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Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, writes at Slate that if Edward Snowden's stolen trove of beyond-top-secret documents had dealt only with the domestic surveillance by the NSA, then some form of leniency might be worth discussing. But Snowden did much more than that. 'Snowden's documents have, so far, furnished stories about the NSA's interception of email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions of Taliban fighters in Pakistan's northwest territories; about an operation to gauge the loyalties of CIA recruits in Pakistan; about NSA email intercepts to assist intelligence assessments of what's going on inside Iran; about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls 'worldwide,' an effort that 'allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.' Kaplan says the NYT editorial calling on President Obama to grant Snowden 'some form of clemency' paints an incomplete picture when it claims that Snowden 'stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency's voraciousness.' In fact, as Snowden himself told the South China Morning Post, he took his job as an NSA contractor, with Booz Allen Hamilton, because he knew that his position would grant him 'to lists of machines all over the world [that] the NSA hacked.' Snowden got himself placed at the NSA's signals intelligence center in Hawaii says Kaplan for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents. 'It may be telling that Snowden did not release mdash; or at least the recipients of his cache haven't yet published — any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China,' concludes Kaplan. 'If it turned out that Snowden did give information to the Russians or Chinese (or if intelligence assessments show that the leaks did substantial damage to national security, something that hasn't been proved in public), then I'd say all talk of a deal is off — and I assume the Times editorial page would agree.'"
Governments can dish it out but can't handle it? Too bad. I was never consulted about being taxed, I just am. I'm glad it's not just a one way street with the government thugs.
'It may be telling that Snowden did not release — or at least the recipients of his cache haven't yet published — any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China,'
Why would he have access to Russian or Chinese documents?
The NSA's operations abroad are not against the organization charter, and are, therefor, not against the law.
Some of the revelations, however, while detailing operations that are technically legal, do paint the organzation in a light that shows it to be an unchecked body with too much power and not enough supervision.
The specific examples listed in the article may not be under the above category. Still, it is not clear who did the sifting through and filtering the material to decide what gets published. If Snowden did none of it, than those can be chalcked down to "collateral damage". If the bulk of the material is relevant for a whistle blower, I'd still go with clemancy.
Shachar
P.s.
Not that I, as a non-US citizen, or even resident, have a real say on the matter.
Snowden may be a first class asshole for all I know but that's irrelevant... our elites have failed us and it's only a matter of time before history repeats and the streets run with blood.
All Snowden has done is shown precisely how naked the Emperor is. Squabbling over minutiae is just window dressing from this point onwards.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
How could have Snowden accessed documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China? Did Kaplan just leaked that the NSA possesses documents on China and Russia cyber-operations that Snowden could have accessed? Kaplan should be prosecuted for revealing to China and Russia that the NSA has documents on their own cyber-operations.
about NSA surveillance of cellphone calls 'worldwide,' an effort that 'allows it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.'
Yes, it's essential to national security that we "look for", identify, and if necessary kill, any and all "unknown associates" of Ms. Merkel!
It doesn't prove Snowden is in the right, but when the NSA's proponents can't string together one paragraph summarizing the "good" programs Snowden's compromised without this sort of thing, you can be pretty damn sure NSA is so far wrong it's not funny.
Snowden could have been an Ellsberg; instead he chose to take his information to China and Russia. One would have to assume is the first things those country's intelligence agencies would do is get their hands on his files. He could refuse; but then again they could simply bundle him up and ship him back to the US and core political points. In addition, if what Kaplan says is correct and he did this in a premeditated manner then his whole story starts to unravel. At this pony, he has to start wondering what happens when he is a bigger liability to Russia than an asset? Putin certainly, as a former intelligence officer, will have no qualms over cutting him lose once he is no longer useful. finally, there is no upside for any President granting clemency. Cutting a deal, maybe, where Snowden gets a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation.His biggest problem, in many ways, will be his ego. As his value fades and the world loses interest in him, if Russia doesn't cut him loose he'll probably wind up like Kim Philby, cutoff from friends and family, largely forgotten and ignored. That will take a harsh psychological toll.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Since all of the NSA's collection programs are international in scope, how should Snowden separate the documents to make an international spying program such as XKEYSCORE resemble a "domestic-only" program? That's an impossible hurdle... The corollary is that in the author's opinion, any leak about the NSA's collection should be punished because it would include spying on "legitimate targets". But his argument sounds reasonable on the surface.
