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Edward Snowden's New Job: Tech Support
Nerval's Lobster writes "Government whistleblower Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia after releasing top-secret documents about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities to the press, has a new job: tech support. Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the Associated Press that his client starts work Nov. 1 for a "major" Russian Website, which he declined to name. In June, Snowden—a former CIA employee who worked as a contractor for the NSA—began feeding an enormous pile of classified charts and documents about federal surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers. Many of those documents suggested that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans, which in turn ignited a firestorm of controversy. The Snowden revelations have continued into this week, with The Washington Post reporting that the NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers. Snowden's documents suggest that the agency has figured out how to tap the links connecting the two tech giants' datacenters to the broader Web. Google told the Post that it was "troubled" by the report. A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.""
"IT support. Have you tried turning the NSA tapping device off and on again?"
Ezekiel 23:20
Don't give him root.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
So he hasn't even been arrested yet, and his punishement has already started?
He will be tech support for ... FSB
Maybe www.fsb.ru?
The world now is a better and safer place.
.
.
.
OH WAIT!
He should've just let them shoot him.
A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency, unless Edward Snowden has evidence that we were cooperating the entire time at which point we will clam up and not be available for comment."
There, fixed that for you unnamed Yahoo spokesperson.
since the u.s. claims global jurisdiction over its citizens regardless of where they travel to or reside, and he is still one, now he's gonna have to file taxes.... that means if they don't know it yet, by april 15th, the feds will know his address... and if he doesn't file, he can then be arrested on tax evasion.. even if what he's done already ends up being legal whistleblowing.
Whatever Snowden did to bottle up his stolen cache of documents, it has apparently kept the entire US security apparatus at bay.
Now, THAT'S a project that would look good on an IT resume, anywhere.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Document leaker provides IT support for YOU!
Just encode them as illiterate, incoherent, childish ramblings and post them to Slashdot. No one will ever find them there... like looking for a needle in a haystack!
I felt bad for the man who had no signature, until I met a man who had no comment.
That's my guess. :)
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
You thought so before this.
You'd think so even in the face of evidence against it.
Why?
Because you want to think so.
But answer this: if he WERE a double agent, SO WHAT? Does that make the data he got wrong? No. Does it make what the documents say a good thing for the NSA to do? No.
So *even if* you're right and Snowden is a double agent, that has no bearing WHATSOEVER about the crimes the revelations have documented.
I can feel his pain.
After having lived in Russia for some 6 month cumulatively, I have this to say: Edward Snowden is going to love it.
A few reasons:
- Incredibly beautiful women
- Incredibly cool clubs and bars
- Awesome Moscow Ballet / Classical Music / Cultural Events / Arts / Museums
- McDonalds has a whole wheat bun, need I say more?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
If the FBI can't get him, the IRS will. Nice.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Yahoo may not have given it, but it sure sounds like the NSA has done it anyway.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"But who would have thought that a contractor would be able to be called a whistle-blower?"
What is that supposed to be telling anyone?
Taken on face value, this says "people who have evidence of a crime will be called whistleblowers when blowing the whistle on the crime even if they're a contractor".
Well duh.
"Or that a snooping agency would have been able be snooping?"
Ah, you DO know that the NSA were not tasked with "snooping", right?
There's a reason why, for example, the CIA investigate external threats and the FBI investigate internal threats and that it is a bad thing for the CIA to be investigating internal threats EVENE THOUGH "Who would have guessed an investigation organisation would investigate, huh?"
That is because they aren't tasked with "investigate stuff". They have a remit, as do the NSA, and that they stepped outside it.
Think on the recent USA's bellicose attitude to "Chinese cyberwarfare!".
Who would have thought it? An intelligence agency trying to gather intelligence on a foreign government?
Except when it's not the USA doing it, "THIS MEANS WAR!".
But answer this: if he WERE a double agent, SO WHAT? Does that make the data he got wrong? No. Does it make what the documents say a good thing for the NSA to do? No.
