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Australia Spied On Indonesian President
mask.of.sanity writes "Australia tracked calls by Indonesia's president, documents leaked by defence contractor Edward Snowden reveal. The nation's top spy agency the Australian Signals Directorate tracked phone calls made and received on the mobile phone of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono for 15 days in August 2009, and also tracked his wife and inner political circle. Indonesia was Australia's nearest and most important regional neighbour."
"I didn't spy, YOU did!"
"No I didn't, YOU did!"
"Well, okay, but I didn't spy on Bob."
Bob: "Oh yes you did!"
"Shit. Okay. we all fucking spied."
"yip"
Table-ized A.I.
Anyone surprised? That's what intelligence agencies do.
is, not was
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The delay in publishing this story is excessive, even by slashdot standards. Was GCHQ reluctant to release it on their tech news site while the Democracy Forum conference in Bali and CHOGM in Sri Lanka were still ongoing?
I would be far more surprised if Australia wasn't doing this. What's more there would be a real problem if they weren't.
In terms of potential conflict with another sovereign state Indonesia simply has to rank highly for Australia. It is close by, has a large military, and has a history of conflicts with Australia. The risk may be very very low, but like house insurance, the risks of your house burning to the ground are low but you still take out insurance.
Australia's nearest neighbour was and is Papua New Guinea. You can almost walk from Papua to Australia at low tide (if you have very long legs).
Second nearest is Tasmania, followed by Indonesia.
I'm a fruit pirate. I bought a watermelon once, and spat the seeds in the back yard. They grew into another watermelon,
A few days ago I was browsing some Middle East news on a Middle East news site. Suddenly my phones camera flash goes off, which I don't recall having seen before and I get the suspicion someone took a photo of me using my phone camera... Yes, I use Android but that is really not the point. Is this a known 'trick' on phones? I think I have read about a similar style, abusing peoples laptop webcams.
(no didn't wan't to login today...)
Please shoot the man that wrote this comment. Now, I don't claim to agree or disagree with him, but he very clearly needs to die. Again I claim no pro or con to his argument, but he has done considerable damage to this website and needs to be shot
Since ancient times, governments have always spied on one another with varying effectiveness. It's just in our modern times, with the advent of the Internet, governments not only spy on each other but on as many others as they possibly can. Unlike governments of course most people don't have such deep dark secrets and their communications with one another are almost always quite boring. Would it not be nice if all the spies got bored to death by all the mundane things we have to say to one another?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
You're not particularly thoughtful are you?
Killing him won't destroy his documents. It's certain he's got multiple backups with multiple people.
Why would the US government risk egg on their faces and a further highlight the degradation of American Ideals for nothing?
Indonesia was Australia's nearest and most important regional neighbour.
So has Australia swallowed it whole like a fratboy scarfing a goldfish and I just missed the news?
Here's the thing guys. This isn't a troll. It's a politically unpopular thing to say, but we're all thinking it. This is America. Good, bad, this is how democracy works. We ask the hard questions. The uncomfortable ones. You people ask and beg and bitch and plead with and about our government regarding surveillance, and how your free speech is being oppressed... but when someone pops the question everyone wants to talk about, you're gonna shut them down. I posted this knowing it would go straight to the depths of this website.
And the real kicker is; no government man in a black helicopter made any of you push the downmod button. You did that. So pro or anti snowden alike... you all got one thing in common: You're afraid to stand up and ask the hard questions. You'd rather let the government take care of things for you, and then bitch about the result. Well, you don't get that privilege if you can't sit down and reason out an argument for why, or why not, to do a hard thing. You don't get to complain about government officials riding roughshod over our rights, because if you're not gonna excercise them to begin with, then why do you even care?
We need to ask this question. This is how we've done business for a very long time. If the policy has changed, shouldn't we, the public, the people, be asking why it was done without our input? Whichever side of the issue you're on, or even no side at all, it should bother you just a bit that nobody anymore can ask the hard questions without being thought of as a "troll" or that it's "flamebait". Because it's neither. And to Godwin this whole thing, yeah, I'm gonna drop a Nazi reference now -- how do you think all those Jews got exterminated? They voted for Hitler. And then they stopped talking. They let the government do whatever it wanted, and as long as they got economic security and comfort, they didn't ask publicly what the cost was. But they knew. Yeah, they knew something was wrong. But they weren't gonna be the ones to talk.