He doesn't deserve clemency, yeah. For clemency, you first need to do something wrong.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
am glad Snoden didn't release mdash;
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
This is one of those propositions that can only ever be in the past tense in a single logical state: busted.
These one-way allegations have a way of never dying, or at least not until it's back page news. Meanwhile, they muddy the waters a great deal just hanging there.
Neither is it self-evidently clear that the NSA's voraciousness is separable, to where informed public debate can exist with only one-half of the picture (aka the domestic half).
I think this article translates to: "it's our policy to never grant clemency under any conditions just in case we later discover a game-changing fact".
The option of a conditional clemency is fraught with unsolvable issues. Snowden could attest that he's never actually done any entirely non-clement things, and if were subsequently learned otherwise, his clemency could be revoked. This would be "clement until proven guilty".
Only for this to be workable, one would have to have a way to prove that the NSA never plants leaks of its own information to gain what it dearly wants—have I got a bridge to sell you—as there's no way to prove that a leak originated from Snowden unless the substance of the leak contains information one can verify the NSA never had at that time.
Good luck with that.
And somehow the subtext of all this seems to imply that the NSA's proven snookery (illegitimately authorized as far as the eye can see) should take a back seat to Snowden's unproven snookery (the worst things he might have done).
I don't blame the NSA for the lamentable standards of civic discourse. But neither can the agency hide from their legacy of operating behind a thick smoke screen of democratic false impressions.
He is a fascist and a traitor of the people. One day the balance of power will change, Franky boy may pray it won't happen in his lifetime.
of sensible people is they are taken for a ride, that Snowden did the right thing and now, as expected, the bean counter mentalities bribed by mental cool-aid are trying to countersteer the sailboat which already left the harbor.
How the show continues will be seen and the true outcome may never be known.
Just one hell of a said affair going on.....
Soldiers fight for our freedom? As if fighting in some third-world crap hole has anything to do with our freedom here in the United States. I think Snowden is a true hero. He didn't give his life for oil or empire, he gave his life for something that intimately has to do with *our* freedom.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Every country with their own little sets of 'freedom fighters' or revolitionaries would tell their groups not to trust email traffic, mobile phone calls, and radio transmissions by default.
As for cyber-operations, every country has known since the late 1960's that their telco, crypto, banking, legal, embassy networks where under constant surveillance and could not to be trusted.
By the 1980's encrypted embassy plain text was finding its way into the Western press...
Some nations crypto staff seem to be not working for their nations best interests when passing junk encryption... the German efforts to protect their political communications seem very slow...
As for Russian or China will they really be baited by an ex CIA source who got to work for the NSA via a contractor?
Thankfully what has changed is a deeper understanding of software, hardware and crypto been junk as sold, delivered, reviewed or upgraded.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Snowden is Evil because We Say So.
Those wars are out there, like it or not. The US has done terrible wrongs but, from my POV, that is secondary to the fact the US is the only real power that can keep the Asian autoritarianism at distance. Information is absolutely vital for not losing a war (winning is impossible anyway) and what Snowden did, no matter what the motives, clearly hurt our side. To whine about "clemency" is ridiculous. He chose to switch sides himself. His former job was such that getting into neutral position for him is impossible. I doubt Russia will ever let him be free to move at will. Just like the USSR never trusted Kim Filby and kept him in a controlled environment, more a showcase rather then any asset of any value, I suspect now Snowden will be a pet monkey for the Kremlin satrap. However, if Snowden is let free, I will not shed any tears when the long arm of youknowwho reaches him.
So lets apologize, convey our sympathies and ignore it. As per usual, everything will be alright. ok ?
Soldiers fight for our freedom? As if fighting in some third-world crap hole has anything to do with our freedom here in the United States. I think Snowden is a true hero. He didn't give his life for oil or empire, he gave his life for something that intimately has to do with *our* freedom.
WTF? Who said anything about soldiers.... Please re-read what I wrote
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
nobody is aware of the volume of documents. Snowden may not even scratched the surface, and specifically handed over editorial control and journalistic ethics to a group of news organizations to pick what gets released. As some numbers have been floated the documents are at least in the many tens of thousands, but as high as 1.5 million. Thats teams of people working for months or years to sift through. So this type of mass collection would be beyond the scope of his personal ability to carefully select what was given to journalists. If he personally handed over to china or russia anything, he'd be in the bad books. but other than that, his motives as stated do not seem to be violated
The rights enumerated in (but NOT granted by) the US Constitution are BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS to which every human being is entitled.