So *even if* you're right and Snowden is a double agent, that has no bearing WHATSOEVER about the crimes the revelations have documented.
You don't get it. It is not about the data. At this moment the global attention is aimed at the NSA, and it says: "NSA = bad" and "Snowden = good". Some people just want to turn that around, and make it "Snowden = bad", and make people forget about the NSA.
It's really that simple.
If the NSA had actually tapped the fiber between Google and Yahoo's data centers and the internet without their knowledge and this actually turned out to be true after they investigated would either company actually publicly say "After an investigation we have found the NSA has been tapping our fiber without our knowledge and we are taking steps to stop this"? I think that highly unlikely and if anything even if this was true Google and Yahoo would continue to issue denials that this had ever happened or that it was possible.
I was hoping he was going to have to learn the Russian phrase for "Would you like fries with that comrade?" Not that tech support isn't punishment too, it just pays better.
His English is likely pretty good, so maybe phone support would be a good gig for him.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Manager of external archiving by any chance ? :-)
Did he start to believe all those In Soviet Russia jokes??
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
He can outbid anyone on Ebay. Anyone.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Your post is completely incoherent.
That's my guess. Any others?
Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple!
Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google!
Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple!
Apple! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple!
Google! Google! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple! Google!
Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Apple!
Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Google! Apple! Google!
Google! Google! Apple! Apple! Apple! Apple! Google!
Apple! Google! Apple! Google! Google! Google! Apple!
Undetectable.
Bah. Stupid filters don't understand my intent. "Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition."
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
When China wiretaps and cracks US systems, it's an act of war.
When the USA wiretaps and cracks soverign states like Germany, it's "Well, they're spies! Whadayuhexpect?".
My guess is Yandex, they have a popular search via DuckDuckGo, and if they can upgrade their stuff (needs https on search) so we can ditch DuckDuckGo (US based) for Yandex directly, I'll happily switch.
"NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers"
Why aren't NSA attacking Microsoft Live / Hotmail? I suspect they don't need to to get whatever access they want.
Nice that the FISA court said NSA couldn't hack Google and Yahoo, so they did it under a different authority that doesn't require the FISA court.
The US plugged the leak, no new documents has been leaked lately, just been releasing the June documents in a timely rate. And while there are no new leakers, the government keep promising that they did not ever, is not doing, and will stop doing whatever is in this leaks, hoping that there are people with lower IQ than body temperature (in celsius) that believes them, while now there is no way to truly verify that (they probably will even release their own "leaks" to keep the illusion of that all will be legal from now on).
Anyway, for what Snowden did, (if i owned a big enough company) i would give him a good salary even for doing nothing. And if can do something useful, something that he would enjoy doing, the better.
Ed - "Hello this Edward, how can I help you today."
L User - "yes Comrad, my mouse appears not to be working anymore."
Ed - " Ok" (.Clicky- clack- clack) "just let me get root access here on your PC"...
L User- "Click"
Ed - "Hello Comrad, are you still there? I seem to have lost you..."
No, he didn't. He achieved nothing—not even controversy. The most he did was sacrifice a great life in exchange for an apathetic nonresponse from the American people. “Nobody can hear you. Nobody cares about you. Nothing will come of this.”
Well done, Snowden!
... Many of those documents proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans ...
FTFY. The released documents 'suggest' wrongdoing by the NSA in much the same way a bear eating your face off 'suggests' the presence of dangerous wildlife in the area.
The reason they don't tell you what site he's working for is because they don't want you to know it's hosted in Russia....It's the Obamacare site! Maybe he can get it running smoothly!
Once a thief, always a thief.
Snowden is no longer leaking docs, and hasn't since the original handover.
Its the journalists (Glen Greenwald & Laura Poitras) he handed the docs to who have been trickling out the docs.
They have stated that they have multiple copies in multiple locations and the intercept at Heathrow Airport of Glen Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, where the British confiscated USB drives containing copies of classifed materials did not hinder their access to the material.
