the public vote where consent to the spying program was established? Oh there isn't one? You professional liars just love to trot out "we're a democracy" to shift the blame. Fuck you. It's a Republic. A Democratic Republic. Anyone who's held office while this shit has been going on let it happen. We need to fire congress -- They let the NSA lie to them, knowing full well that shit was a lie. The secret courts even ruled the NSA actions as a violation of the constitution. That means the Armed forces should be storming the NSA server rooms and shutting them down because they swore to protect the Constitution. Game over. We can't trust you. If a you found out a spy was a double agent you wouldn't let them go right back to working for you. Get the fuck out of our government. We're Americans. We can and have fought off forces greater than ours who wished to snuff us out. We didn't need an Orwellian spying agency to do it either. Now we're one of the greatest countries around, and you're saying we have to "Talk Sensibly About Spying"?! Yeah! We do! The sensible thing is to route that shit out. The Flu kills more folks in a year than multiple 9/11's. I'm more scared of my bathtub than a damn terrorist. Cars kill hundreds times more folks every year than 9/11. The sensible thing to do would be to stop wasting our money on shit we don't want, if this were "democracy". Fucking moronic liars. What she means is: "We need to engage full damage control, STAT!" Bite me bitch, you're fired.
Hillary Clinton is as dirty and corrupt as they come. I used to work for the Clintons, so I assert that with more inside-baseball knowledge than the average bear. Want an example? Bill Clinton is now in bed with the guy who started and funded the Vince Foster witchhunt against them. See, most humans with any scruples would not choose to do that. But gold rules.
Hillary will say whatever she needs to say to get enough sucke...er, voters, to vote for her. Then if successful she'll turn right around and dish out more of the same 'ole, same 'ole on Americans. Electing her to President is no solution at all.
Stop pretending it is.
The only solution seems to now be, given that neither the judiciary nor the legislative branches have put a stop to it, to have everyday Americans converge on DC and burn the place to the ground. Also, the Hamptons, and Newport, and Westchester, and every other gated community where DC's true masters sequester themselves.
Then we can all sit down at a new Constitutional Convention and figure out America 2.0 where crap like this can't happen again.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
...or go home.
Since you allegedly graduated from an American law school, you should recognize the following text:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
What the NSA is doing is not merely a crime, it is a usurpation of powers explicitly prohibited to the government in the document that is the ENTIRE legal basis for the government's existence. If you expect the American people to put up with it, then with all due respect, fuck you with a red-hot poker, you power-grubbing geriatric cunt.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."