Every human being on Earth has a fundamental human right against unreasonable searches and seizures, unlawful arrests, and to be free of total government snooping and over-reaching police actions.
Exposing our violation of the rights of practically the entire Earth population was the right thing to do. Snowden deserves more than clemency. He deserves a sainthood.
Just another example of American exceptionalism: Snowden should not have divulged America's illegal activities outside the US because we're special; we can do no wrong. What a bunch of self-righteous bigots.
Don't stop where the ink does.
Kaplan says the NYT editorial calling on President Obama to grant Snowden 'some form of clemency' paints an incomplete picture when it claims that Snowden 'stole a trove of highly classified documents after he became disillusioned with the agency's voraciousness.' In fact, as Snowden himself told the South China Morning Post, he took his job as an NSA contractor, with Booz Allen Hamilton, because he knew that his position would grant him 'to lists of machines all over the world [that] the NSA hacked.' Snowden got himself placed at the NSA's signals intelligence center in Hawaii says Kaplan for the sole purpose of pilfering extremely classified documents.
What Kaplan leaves out is that gig was not the first time Snowden worked for the NSA, he'd been working with the NSA and CIA in various capacities since 2006. It was during this work "he became disillusioned with the agency's voraciousness". He took the contractor position explicitly to get the evidence for the illegal programs he already had first hand knowledge of.
Kaplan actually emphasizes that this job was only 3 months, implying that Snowden had just learned about the programs and is therefore lying about all his deliberations and questioning within the agency.
Whatever you think of Snowden I think there's enough evidence to conclude that Kaplan is a hack.
I stole this Sig
But he didn't give up his life, he opted to create a new one. He went the same way as Assange did by seeking asylum in an unfriendly country. If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court. Plenty of lawyers would be happy to work for him due to the high-profile nature of the case.
Even if he were convicted, is that any worse than being confined in his current situation? Conversely, it may lend much greater credence to his cause. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years and his incarceration was one of the things that kept support for the anti-apartheid movement strong.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Had the released documents only reveled domestic spying, then the NSA might have looked even worse in the eyes of Americans, but the USA might not have looked as bad to the rest of the world. It would have been a misleading image of the USA though.
It may have been illegal according to current American law for Snowden to reveal, that USA is treating every other country in the world as an enemy. But you have got to ask if it really is Snowden, who is wrong here. It could be that it is Snowden who is right, and on the other side, we have the law, the NSA, and the government who are all wrong.
I'd say it is up to the population of the USA to decide whose side they want to be on.
If the population of the USA thinks it is OK that NSA is spying on all other countries as if they were an enemy of USA, then the population should make this point very clear. In that case Snowden should never go back to the USA, but there will surely be countries of another opinion, in which Snowden can live as a free man.
If OTOH the population of the USA thinks that the NSA has gone too far, then they should also make this point very clear. If it is only the small elite in power, who consider the spying to be OK, then the population need to replace them with somebody who acts in the interest of the population. In this case it is of little importance, if the NSA acted within the law, the law need to be updated to make it absolutely clear, that this is no longer legal. And Snowden's actions should retroactively be made legal.
I don't know what the majority of the population of USA thinks about that question, but I think the world deserves to know. Does the population of USA think it is OK for USA to be spying on every other country?
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
War on Drugs is a war on American citizens. NSA works with the SOD who works with the various State Polices. Any senator, representative, president, prosecutor, police, etc that have participated in this war are guilty of treason. So in this way, Ed Snowden may be guilty of Treason, as many govt appointed and elected officials.
Constitution says:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Re Plenty of lawyers would be happy to work for him due to the high-profile nature of the case.
They would have to be cleared by the US gov. Thats a short list of US lawyers. The court would be sealed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Your wife is fucking the plumber. Your friend tells you the fact.
And the traitor is... your friend!
Excellent thinking, you are definitely a genius.
are called human rights, because everyone has them. Even criminals, convicted murderers, child killers. Every human has human rights.
So, snowden is a hero. Privacy is not only meant for the USA.
It might be considered that the NSA, and the supporting government, are the actual traitors, acting against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and Snowden is the actual hero. History (and to some extend, truth) being written by the victorious belligerent, the future will tell who's on whose side.