Talking, people, is what democracy is about. If you don't talk, you don't have a democracy, except on paper. So talk people. Snowden lives. Snowden dies. Some other option. Step up to the microphone and say something. Or... or you can sit there and sneer, just like the german people did. But think about where it got them. Decisions need to be made. If you believe in democracy, you should make your opinion known -- because otherwise, the decision will be made without any of our input, and I promise you.. it'll be even worse than what I've put on the table.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Indonesian hackers deface Australian websites over spying
Hacking group claims to have infiltrated Australian websites
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
You guys just don't get it. You're the very thing you claim to despise: The government comes and squishes free speech because it's unpopular... but then here you are, doing the same damn thing. The government isn't suppressing us: WE are suppressing us. We're plugging our ears and singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah."
You have the right to free speech, you don't have the right to force anyone to listen to it. You got downmoded, this isn't jackbooted thugs stepping on your throat. This is the collective public saying they think you're a moron and have no interest in listening to the drivel coming out of you. The paranoid schizophrenic hobo shouting on the street corner about the CIA using woodpeckers to control the russians has the right to say his nonsense. That doesn't mean I have to listen to it.
There are quite a few reasons not to kill Snowden.
First and foremost: It's pointless. The cat's out of the bag and unless he's REALLY stupid, he's got some kind of dead man switch going. Like "if I vanish, publish that crap". Possibly he even informed the relevant places that this is the case. Or maybe he informed them and is just bluffing. And even if not, the damage is already done, there is precious little he could add to it anyway. At any rate, killing him won't accomplish anything beneficial for the US government. But there are some decisive drawbacks to it.
First, he's not in some insignificant backwater -stan country, he's in Russia. Remember that speck on the map? If not, ask your daddy, he'll tell you about them Russkies and how they used to be the other side of the nuke equilibrium. Also their special forces ain't what you're used to fighting. They're not some half trained religious nutjobs with outdated guns, they're top trained completely insane nutjobs with modern equipment who don't even ponder whether "collateral damage" could possibly have some kind of political impact. The kind of insane nuts that flood a theater full of hostages with nerve gas 'cause some terrorists might be inside. Not quite the kind of enemy you really want to fight over an insignificant nuisance.
And then of course there's the other reason: Public opinion. The US government already has a pretty bad rep, both with its citizens and with people abroad, but even with various governments that got pissed by having their cells and other forms of communication tapped and sniffed into. And then the US goes and kills the person who exposed it. Not only will it instantly raise the question why, and whether he had something even more dangerous to say, it also destroys the last form of goodwill the US still have. Technically, the US, and especially its government, would lose the last bit of credibility and trust it might have with some parts of the world.
In other words, the best thing the US can do right now is to simply wait for it to blow over and possibly start a war or two to distract the world.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Everyone spy agency would *LIKE* to spy on everyone all the time. But various factors stop that.
Budget, you don't have a $10 billion a year budget.
Technical ability, you don't get access to zero day exploits
Route, the comms doesn't traverse routes you can access.
Political reasons, your own democracy can't be spied on, because you'll chose your politicians.
Protection, the people you want to spy on are protected by a foreign spy agency
Motive, you just can't justify spying on people of no importance.
Balance, the damage the spying does far outweighs the information you would obtain.
Likewise every country would secretly like to control all other politicians, even their allies, but the same factors that stop you spying on them prevent that.
When it comes to the NSA though, all of these seem to have been removed. They have the budget, the zero day exploits, the comms crosses the USA. the democracy doesn't know, and there are enough traitors in power to prevent it being stopped, protection is gone, British GCHQ works for the CIA not British Parliament, you put a general 'collect it all' in charge, and the people doing the spying are getting budget increases so they don't feel any balance.