(Who gives their partner a bunch of classified docs and then asks them to fly via one of the USA's closest allies and not expect them to get stopped?)
Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though. He lost a lot of sympathy when he went down that road.
Yeah, it really IS simple.
Unfortunately, it's simply stupid, isn't it.
It is the same people who say "Oh, oh, don't say bad things about the USA or point out the USA doing bad things, because it's anti-US!".
And the same people whine about how China kills people, has the great firewall, is a real bad person on human rights. And never once think "That's anti-China!" and stop.
However, this current "He's a double agent" doesn't even make a claim on the information! There is no more clean and pure an example of an ad hominem than this! It doesn't even manage to claim the data is wrong, it just goes "The person telling this IS A DOUBLE AGENT!!!".
No no no, it's too intuitive that Google is 1 and Apple is 0! You should swap them!
"Ah, you DO know that the NSA were not tasked with "snooping", right?
There's a reason why, for example, the CIA investigate external threats and the FBI investigate internal threats and that it is a bad thing for the CIA to be investigating internal threats EVENE THOUGH "Who would have guessed an investigation organisation would investigate, huh?"
That is because they aren't tasked with "investigate stuff". They have a remit, as do the NSA, and that they stepped outside it.
As you rightfully pointed out, the NSA snooping internally and sharing it with internal law enforcement are extraordinarily major issues - but that is where it ends. Everything else that Snowden revealed was espionage against the United States.
Foreign intelligence agencies have always spied and snooped so the rest of the world should drop their shocked outrage act.
http://xkcd.com/257/
He is a currently in a language & accent training class learning how to say 'This is Vladmir speaking. How may I help you?' in Russian.
That is so incredibly devious! It take s real fiend to spread rumors and lies this malicious.
NSA Operative: Our public profile is way too high, and this Snowden jerk is winning in the popularity polls. We need to discredit him, quick!
NSA Public Relations Rat: Well, we need to get people to despise Snowden and focus on him and his new antics so we can fade back into the background.
NSA Operative: OK, so who is the most despised group on earth? Terrorists? Traitors?
NSA PRR: No. No. We've been trying that for months, and we just can't get any traction with the press or public. Worse, both those arguments lead back to us and our data.
NSA Operative: How about members of Congress, or the White House?
NSA PRR: You mean get him elected? No good, do you know what a seat in Congress is going for these days? Even our black budget can't afford any more than we already have, and don't even get me started on what a White House position costs now.
NSA Operative: Hmm... pedophile rapist?
NSA PRR: Maybe you're onto something... He is in Russia after-all... Wait! I've got it. The most universally reviled, disgusting, hated group in the world!
NSA Operative: What? What!?
NSA PRR: We'll tell everyone he's....... Tech Support.
NSA Operative: You vicious bastard. Even I couldn't have some up with something so foul. I love you for it.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
The USSR often gives jobs, usually non-cushy ones, to defectors. Lee Harvey Oswald got a job in a radio factory assembly line. I guess IT support is the modern equivalent.
"Snowden did transition from a whistle blower to a spy though"
No. He did not.
He was a whistleblower and remains a whistleblower.
Google is "troubled" but I doubt they will raise a much bigger fuss than that. Why? Because they are competing for government contracts against Microsoft and other vendors for Cloud services etc. So while this deeply undermines the company, they probably won't get too loud about it until it starts to wreck their reputation too severely.
I'm surprised he was hired in the first place. He might be talented and an asset to any organization but he's also proven himself to be a liability. He will likely never be hired anywhere anybody has something to hide ever again.
Sorry you love the Federal Government so much, but Snowden is a patriot standing up for the ideals on which the USA was founded. Deal with it.
Comrade, Berlin wall has fallen decades ago. Boris the Drunken rode tank to White House and threw Communists out. Oligarchs in charge now.