The difference between this case and Manning's is that Snowden will be tried in a civilian court rather than a military tribunal. Due to what we know already, there would be immense public pressure conduct the trail in the open, and there is know point sealing what is already public knowledge.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
And suppose he tried that, he ended up in jail, and the government was somehow able to spin damage control and minimize his efforts? You make some good points, but he took the most realistic path of options to make sure he didn't go down in vain. I must admit, when this all started, I thought it would blow over fairly quickly. Most events like this have. In the end, the only thing that America responds to is money. That Snowden is costing corporations money here is the best thing to happen to America since apple pie. The Constitution is gone and our Rights are a joke, but cost corporations some money, and maybe we will see baby steps taken in the right direction.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
The newspapers asking for his clemency all received financial benefit from Snowden with the headlines and people looking for information about the headlines they were pushing.
As far as the intent argument goes. We have know all kinds of abuses have been happening for a long time. Courts have issued rules on insane standings rules that say things like "you can't know your right were violated" so you can't sue, which means you can't find out through discovery.
So someone like Snowden who is on the outside would have had little choice but to intentionally infiltrate the NSA or just keep bending over and taking it like everyone else. It might be more fair to describe him as an activist than a whistle-blower, but morally I think there is plenty of equivalence there.
The issue about disclosing the stuff that isn't likely to be illegal or outside charter is that it was probably necessary for credibility. If the only stuff he handed over was heavily filtered and redacted the only questions that would have been raised would be "why should we believe any of this is authentic, the courts will never let us verify any of it?" and "What aren't you telling us?" It isn't as if he posted the whole trove on 4chan or something he leaked to (mostly) responsible press agencies who have always played the role of filter for this kind of thing in western democracy. I think the wider leaks though perhaps unfortunate with respect to some national interests were quite necessary and done as responsibly as possible.
All and all the arguments against clemency pretty much boil down to "he threatened order, and we can't have that" Which when it comes to military and intelligence personal and civilian employes of similar nature is not an argument entirely without merit; but the NSA is so out of hand a wrench any smaller would have done nothing to even slow the gears. At some point the system gets to broken to work with in it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Public knowledge is not declassified.. the US gov in court would be reviewing classified material.
http://www.whistleblower.org/action-center/save-tom-drake shows some of what can happen.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That's not what the author is saying. He's saying that there is evidence that Snowden is not some heroic patriot, but just a regular old spy that got paid off by the Russians or Chinese, and is just using the domestic spying to help get the public on his side and make it more difficult for the U.S. government to catch/prosecute him. And even if that is not the case, he still exposed a lot of the U.S.'s international spying efforts which could potentially cause immediate harm to U.S. forces overseas, in addition to exposing the domestic spying.
But he didn't give up his life, he opted to create a new one.
But he did give up his life, which is why he has to create a new one. He didn't actually have to die; he has to live with his decisions.
If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court.
What point do you really think he'd be able to make? They won't permit much of his testimony for national security excuses.
Even if he were convicted, is that any worse than being confined in his current situation?
Ask Manning.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court.
he has already made a point. you seem to have missed it.
besides, the obvious reason for him to stay away is that he can't reasonably expect a fair trial in the US. and that's the other important point he's making.
Edward Snowden better find a home in Russia or some other East Asian backwater like Mongolia, get married in live a hidden very rural life, and here is a book i recommend for him to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can't_Go_Home_Again
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
He copied the documents but did not deprive the NSA of them. He only copied them and did not steal them. This is the same distinction that must be made when discussing copyright violations. It seems like a small point, but the thievery elicits much stronger emotional responses than copying does, and some are making deliberate efforts to paint Snowden in as bad a light as possible. Please, let's use the correct term.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
...for the people, and of the people has no legitimate reason to indefinitely keep secrets from the people. When temporary secrets are needed, they should be placed in escrow, so the reasonableness of the duration can be evaluated when it comes out, and those keeping the secret can be held accountable. Until the government provides such reasonable checks, surely the people are justified in seizing all of its information by force.
Supposedly in the US we elect our leaders. We also decide the degree of taxation and which agencies will receive more or less tax dollars. So what meaning does a vote have when much of government is covert? Is our military adequate? Does our military receive enough funding? I have no clue because much of our military is top secret. Without knowing whether we are superior in strike and defend ability how do I decide who should be president? Is the NSA over or under funded? How can I know? Should I be voting for hawks or doves? Clearly the ability of government to have secrets wipes out democracy . So I must belive that anyone who releases secrets is a hero in that our own government may well be more dangerous than any foreign power.