So no, everyone doesn't spy on everyone else. It's largely the NSA spying on the world mostly UK, Aus, Can, NZ, and in turn these 4 tools spying on the rest for the NSA.
Yeah, loosing credibility was the reason Stalin refused to have Trotsky killed once he killed off all his sons & chased him from Russia. It's also the reason that Putin refused to have Litvinenko poisoned with Polonium. Because, you know if either of these had occurred (but especially the second) that would have precluded anyone supposedly working for freedom to request asylum there...
I'm not calling for snowden's assassination but "loosing credibility" is a farcical reason for not doing it.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Stalin didn't have to keep up the illusion of a democracy. Everyone already knew that the elections are a farce, something that isn't out yet in the US it seems.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The kind of insane nuts that flood a theater full of hostages with nerve gas 'cause some terrorists might be inside.
Now now, you don't know that it was nerve gas. It's still officially a mystery gas. The authorities refused to release information about its makeup, even to the doctors who were desperately trying to save the poisoned hostages. In any case, the hostages were just lucky only about a quarter of them were killed. They could have all ended up summarily executed like the majority of the terrorists (most of whom were unconscious). Interestingly, even the terrorists who were captured alive turned out to have actually died in the theater afterwards, which has fueled speculation that the whole thing was set up by FSB agent provocateurs in the first place.
Enlighten me: exactly what demands did Snowden make? The man is an idealist - nobody will disagree - but it is ridiculous to label him a terrorist for whistle-blowing things the government is doing. If what your government is doing terrifies you, I'd argue the problem is with your government, not the whistle-blower.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
While the most frequent reaction here is "Well, duh!" (and I must admit it was my first reaction too) that's not the point.
The point is that my government is doing that, and I strongly disapprove of it. Your government is doing that and you (perhaps) strongly disapprove of it. If we have the luck to live in democracies, it's our fucking duty to do something about it.
You and that cold fjord guy should totally hook up. You've got so much in common, I'm sure you'd hit it off straight away.
Wut? They later came out and said it was xenon - displace air, lower partial pressure of oxygen, make people pass out.
You and that cold fjord guy should totally hook up. You've got so much in common, I'm sure you'd hit it off straight away.
I am still not convinced that girlintraining and cold fjord are different people. Cold fjord seems to have a style of being 'lucid with possible poor citation' while girlintraining is longwinded, pulls reasonable sounding things straight out of her ass and tends to be far more eloquent.
Both push this similar mishmash of ideas, and just like the shill accounts are quickly modded up to +5 only to be modded back into oblivion the next day.
"Nothing Snowden has leaked has shown anything that hasn't being going on prior and since WWII."
Most of these programs began in 2011, the internet mass surveillance began in 2002, was stopped in 2005, and restarted in 2007. The technology to mass spy on everyone on the planet didn't exist even in 1995, let alone 1945, GCHQ's 'Tempora' only began in 2011 and is still waiting a law to make it legal. New Zealands mass surveillance officially only began in June this year.
These programs weren't even running during the cold war on the democratic side of the wall. Stasi and KGB had a go at it, but the technology wasn't there for true remote mass surveillance.
So no, it's new.
The fact that modern democracies have these grey-shaded institutions and make use of them to spy on each other is something that we probably will have to live with, and maybe even appreciate. As long as the targets for the espionage is large centralized power centres, like government, the military or organized, violent groups. In some way I think that we need, as in Iain Banks culrure-books, someone to step in in "special circumstances." Assassination, revolt or similar should of course rather NOT be the job of our intelligence services. Think if MI6 and CIA hadn't instigated a coup in Iran in 1953 against one of the regions first democratic government? How would the middle east have looked today?
But the really big wrong that Snowden has revealed is mass-surveillance of the entire population. This kind of technological spying can only be used for one thing: anti-democratic, cost-heavy practises, targeted against the press, grass-root and the very population that the system was intended to protect.
