Slashdot Mirror
USA Today Names Edward Snowden Tech Person of the Year
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the USA Today tech column: "...But until a lone information-technology contractor named Edward Snowden leaked a trove of National Security Agency documents to the media this summer, we didn't know just how much we'd surrendered. Now that we do, our nation can have a healthy debate — out in the open, as a democracy should debate — about how good a bargain we got in that exchange. For facilitating that debate, at great risk to his own personal liberty, Snowden is this column's technology person of the year for 2013."
To all you idiots out there, if you've got nothing to hid then you have nothing to fear. Edward Snowden is a big a danger to the US today as the Soviet Union was 4 years ago. He should be executed without trial.
Thanks, Mr. Snowden, for what you have done for the country !
I'm sure the country appreciates what he has done. In time he may even be honored with a parade.
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
I think Snowden was a traitor who helped America's enemies and geopolitical adversaries (the latter group includes China and Russia), but I don't write a major media tech column. Even if I did, an anti-Snowden column wouldn't be PC with techies, especially not here, so it would either be ignored or lampooned.
To me, none of Snowden's revelations were particularly surprising. The NSA is a spy agency by charter. Spies can and do go beyond the letter of the law in order to fulfill their mission of protecting their country from its enemies... it would be shocking if they didn't. If you don't think so, maybe you can argue that point. Congress is deputized with providing oversight over the spy agencies, and so far they seem concerned but not alarmed (at the content of the revelations, as opposed to the diplomatic damage).
And the spectacle of the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft protesting on behalf of the privacy of Americans, that's right out of Casablanca. "Your winnings, sir."
As rants go, this one is unusually lame. I'm just sayin' ...
...] ... oh please ...
Highlights:
"What happened to our spine?" [groan
"I wish I knew the answers."
" Now I think I am a defeatist." Congrats DUDE!!!!!
"I was cynical then, but had hope."
"Then I had the optimism to think that we were on the brink." --- [groan x 2]
On the plus side, I see no spelling errors or grammatical errors --- so I bet you get high grades in English.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
" dastardly unconstitutional secrets"
People keep saying this but I have yet to see any evidence of it. Everything revealed has been perfectly legal under the constitution, The judicial branch has hundreds of legal precedents interpreting what constitutes "reasonable" and "search and seizure". This is the same judicial process that is defined in the constitution. You might DISAGREE with it, but this is the process that the constitution has laid out for us regarding how law should be interpreted. So, to say that it is unconstitutional despite the judicial branch's clear rulings, you yourself are advocating violating the constitution. I know this isn't what Slashdot commenters want to hear, and I'm sure I will get modded down for this while someone posts a bold one-liner comment to this that gets modded +5 insightful, but this is the truth. I beseech everyone who values online privacy to rephrase the debate, because trying to argue that is unconstitutional is wasted effort for everyone who cares about privacy. You will be excluded not only by everyone who wants a serious, rational debate about this subject, but also by the people who have the power to change it (i.e. our elected representatives, for better or worse)>