Snowden had many options for disclosing some of his information. He chose the most headline-grabbing, attention-seeking method, that also happens to be illegal. There are true whistle-blowers that have inspired change while using legal tactics without achieving celebrity status. It may be harder. It may take more time. But they believed in the cause and dedicated those resources. I really have no sympathy for him and really don't understand the calls for clemency. He had options, he chose to break the law.
As long as felons like Holder, Alexander, Clapper are not just running around free but are kept employed, any talk about "clemency" is absurd. When we are talking about equal and just treatment, clemency will not come into play if Snowden returns to the U.S.A. Instead he will be given ample media time and be able to continue in his work as a government contractor.
That's how the Department of Justice and the president and congress reacted to the proven crimes of multiple perjury by government officials who spent billions of dollars fighting the U.S. constitution and spreading terror domestically and abroad.
Can we do less for Ed Snowden? The person who actually kept his oath on the constitution?
Edward Snowden committed no crimes against justice, he committed crimes against a police state, a big brother state that is and was becoming worse by the day. Edward Snowden did not steal anything, he liberated the truth. His continued freedom is proof that many others can achieve the same acts non-violent acts against a criminal state and work together to bring it down and put the minority that distort and corrupt democracy the world over finally behind bars where they belong.
Edward Snowden does not deserve clemency, he should not be charged in the first place. Until such time as he is called as a witness to testify against those who committed real criminal acts the world over, then he would be doing more harm than good by returning. His continued freedom is proof positive that you too can work to bring down a corrupt elements destroying you democracy, your freedom and your rights and do something that has been celebrated since time immemorial escape to fight another day. Each and every time Edward Snowden appears in public free to challenge those criminals is a victory.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am convinced that Mr. Snowden represents more than himself, and that he has help and assistance from a faction or factions inside the organs of state security that do not like the way things are headed.
This piece by Mr. Kaplan clearly represents a bit of propaganda from the other side, the elements inside state security that do like the way things are going. In that light, while not informational, it is informative about the shadow play going on behind the scenes.
Constitution says: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
I'll see your "Constitution says", and raise you a "Constitution also says":
"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."
Traitor or not, Snowden has exposed a massive crime by the US government against it's citizens. Why are we even talking about him? Where is the prosecutorial inertia for holding our lying leaders accountable? Dead in our mother's basements, apparently.
O RLY?
There are a lot of people in New Orleans who would disagree with that.
Wait, the U.S. military shot down a hurricane that was about to attack U.S. citizens? Or it fought the hurricane, and drove it back into the sea, after it dared to attack U.S. soil?
Look, I appreciate the cleanup efforts that the National Guard was able to engage in, after the local politicians finally got their act together enough to let the National Guard and FEMA into their jurisdictions (which they held off doing for a very long time, at the cost of many lives, and a lot of property), but to say that the military in this case was protecting citizens, rather than engaging in a relief operation, is a lie.
Some of the revelations, however, while detailing operations that are technically legal, do paint the organzation in a light that shows it to be an unchecked body with too much power and not enough supervision.
"Honey, where are the parental controls settings on this NSA thing again? I can't find them using the damn remote!"
That editorial was written to shift perception. The CFR is part of the inner circle in Washington. Anything that comes from anyone associated with it should be viewed as a tactic in a larger campaign. He's not trying to argue the finer points of Snowden's guilt or innocence. He's trying to move the needle of public opinion, so that subsequent actions against Snowden have less resistance.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court. Plenty of lawyers would be happy to work for him due to the high-profile nature of the case..
And who guarantees he will get a fair trial, with a jury of his peers, before he returns? Who can give assurance that Snowden's attorneys can discover and submit all the evidence? If The System wants to be "fair" about this, then let them demonstrate their fairness by having a trial of those who violated the Constitution as exposed by the revelations to date. Will that happen?
Why hasn't US Attorney General Holder done anything yet about the violations? Because he's part of the problem, perhaps? (I'm a citizen, who thinks that with the current Administration there are legal "haves" and "have nots" in the USA today. Witness Fast and Furious as an example of the uneven application of justice.)
There are no legit reasons for keeping any NSA programs secret. These punk bitches are rapist murderers who dictate and control the poverty of every man women and child on earth, and they cover up every crime they've ever committed against us.
I am saying that Snowden deserves our full support, and our fucktard government agents deserve treason charges and death penalties. Without Mr. Snowden's disclosures, we'd almost all still be in the dark, and they could still get away with anything they wanted. Nobody was going to tell us any of these programs were going on, and they would have only continued to interfere with and dominate our lives without detection.