The point is that IF (or when?) they get him, instead of an ugly trial process that the government may even loose, or not get a severe enough punishment (for them), or they may be forced to reveal (even more) stuff they don't want to, they have a very easy and clear-cut tax evasion case. Also, the public doesn't like people who avoid taxes, so it's also much easier on the PR front. And no war between the pro- and contra-Snowden factions, at least not nearly as much compared to if the trial is about "treason".
I'll bet he's designing the Putincare website - which will work flawlessly!!
or so I'm told...
Whatever Snowden did to bottle up his stolen cache of documents, it has apparently kept the entire US security apparatus at bay.
"US Security apparatus At bay"? How so?
As I see it, they have stopped him from having access to any additional materials to leak, effectively confined him to living in Russian hands and although additional documents are trickling out, his time in the limelight is almost over. As I see it, he is alive today only because the US security apparatus decided to let him live for now, and the Russians are only going to be interested in him for as long as they can keep documents trickling out that they haven't yet seen.
Where Snowden did control part of this whole fiasco at the start, he is in large part just a pawn now, has been since he left Hong Kong. I don't see any way for him to become relevant again, which is probably why he's still alive. The Russians may or may not keep him. If they don't, he will likely be captured and returned to the US for trial. If they do decide to keep him, it's only because it would be another jab at the US and might serve to get NSA funding reigned in some. The Russians do give a flying flip about privacy, monitoring phone calls or other things the NSA might do, they just want to make the NSA/CIA as least capable as they can and Snowden gives them a little bit of leverage.
The real question is would Snowden's capture and trial or the grant of his asylum claim serve their purposes the best. You can bet he'll be in US hands within hours if they want the trial. In the mean time, they just wait and watch the NSA get defunded.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That's why I encrypted it with ROT-13 before encoding. Twice, for extra security.
Then I remembered that there's some obscure vulnerability in the double-ROT-13 implementation, so I ran it through ROT-26 as well. I figure that's good enough for anybody... but just for fun, I then XOR'd it with a string of 0xFF bytes. Since XOR encryption is fairly easy to hack, I took the resulting string, converted it to binary, and ran an extra ROT-1 pass on it (modulo 2, of course... I'm not stupid), and converted the result back to ASCII.
That's what I encoded.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Wow, what backwards alternate universe did you pop in from? So far the documents have revealed precisely the opposite of what you claim: that the NSA has been spying on American citizens. And not just plain, vanilla spying, but spying with raisins in: over-aggressively gathering and hoarding details about who, when and where everyone communicate with anyone.
The linked slashot article is the only one that I've seen that specifically mentions tech support. All of the other articles, including the source Russian articles don't mention specifically what he'll be doing there. Something tells me that you do just out out there and hire Edward Snowden as a first level help desk rep or something similar. I think Slashdot is just making up stuff again. My guess is that he's probably involved in security or IT administrator role. Wow, even the MSM is covering this one more accurately than /.
You might want to look up your history a bit ... Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed 2 days after he shot Kennedy while in police custody in Dallas ... he never made it anywhere near Russia ...
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Hopefully, the "major Russian website" company asked USIS (www.usis.com) to do a thorough background check on Snowden. They have done admirably in the past.
Snowden is bad. He's the definition of traitor. If you support him, you're just an ignorant tool.
He didn't release documents describing the NSA spying on its own people. He's a traitor who released any and all documents he could get his hands on, just like Bradley Manning. The newspapers and reporters are the ones who zeroed in on the NSA spying on its own citizens and made sure you heard about it first. They actually looked for BAD things that were going on, and didn't just throw everything out there.
If Snowden only released documents about spying on Americans, then you'd have something to work with, but he did no such thing. He dumped it all, including operations information that is most certainly well within the NSAs purview. Spying on Merkel? Guess what, ITS THEIR JOB TO DO SO.
He's not a whistle blower, he's an attention whore. The reporters that went through these documents and found the information about spying on American citizens are doing the right thing. Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason. If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that. He never should have published ANY of that sort of shit.