Why, with the biggest arsenal in the world, with terrorists shitting bricks in Guantanamo, with several dictators sabre rattling and then sitting down and suddenly behaving when three aircraft carriers and a full entourage show up off their coast, can we not manage to deal with this one, simple, irritation? Just give him what he wants -- he wants to be a martyr. He leaks, and he leaks, and at this point he's probably inventing new documents to leak. Snowden might as well be a brand name; it's got household recognition. So please tell me... what's the hold up on pulling the trigger?
Point 1: It's Russia with nukes. You shouldn't be going around advocating the execution of people when you can't be bothered to understand that there are consequences to that.
Point 2: Snowden's leaks aren't damaging national security, but rather strengthening it by revealing US federal government abuses.
Point 3: Assassination is not a signature US move. In fact, we're rather bad at it.
Point 4: If you meant satire, you're going about it in a rather bone-headed way.
"The facts are the facts; he's a threat to national security, right or wrong. "
You got that wrong. He's a threat to the National Security _Agency_!
National security is quite OK.
Hear hear!
Spent All My Mod Points
Who said that? The prevailing opinion is that it was some variant of fentanyl. I strongly suspect you're joking, but I'll humor you. Xenon wouldn't make any sense for a number of reasons. Some of the hostage-takers used gas masks, but they weren't self contained breathing systems with their own oxygen supply from any report I've seen. If anything had been used that lowered the oxygen content of the air, the gas masks would have been ineffective. Also, reports are that hostages smelled the gas. Xenon is odorless. Also, Xenon is very dense compared to regular air, it could displace oxygen, sure, but you would have to fill the theater from the bottom up with a massive amount of it. Symptoms of the affected after the event are also not consistent with simple oxygen deprivation.
If you kill Snowden, you can kiss goodbye everything American, and not just economy. You would be as alone as North-korea now. and you wouldn't be better.
So, Putin's assassination of Litvinenko (& Russia's subsequent loss of credibility) explains why Snowden couldn't possibly be hiding in Moscow? Oh, wait...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
It was rejected for incorrectly (sort of) using the past tense.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Does it matter "Who spied first"?
Is mass murder and torture OK as long as someone, somewhere did it first?
No?
THEN WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE IT SO HERE?
I have been wrong the whole time. After being modded down into a smoking hole in the ground on slashdot, I have seen the light. Snowden and his fellow travellers actually DO know better than everyone else about diplomatic and foreign policy than all the people who spend their entire lives keeping us safe from the hordes of criminals, Islamists and angry poor people out there. I have seen the errors of my ways. Obviously, any kind of government secrecy is the thin end of the wedge to Stalinism and tyranny.
If Obama has Snowden killed, there would be a lot of posturing from the Kremlin and fuck-all else.
Yea right. How about for starters, escalation of the Syrian civil war?
Rich countries spy, the poor get spied on. It's just colonialism.
I remember the outrage in 1987 when Jonathon Pollard was caught spying on the US for Israel. A simpler, more naive time perhaps, but the harsh reality of the World is that information is power. Nations are willing to forego an occasional bit of moral outrage in their Machiavellian quest to retain and grow their influence.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why would the US government risk egg on their faces and a further highlight the degradation of American Ideals for nothing?
Good question. I assume, however, that's it's purely rhetorical in nature since those pulling the puppet strings of [those running the government] sure seem to believe they've got an adequate reason... :)
The claim wasn't that they wouldn;'t spy on others but that, variously
They would be "of the people, by the people, for the people"
They would have government by the fit to lead, not inheritance of power
They would not be like the Old Word, they would be a Land of the Free
None of which means "Spy on everyone, including your own people, raising as much in tax as is necessary to keep this train going".
It seems lately we've been inundated with stories of governments spying on each other... as if... to distract us from the fact that they are spying on us. Oh you sneaky government, you.
Well. I don't think you are a troll. I think you are just way off. So I will respond.
> can we not manage to deal with this one, simple, irritation?
Nope.
> This is an honest question; I simply do not understand why we're holding out on this one guy, when we've sent in Seal Team Six to give people who have done less in economic damage severe and sudden lead poisoning and then dumped their body uncermoniously in the ocean where it'll never be found.