More NSA puke shit details here for those interested in their space weapons capability: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
Oliver North called himself a "patriot" after being pardoned for his involvement in weapon sales to Hezbolla, less than a year after it had blown up more than one hundred US Marines, weapon sales to Iran which had declared itself and enemy of the USA and a bit of embezzlement on the side to pay for home improvements and a car. Various other people in the party that is now calling for Snowdon's blood also called him a patriot. He had his photo taken wrapped in a flag when he was running for office. He said he was selling weapons to terrorists without orders from above (although Poindexter was implicated it was not by North), just out of a sense of duty to his country.
Fast forward to Snowdon. Why should he get a raw deal when what he did was far less damaging than North, and his whistleblowing, apparently also out of a sense of duty to his country, was of far greater national benefit than selling weapons to terrorists and a declared enemy?
We don't know for instance how much Boeing paid the intelligence community for the industrial espionage on Airbus that was exposed a few years ago. We don't know if they get anything from financial manipulation of markets but we do know they have the ability.
All The NSA surveillance as helped to break one single real terrorist suspect... not one.
That's including the big pile of really dubious suspects the FBI has been bringing in lately.
The only thing the NSA really watching all their political opponents. Outside the US and inside.
There is little doubt in my mind, some of the best and brightest, the people writing the exploits and doing the most devious thinking, were recruited from the floor of DEFCON. The military finally smartened up and looked at the talent pool, unfortunately for the American public. NSA recruiter: "Do you want to be in the shadows of the public, and do what you do for little to no money, assume huge risks with little to no credit for your work? OR, would you like to work side by side with other like minds, making 250k+ a year, company vehicle, paid housing, big bonuses for working code, and get to work with unlimited bandwidth and computing power? You will have physical access to devices when needed to test your code and theories, and, you will be completely immune to prosecution. Free coffee, sodas, meals, gyms, 4 weeks of paid vacation. You WILL NOT, however, be allowed to work from home, and, you will never have to take your work home with you. Sound good?" Me: "I didn't graduate high school, is this a show-stopper?" NSA recruiter: "You are going to be a real asset to the NSA, we value your commitment, sign here." I bet they never thought what they would be doing would lead to this. They thought they were strictly going after bad guys. Getting your ego pumped and stroked tends to make you forget who you are and what you once stood for.
Time to put an end to this mess.
Nominate Snowden for Nobel Peace Prize.
Same for Julian Assange.
Same for Bradley/Chelsea Manning.
Its the only way to let trolling politician know their dipers need changing.
There are NO further equitable solutions.
So some guy from The Establishment says that Snowden and all future leakers should have somehow performed a humanly impossible feat of meta analysis on millions of documents which constitute proof of widespread criminal and unconstitutional activities . THAT is the standard leakers shall be held to. Or else. They're not leakers, and it's espionage.
So says the Council on Foreign Relations.
You can just seem them breaking into workshop gorups brainstorming how to spin the Snowden Affair so as to turn the American public against him and give the NSA defenders on PBS and FOX talking points.
"Hey polls show people think he's a whistleblower , but maybe if we can split that perception by appearing to agree with the public on *some* of the stuff while damning him with the other stuff, we can split the opposition."
This from the CFR. What did you expect? I used to think that the CFR might be some kind of collective voice of wisdom, experience and expertise on world affairs. You know, people who had wide ranging real world experience and were out of their posts or retired but still engaged and concerned.
I am an asshole this way; I impugn my own idealism to the actions of others.
The CFR is a bunch of hand picked academics and fucking yes men and women drawn from previous administrations and Ivy leagues universities whose main function is to think and live and produce "solutions" within the Skinner box out of which cookies , cake and ice cream have fallen to them their whole lives . They're entirely composed of and express the perspective of government and establishment academic institutions whose "think tanks" and "department chairs" are little more than hand-up-your-ass-moving-your-mouth , you-know-who-feeds-you-baby extensions of Washington officialdom and groupthink.
Good thing they weighed in on Snowden. I know we were all breathlessly awaiting their opinion on this matter.
"I'm sorry to report he trial balloon didn't float too well."