Being a whistleblower is different than stealing a bunch of documents, regardless of what they say and publishing them for all to see.
Sorry you're such a fanboy of his, but he's a douche bag traitor. Deal with it.
How is that NSA job working for you? Good benefits? Kids don't respect you anymore? Your wife left you? Your dog ran away? Ya, that's what I thought.
Be seeing you...
He will also receive a honorary pension from KGB.
"You might want to look up your history a bit"
Irony detector overload.
You might want to look up some history yourself. Mr Oswald worked in a factory after defecting to the USSR, before returning to the USA and ultimately eating those bullets.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason
If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that.
Snowden committed treason by telling us what everyone already knows?
I'm logging to all our infrastructure from shared wifi networks using telnet
Dumping info about the NSA spying on other countries ... thats treason.
If you didn't know the NSA was spying on other countries, your a moron, its their job to do just that.
Snowden committed treason by letting the morons know what the rest of us already knew.
'Traitor' and 'whistleblower' are not contradictory concepts. Snowden committed treason to reveal illegal behavior in the NSA. I am in favor of using his information to force the NSA to follow the law, *and* in favor of putting him in jail for treason.
It's also wrong to suggest that whistleblowers should receive automatic pardons. There were ways to reveal this information without committing treason; Snowden chose not to take that route. He's a traitor *and* a hero, and ideally his actions would cause positive change in the world while he's rotting in jail.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
So NSA spying on you is good
Snowden spying on them is bad.
Why? IF he was a spy and stole secrets, so what, it's what they do!!
Why are you getting your panties all in a twist?
Spies spy, Deal with it.
I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.
Now, I accept that people overseas are thrilled with him because it's in their interests. It is NOT in the interests of Americans to have someone indiscriminately dumping intelligence secrets to the press. Let the British, French, and German posters cheer Snowden on. Americans definitely should NOT be.
And, for those of you bemoaning the evils of surveiling allies, this was, is, and shall always be a part of foreign affairs and EVERY nation does it. EVERY nation. As a Senator pointed out last night, we've historically found through surveillance foreign politicians pushing inexplicable, self-defeating agendas who were on the take from some mega corporation. Lots of naive people think that just because you shake hands with the prime minister of nation X, that means you can turn your back on him.
That being said, the NSA leaks are our fault for expanding surveillance to dragnetting proportions so large that we relied on private contractors hiring high school dropout hackers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
He's no longer in possession of them. He hasn't had his documents since he left the country. He also wouldn't have the means to protect them. The ONE smart thing he did was not taking the documents to China or Russia.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Events around NSA, Snowden etc. bring whole new dimension to playing Splinter Cells and watching Person of Interest. It's always interesting when scenarios that were "what if" during the time game or show was made actually meet reality. "Told you so!" syndrome?
There is no light without darkness.
So ignorant.
Fuck you dipshit. You should be beaten for the tone you use.
"Everything else that Snowden revealed was espionage against the United States."
Nope. Espionage is defined already and what Snowden has done is NOT espionage, moron.
Could you share your own personal definition of "espionage"?
George Washington spent approximately 13% of his federal budget on intelligence services, whereas today we spend less than 6% to the same ends.
So before you go all teabagger on us, imagining that your political position are the "true ideals on which the USA was founded", I suggest you do a little research.
save the arguments about moral superiority. it's not really a meaningful argument to claim that something didn't live up to whatever expectations you put on them based on faulty perceptions.
Ask George Washington, Mohandas Gandhi and Oskar Schindler.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Call the Register!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Blablabla National security babble.
Snowden's just a guy who did what he thought was the right thing to do. Even if he did the US a disfavor, which is unlikely, he did the majority of the world a big favor.
You can dream, shill, but so far Snowden is still thoroughly fucking you and yours. Cheers to him.
The federal budget in Washington's times was how much of the country's GDP?
There were ways to reveal this information without committing treason; Snowden chose not to take that route.