The world cheers if Seal Team Six caps pirate kidnappers or OBL. However, the world has already decided who the good guy is in Snowden vs. NSA. I suggest you read some publications and polls outside US for a change. It's not hard. You have Internet access.
Even the pressure on Hong Kong and Russia to extradite him cost US reputation, let alone your hare-brained ideas of assassination. Even US cannot wipe away globally popular icons. Not to mention the fact that the Russians have better radars (can't drop in ST6) than Pakistan :-).
I know the economy is tough. You aren't applying for a job at the offices of Peter King or Michelle Bachmann, are you?
> he wants to be a martyr
Whatever gave you that idea? He never said that. Don't let your imagination run wild to support your fevered fantasies. He asked for a pardon.
> What about making him a martyr is so unappealing
The international backlash. A few years ago, I would have also said: The Fifth Amendment.
> this isn't a moral judgment on whether he's right or wrong
Oh, I think you are well past making moral judgments.
> When a hungry bear takes a run at you
On what planet is he a hungry bear? He is not even deciding what articles get published now. The journalists are doing that. Next, you will be calling on capping them too, I guess.
Do you think that if a dissident fled a third world country to US and exposed secret service overreach of his country to NY Times, would you say that the said country ought to cap him too?
> he's done more damage economically than they have
He did? I thought that the "Ha Ha. We can do whatever we want because no one is ever going to find out" attitude that is damaging the economy.
If we find out tomorrow from a Chinese dissident that Beijing has commandeered Huawei gear for espionage, would that be the dissident's fault or Beijing's, for lost sales?
> why aren't we doing our signature move on this guy?
Wow. Just wow.
> but we're all thinking it.
No. I'd say, just a few people like you, at least over here.
> how do you think all those Jews got exterminated? They voted for Hitler. And then they stopped talking. They let the government do whatever it wanted
Who is the Hitler here again? You mean if only Germans rabidly demanded for more assassinations like you, Nazis would not be in power?
Anyway, you parade around with a "Cap Snowden" banner in the real world and lets see how people will speak up... to you anyway.
> The government comes and squishes free speech because it's unpopular... but then here you are, doing the same damn thing.
Ah, the irony. The fascistic lady who calls for extra legal assassination of a non-violent dissident who leaked information to respected journalistic institutions thinks her free speech is in question because she got... oh! the horror... down-modded. Do you even know what free speech is?
Calm down lady. NSA overreached. This is not a subjective opinion. The guy who wrote the patriot act authorizing NSA thinks so. The guy who invented the WWW also thinks so. There are enough US Senators and Congressman who voiced support for him, even though everyone wishes it never needed to come to this in the first place.
Now, as a civilian, I could not care less if US wiretaps diplomats and presidents of other countries. But the point of these leaks is to puncture holes in the argument that the reason we need to tolerate global electronic surveillance apparatus and a domestic Soviet style surveillance state, is to defend us against terrorism. Greenwald and others are demonstrating that it is not the case.
Well. I don't think you are a troll. I think you are just way off. So I will respond.
Okay, first, thanks for responding. But, I didn't take a position as you're implying. I just asked a question, to start a dialog. I personally agree with most of what you're saying; But the only way to get a better handle on why these policy decisions are being made, and to give the public a voice in them. Because somewhere, someone in our government had this conversation. It was then tabled. We need to know why, and since we can be reasonably sure the government isn't going to reveal this, the best we can do is lay the facts on the table and try to draw conclusions as best we can. Which is what you did, and which I thank you for.
I only wish more people were willing and able to do so.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Ever heard of presuming innocent before guilty? Ever heard of this strange process whereby we have a trial, present evidence, sort through the facts, THEN decide innocent or guilty? Ever heard of the sixth amendment to the US constitution?
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
That's why. We're supposed to be better than that. (we're NOT, but we're supposed to be damnit!)
This is the collective public saying they think you're a moron and have no interest in listening to the drivel coming out of you.