So... he stole the stuff they stole and gave it back.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
The biggest concern with any Russian or Chinese documents is what the NSA's having them reveals about the American intelligence capabilities and operations. A public release of such documents, while embarrassing to Russia and China, might be even more damaging to US intelligence, and might possibly expose people working for the US.
all this, while at the same time not serving the purpose of Snowden: "To show how NSA is spying on everyone, specially when this 'everyone' specifically include innocent by stander like US' own population or friendly ally countries. To show abuses of surveillance"
- "Look all the nasty things NSA is doing on US population themselves, in the name of war on {bogeyman du jour}": that suit the purpose and shall be revealed by journalist, after the currate everything to remove dangerous informations.
- "Look at all the things we've managed to steal, here are some documents from Russia and China that should have remained confidential, but did not": that only brings problems.
Even if Snowden did manage to get such documents (no proof exists), these documents aren't likely to get released.
Instead, Snowden spent several days in the Russian consulate before being allowed into Russia. What did he do to convince the Russians to let him in? If *you* were the Russian foreign ministry, how would *you* handle this? It's a legitimate question.
Why do people keep thinking that the information inside Snowden's documents are a total surprise to Russia and China? These countries have had their own intelligence services *FOR AGES*. People at current top level inside the NSA weren't *even born* back when Russia already had cheka. This countries and their intelligence services have way much more experience and resource than a signle rogue consultant like Snowden (although, for his defence, Snowden *is* brillant and *does* have lots of knowledge and enoguh discipline to have run his stint successfully, without early detection). If Snowden has managed to gatter all this, then one can only imagine all what top opperatives of FSB, MSS, and others have managed to collect.
The same information that Snowden did manage to gather in his documents, and (probably even more) are probably secretly know by Russia and China thanks to their own intelligence channels.
So to go back to your "Russian foreign ministry" exemple, I'll probably keep rellying on exclusively all that FSB (and before KGB) has gattered. They are good guys with experience and ressources, and most of their intelligence can be trusted. I'll absolutely avoid getting anywhere near Snowden's document. The debriefing at the Russian consulate very likely didn't at any point at all concern the intelligence gattered by Snowden. Almost all the time was very probably spent trying to solve all the diplomatic hassle to manage to find a way to safely bring Snowden to russia and find him a place there (and deciding on an exact status, etc.) all the while avoiding hurting allies. Simply bringing Snowden to Russia publicly is a big enough madness that explains alone all the time spent. Given all this already existing circus, trying to get hold on the documents would be the worst idea possible. The "Russian foreign ministry" didn't probably give a fuck about Snowden's documents.
- Peeking into those publicly known documents would have angered even more the USA and would have been even more detrimental to the diplomatic ties of Russia and any other country concerned by those documents. Peeking these documents would be damaging.
- Chances are, that anything in these documents happened to already be known through Russia's own spying program. It's not worth looking at them to begin with. Peeking these documents brings almost no advantages at all for Russia.
Given this, Russia has probably decided "forget about this" regarding the document. And concentrated on the difficult task of bring Snowden to them. .
- That has also been a diplomatically complicated task
- But a
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Isn't it curious: do we really know more now than before Snowden made his "revelations"? We already knew that the NSA was snooping in our "metadata" and in all kinds of international traffic. So who now protests what the NSA does? Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Australia, India and Brazil. All countries with strong ties to the U.S.; all countries who have cooperated or can be presumed to have cooperated with the intelligence-gathering of the U.S. in the past. Why don't we hear the protestations of China, of North Korea, or of neutral countries like Spain?
Isn't it curious: the NSA "contractor" plugs in his portable drive into the evil network and, like Princess Leia, carries off the plans to the intelligence-gathering form of the Death Star for the Rebels while being undetected. Who would you pick to act such a part? Perhaps a young, geeky-looking guy -- oh, and let's make him white so we can avoid negative colorations of the the U.S. (and other countries') minorities...
Isn't it curious: the NSA "contractor" escapes the control of the possessor of the information. He supposedly knows all of the right contacts to gain "amnesty" in a foreign country. He lands in Russia rather than in a more neutral country ... and Russia does have strong ties to the U.S. now, don't they? He who "betrayed" the NSA sips expensive wines and eats caviar under the protection of a country that really shouldn't care less what happens to him, right?
When the grass grows high in the forestland, sometimes the keepers of the forest execute a controlled burn. They intentionally start a fire in the grass so they can have the resources to keep it under control, rather than wait for some future accident to cause a crisis. I suspect that here the grass is public opinion, and Mr. Snowden is the match put into the grass.