Can you give some examples? Because, you know, a bunch of NSA whistleblowers came out lately and noted that they were trying to reveal a great deal of what Snowden dumped on all of us through "proper channels", but no-one was interested in anything other than reprimanding them.
Consider for a moment that you are supposed to have a representative government that governs with the consent of the governed.
Regardless of what you personally think about foreign spying (Merkel and the hundreds of millions of the French, Spanish and whoever else), look around and see the reactions from your fellow citizens. Do they all agree with you? Hell, even Dianne Feinstien who is is on the intelligence oversight committee was caught unaware of some of these programs.
These actions are happening in your name - you're ultimately responsible for the results. If the result of these actions is economic sanctions causing you to lose your job or you being drafted and shipped off to war, you might want to reconsider your position on having an informed electorate.
The stuff they are keeping secret right now has no business being decided and carried out in secret. If you're fine with spying on allies, then make it known your official policy is to do so - if it's truly necessary, it's not a policy you need to be ashamed of, and don't worry - you will find supporters for it. Don't claim one thing and do another though.
Personally though, I'd be happier if the individual listening to Merkel was a little more interested in listening to Tsarnaev (since even NSA resources are finite and all...).
Offical. From the USA, even.
Snowden doesn't fit the definition.
That is so incredibly devious! It take s real fiend to spread rumors and lies this malicious. ...
...NSA PRR: Maybe you're onto something... He is in Russia after-all... Wait! I've got it. The most universally reviled, disgusting, hated group in the world!
NSA Operative: What? What!?
NSA PRR: We'll tell everyone he's....... Tech Support.
NSA Operative: You vicious bastard. Even I couldn't have some up with something so foul. I love you for it.
could be worse they may have called him a telemarketer
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Then this should be easy, Slick: who'd he spy for?
Can't he provide his lawyer address or some Russian address that is not where he actually lives at? Taxes would be the same in one or another Moscow neighborhood.
If he ends up legal, giving a false address while still paying doesn't seem a serious charge (IANAUS&ATANAL).
If he ends up illegal, he should avoid being arrested anyway (do you get extradited for tax evasion? Even if you are acknowledged a refugee?)
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Yeah, that was a bullshit talking point the first time around, too. Manning didn't "leak documents indiscriminately" - if I were king for a day fascists would recieve an automatic shock to the balls for using that talking point - he gave them to a responsible media organization: Wikileaks. Who vetted the documents before release, and even asked the USG for help in redacting names of sources, etc.
But given the fact that Snowden personally selected the information he wanted, rather than a lowly grunt taking a database dump, that junk talking point doesn't even get off the ground. You guys also tip your hands by getting all hot and bothered over the laws broken by whistleblowers while at the same time not giving two shits about the lawbreaking revealed by said whisteblowers.
You keep using that word, traitor. It does not mean what you think it means. You're also ignoring in swearing the Oath of Office you swear to uphold the Constitution. Then there's the fact that "proper channels" are designed around keeping this shit secret. Leaving people of principle with no choice but to reveal classified information to the public.
So Timothy McVeigh is a patriot now? How does that work, exactly? Sorry your flawed ideas led you to this place, but as soon as you agree with right-wing nutbags that "TEH FEDURUL GUBMIT IZ BAYYYUD" then the civilized world tunes out.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Sorry you love the Federal Government so much, but Snowden is a patriot standing up for the ideals on which the USA was founded. Deal with it.
Snowden is a patriot standing for the ideals on which the USA was founded in much the same way as another American patriot and hero of the early part of the Revolutionary War did. That hero was General Arnold.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Google if you are so upset, how about diverting some of that lobbying money (~$3.5 million) towards representatives that want to fix this problem..Because lack of trust by your 'customers' is a big problem for you and your ilk. One which might not manifest itself immediately but will over time.
And while you're at it, stop by to Diane Feinstein's office and ask her what the heck she's smoking! She's gone warmongering at John McCain levels at this point.