No, it isn't. This is a specialty website catering to a small fraction of the population, and whether you want to admit it or not, it catrs to a very specific political orientation within that fraction of the population.
I am challenging that worldview, and I knew doing that would catch hell, but it needs done. People occasionally need to be shaken up and forced to answer uncomfortable questions. The question of what to do with Snowden is an uncomfortable one -- because something does need to be done. He broke the law, and that demands a response. Maybe the response is to abolish the law. Maybe it's to draft a new law. Maybe it's to hold a trial. All I asked was for people to engage in a discussion of the available options. Now the government has been pretty consistent with which one it chooses in these kinds of situations -- that inconsistency here is noteworthy.
And this is what people don't want to listen to: They don't want to hear the call of personal responsibility. But that's what democracy demands, if it is to have any value. The downmods represent a strong bias against taking responsibility as a citizen to participate in the government. They only want the pre-formed and pre-digested opinions handed to them by popular media. And nobody likes having a mirror held up to them. That's why the downmods happened. It has nothing to do with the "collective public" thinking I'm a moron.
Nine times out of ten, when someone calls another person stupid, it's not because they are, it's because they disagree but are unable to form a cohesive argument against what is said. Plato remarked on this aspect of human reasoning when he talked about his cave. How you can learn more than your peers, and yet seem stupider than before... because intelligence is commonly held as synonymous with agreement when the two couldn't be more different.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I think the Whistleblower Protection Act covers Snowden, particularly in light of Obama's Presidential Policy Directive 19. If WPA doesn't cover Snowden it should be extended so it does, but I think it already does, and the inconsistency isn't in the law it's in the administration's obedience to the law.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
What I want to know is why did Australia NAME the country and the individual surveillance targets, then put that in a document given to a foreign country, which had their name and organization written all over it? Haven't they heard of code names?
They could have referred to target1, target 2 etc in the country of Elbonia on paper and made it clear in conversation who was being referred to. Even if the intended targets could have been easily guessed, it would have provided some level of deniability.
Never put it in writing.
What is the Great Firewall if not a mass surveillance tool? And a mass surveillance tool the government actually uses -- Weibo has a "Reincarnation Party" of users who got deleted for violating various government standards. Last time I checked precisely nobody had claimed they got screwed because some NSA algorithm decided they voted Romney. Plenty said they got screwed by IRS Algorithms, but the IRS is not the NSA.
I will agree lots of aspects of this are new tech, and that among the world's democracies the US has by far the most troubling program, but that doesn't mean it's particularly unusual.
I'll agree he shouldn't be shot, but that's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
But your last sentence got my creative juices flowing. Why are you assuming EITHER the government or the whistle-blower actually has to be right?
Snowden seems to have meant well, but just look at this result of his leak: now everyone knows that Australia spied on Indonesia. That's probably isn't a surprise to anyone whose thought about it. After Ausrtralia has spies, and all countries within thousands of miles of it are a) strong allies of Australia (NZ, US/French bits of the South Pacific), b) tiny countries with no military capabilities to speak of (Tonga, Nauru, etc.), c) both (Tonga and Nauru are both quite close to the Aussies), or d) Indonesia. Why the fuck would they spy on anyone but Indonesia?
In other words this scoop's major result won't be protecting the Indonesians from Aussie skullduggery, it will be preventing the Aussies from using these specific tactics again. Given that their tactics are shared by all Five Eyes, and that the biggest target of Five Eyes spying is probably China; this particular leak hurts Snowden's agenda of increasing information freedom, because it's fucking China.
What it doesn't hurt are Greenwald's twin goals of a) humiliating the Fiver Eyes for daring to detain his boyfriend, and b) selling lots of freelance news stories in Australia.
Snowden was really naive if he thought Greenwald was on his side, and when you're playing on this level that's a very wrong thing to be.
News flash: ECHELON
Since the 60's it's been going on. The only thing that's changed is the technology to improve on what they had already been doing.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
So-called freedom fighter Snowden goes willingly a country where reporters and others are assassinated for questioning president/prime minister/president/... Putin? This in a country where the there cannot be a scandal on how the government spies on its citizens/neighbors/allies because it's legal & considered normal?
You need a really perverted definition of liberty to be able to hold that opinion, coward.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Putin doesn't have to keep up an illusion of Democracy either.
The main difference is that for some reason the US still wants to be seen as the "good guy" and tries hard to maintain that image. Russia never tried to be anything like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Putin, most Russian citizens & apparently Snowden maintain that he is the nec plus ultra in Democracy. See, he respects their constitution by not being President more than twice in a row & by continuing to follow all the parts of their constitution (that didn't bother him enough to have them removed by the rubber stamp Duma). Putin works hard to be seen as the "Good Guy", see? he even shelters that tireless worker for Democracy, Snowden.
Your original assertion re losing credibility is still bunk.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
This is an honest question; I simply do not understand why we're holding out on this one guy
Then you simply haven't been paying enough attention.
The problem here is that Putin is exactly NOT seen as the "good guy", internationally. But he is smart enough to never have been there when someone was with his hand in the cookie jar. Someone killing a dissident abroad? Putin didn't know. Some journalist dying in an "accident"? Putin was on vacation. It was always "the system". But of course everyone who can rub two brain cells together knows what's going on.
Putin, though, was smart enough to never have anyone killed who was standing right in the limelight. But he's far from being the "good guy" by any stretch. Ironically that makes the matter worse, because if someone is hiding with such a "bad guy", just how bad do those he is hiding from have to be?
And that's where the credibility bit comes in. Let's face it, we don't expect much "good" from the Russkies, do we? We've been taught in the past that they're teh evilz. But we, the good guys wit the white hats, we have to be "good" and play fair. Yes, people still believe that. They still believe we're the "good" ones in the whole game. Go to some random country in the former East Europe and ask what they fear more, that the US-American NSA invades their life or that the impossible happens, i.e. that the communists come back to take control again. The answer would absolutely surprise you.
The US is still the "good guy" in most people's hearts. And that means paradoxically at the same time that they're allowed a lot of leeway when it comes to certain things that aren't perceived as so bad (like spying "for liberty"), but at the same time means that they can't simply kill people because that would be "evil".
This has little to do with what Putin does. Putin is the Russian. Historically, the one that would do anything evil anyway, and hence we don't trust him, but we want to trust the US because they're "good". That sentiment is still deeply rooted in the minds of many people in Europe. And the US would be very ill advised to uproot it over someone like Snowden.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
cold fjord is kinda conservative, and girlintraining is transgender male-to-female. I think there might be some personal issues there.
Most Russian citizens do not think that Putin is a beacon of democracy. In fact, the plurality (at this point it's no longer a majority, just the single biggest voting block) that keeps voting for him is doing so precisely because he is anti-democracy - for them, "democracy" is a swear word, it's that poisonous Western political ideology that was planted to destroy the country from within.
You so insular that you do not see that your viewpoint is not universal. Seriously, go travel around the world. Spend some time in Russia (with an open mind & not just in the international hotels). You'll discover that for most russians honestly do see Putin as "the good guy" & the US as the bad guy internationally. I could take your post, replace all the US references with Russian ones & vice-versa and it would be exactly what I've heard from many in Russia.
Now this doesn't mean that I hold their viewpoint, only that they do.
Argue all you want about how much an elephant resembles a tree trunk, you clearly haven't seen enough of it to notice that other parts are different.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
There is truth in what you say but part of Putin's success is that among those who have abandoned socialism as the one true faith, he has convinced enough of them that only voting for him & eliminating all opposition is democracy.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Not really. He has convinced them that it is good, which is a different thing. They don't like democracy, and don't want it. They want an authoritarian populist government.
I'm more convinced by my conversations with Russians, in Russia, than I am by what you think they think.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I am a Russian from Russia. Understand that any conversations you have with people are going to be anecdotal.
But, yes, you are actually more accurate than I was - according to the poll, most people do want democracy, they just want a "special kind" of democracy: http://www.levada.ru/25-09-2013/rossiyane-o-svobode-demokratii-gosudarstve