He'll be back to the US before you know it, for a nice easy life term.
Snowden is bad. He's the definition of traitor. If you support him...
Then you are supporting the ideas and principles the United States of America was founded on.
Demagogue much? How do you know what I give a shit about? And indiscriminately dumping documents to the media and asking them to scrub them before release is the same thing as indiscriminately dumping documents on the media. The kinds of revelations we got from Mannings leaks about communications between low level diplomats including some personal shots that have no bearing on national policies illustrate what I'm talking about
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You apologists for corrupt police state criminality are so cute when you get called out for your defense of the indefensible. Unfortunately for you, facts matter, and the fact is that neither Snowden nor Manning leaked documents "indiscriminately". That's you trying to find some excuse to dismiss the messenger without addressing the message - classic ad hominem cop out.
Hey, how about those double taps striking first responders, which we call terrorism when someone else does it? And how about that child sex trafficking by American contractors in Afghanistan? You out yourself as a hack with your priorities.
... your a moron
You should get that printed on a tee shirt. You could wear it, you know, ironically.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
When Snowden first started leaking intel, it almost all pertained to the blatantly illegal and overreaching domestic surveillance of US citizens. Now that Snowden is in Russia, being offered jobs by Russian firms, his leaks are ones that greatly embarrass the US on the international level and spoil relations between the US and its NATO allies. This isn't a coincidence. The Russians snapped up Snowden the instant he landed in their territory, and now he's entirely dependent on them - even for a livelyhood, now. I wonder just who has custody of that laptop with all the encrypted files he was toting around, at this very moment. Even if Snowden still has physical possession of it, I rather suspect the Russians are the ones making "suggestions" about how he uses the data therein. He started this as a whistleblower - and he might well still be one, but I doubt he's calling the shots anymore.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The powers that be make it treason on purpose specifically to prevent whistleblowing.
NSA = Bad
Snowden = Bad.
Both are bad but for different reasons.
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Apparently every friendly and enemy nation in the world.
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Patriot? no. He did it for notoriety.
I didn't realize are ideals where lying, cheating, and narcissistic delusion of grandeur.
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What lawbreaking was revealed? The NSA had permission to do what they where doing. It's congress you need to direct your Ire at, not a legally operating agency.
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So you argument breaks down to an Ad Hom?
you lose.
many of us can contain several thoughts. Such as:
1) The NSA was acting legally.
2) I don't like the framework that allows that to be legal.
3) I direct my anger to congress, the people actually responsible.
4) Snowden and Manning both suffer from over inflated belief that they are important.
See it's not one or the other.
"And how about that child sex trafficking by American contractors in Afghanistan? "
and how does the pertain to this argument?
"how about those double taps striking first responders, which we call terrorism when someone else does it?"
You really don't understand the situation at all. But you sit there rage filled with the ability to only think of one group and not be able to think any deeper.
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I love that your homepage at the time of posting was www.NSA.co.il
Just encode them as illiterate, incoherent, childish ramblings and post them to Slashdot.
That's impossible, illiterates can't write at all. I will agree that there seems to be a whole lot of aliterates here, though. "There car's are over they're." Aliterate.
"The man who doesn't read has no advantage over a man who can't read." -- Twain (Clemons)
Free Martian Whores!
So if it's the NSAs JOB to spy on everyone except Americans, why is it such a problem for someone to show evidence that it's happening? Hardly seems like a huge traitorous act, then.
"The NSA had permission to do what they where doing."
No they did not.
That is why they hid their acts.
What? You think that the charges are correct MERELY BECAUSE THEY ARE CHARGED?
No.
They do not.
The official USA definition of what espionage is and what a spy is DOES NOT include Snowden.
The USSR often gives jobs, usually non-cushy ones, to defectors. Lee Harvey Oswald got a job in a radio factory assembly line. I guess IT support is the modern equivalent.
Gasp! You mean just like how those dissidents from China and the old USSR somehow managed to find a job after they got to America? Who would have thought there would be companies willing to hire them?! Right?
"1) The NSA was acting legally."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_(2001%E2%80%9307)
I'm really not sure how anyone manages to keep a straight face when they say things like that, but I guess on the internet it's not necessary.
The Washington Post already owned you so I don't have to.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html
I was a huge supporter of the guy when he was telling people in his country about the NSA violating it's mission statement and turning its guns on the American people. Now, when he went down the Bradley Manning path and just started dumping anything he had in his hands related to our overseas communications and surveillance (that is what the NSA is SUPPOSED to be doing), then THAT became a serious problem.
But... that's exactly what he HASN'T done.
He has been careful with his info, doling it out to responsible news organizations — The Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, etc. — and not tossing it up in the air, WikiLeaks style, and echoing the silly mantra “Information wants to be free.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-edward-snowden-is-no-traitor/2013/10/21/f9d2ae5a-3a74-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html
put a .22 through snowden's head? I think this sets up a bad presedent, just send someone and put him down like the treasonous dog that he is, to ensure that this does not happen again.
Sorry you're such a fanboy of his, but he's a douche bag traitor. Deal with it.
Spying on allies and friends is not okay. Deal with it.
Snowden is a hero, not like the lowlifes at the NSA and their supporters. The NSA has done incalculable harm to the USA with their actions (which would've come out eventually even without Snowden) and the country as a whole will pay for it. Lack of trust is an insidious thing and when you've proven yourself untrustworthy people deal with it in a host of different ways.
One aspect about this guy that hasn't been covered enough, at least as far as I have seen, is Snowden's use of Twitter.
https://twitter.com/EJosephSnowden
Like really, that's all the guy has right? Can he use email, because can he ever trust it? Meanwhile he's twitterin' with the best of 'em, from an undisclosed and secure location somewhere inside Russia. I am surprised he's as vocal as he is, albeit on Twitter. Maybe I'm mistaken and that feed is a hoax, but it seems real to me.
The press never seems to cover his twitter feed, although I did hear about Anna Chapman's marriage proposal she sent to him via Twitter. But I imagine if he were to take her up on her offer, he'd get in trouble with whoever it is that issued his US government clearance, seeing as how she was kicked out of the country for being a spy.
Your ignorance of infants being shot in the head, among many other crimes, is not our problem.
You mean when Congress specifically defunded Total Information Awareness only for the executive branch to do it anyway under a different name?
Garbage. That there is plenty of blame to go around does nothing to change the fact that those who actually commit an act are actually most responsible for it. And how, exactly, is Congress supposed to stop what they don't know about? More than one senator or member of Congress has said they learn about the activities of the NSA from newspapers before being briefed by the administration.
You wish. Dismissing whistleblowers for arbitrary reasons - in this case the 'leaking indiscriminately' lie, since the information was given to responsible media organizations - is attacking the messenger without addressing the message. And we have a term for that: ad hominem.
Bad-faced lie. See above about the defunding of TIA. You might also want to read up on the 4th Amendment.
Without Snowden or Manning we wouldn't know about any of this. "We" includes members of Congress, since they are left out of the loop.
Could we get some more intelligent trolls here please? By focusing all your attention on the procedural rules violated by whisteblowers - designed to stifle whisleblowing - and not on the crimes revealed you out yourself as a mindless authoritarian hack. Because anyone who's not a sociopath would demanding that contractors that traded children to war lords to be used as sex slaves would demanding that they be prosecuted before, and for far longer terms, than any whisteblowers.
But you guys don't do that. Which is why you out yourselves as mindless authoritarian hacks.
Apparently you answered the question: he's even remotely close to being a spy.
It's not true for EVERY nation — not every nation kill or bomb or thrill people all over the world, man. No wonder that some people more likely support Snowden than NSA. What would you say about german antinazi during WWII? Are the traitor too? They are the only who were to save nation's honor eventually.