Mr. Snowden does not deserve amnesty: he already has it.
Where else would he get a fair trial? If he feels that he will be convicted, and that the laws are wrong, then he should be fighting to change them (ie. for more whistleblower protections). A part of that process is to actually get convicted of such injustice.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Maybe because it wasn't the government that did anything wrong. Snowden did, and that's why he went on the run.
Why are we talking about Snowden's crime when it pales in comparison to the breach of the law by the NSA?
This is madness. I'll tell you what, I'll throw snowden in jail if you throw the head of the NSA as well as most of his direct subordinates in jail as well.
Short of that, Snowden deserves to be as free as any of them.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nothing to see here but some CIA op trying to spread hate against a man that should be hailed a hero.
If he goes to jail so should all of DC for sure
When I applied for a position of public trust and had a background check, it was made clear to me that I faced prison if I breached that trust. Hang 'em high, I say!
an ill wind that blows no good
Then where else should he be tried fairly?
The state is set up as a framework for a large group of people to live together in civil society. In a representative democracy, this authority is derived from the consent of the populace and the US has a comparatively good track record, more or less, upholding the fundamental rights to ensure this type of government works.
I, for one, can not say what Snowden *should* have done. However, what he should not have done was to run away to an unfriendly country claiming asylum. One that guarantees its citizens with a much lower level of freedoms and rights that the US or most western nations do. And then to use his life in asylum to denounce the lack or rights and protections that those in the US enjoy (although degraded somewhat by the NSA and allied intelligence). It reeks of hypocrisy and does not go down well with the majority of people which aren't anarchists.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Is that you Baghdad Bob? Or are you Comical Ali?
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Punish Snowden or not? I certainly hope he never gets caught by the wrong people, regardless of whether or not he receives clemency. That's really not the issue. IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT HE DID IT. IT WOULDN'T MATTER IF IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE, KNOWN OR UNKNOWN. What are we (Americans) going to do about the information we've received about the unacceptable SHIT our gov't gets up to? Is it time yet to stop pretending we don't know? My knee-jerk reaction is to say I should move to another country. Hurray! I'm part of the problem :(
Kaplan is arguing that Snowden would have to be perfectly selective about what he took in order to "deserve" clemency. He would have to take from the NSA "the pound of flesh nearest the heart", without a drop of blood or grain of sinew or bone. That's an impossible standard.
Snowden shouldn't get mere "clemency". Snowden should get a full pardon for the laws he broke, plus the Presidential Medal of Freedom and/or the Congressional Gold Medal for exposing these totalitarian programs.
So what is the alternative? Is it open season for every intelligence agent working for the US to be able to release whatever classified information they want to the world?
Snowden would generate much more support, and fight for lasting change, only if he came back to face the music. Mandela, Ghandi, Aung San Suu Kyi, those are the characters that people look up to. He can argue his case honorably and with authority, which he is not capable of doing now on his makeshift pulpit in far-away Russia.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
So? He is also a hero (whether we like it or not). Neither word does him, or what he did, justice. We don't stop at the word "traitor" and disregard everything else. Not even the times are suggesting that he be fully pardoned or something.
If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court. Plenty of lawyers would be happy to work for him due to the high-profile nature of the case.
He wouldn't get to argue his case in court. The state would pull the "state secrets" card, and practically no evidence in his favor would be allowed at the trial. This assumes he even makes it to trial, and doesn't end up in a mysterious accident or murdered by a fellow inmate.
That said, I think he would be far more effective in his efforts as a martyr instead of a perceived outlaw. Unfortunately the attention span of the majority of the American public is such that even that likely wouldn't matter. The fact that information continues to come out regarding the NSA's activities is the only thing keeping this issue in a lot of peoples' minds.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Anyone who makes that argument simply does not understand how bad things are in the USA. A few years of isolation and sleep deprivation any psychological torture is not a good idea in my opinion.
The Founding Fathers were traitors to the Crown, whatever history will think of them London wanted to see them hang. Any Nazi commander who refused to take part in the Holocaust faced an execution squad. Historians might argue, but if Snowden ever sets foot on US soil he'd never see the outside of a prison cell ever again. Many people will argue that Snowden has not only exposed a runaway government agency, he's also exposed the nation's secrets to its enemies. That despite the best of intentions, you can't have people running around exposing classified documents as they feel like. Even those who like the message would kill the messenger.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That's called throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Of course there are rumors that Snowden is a regular spy. "reportedly there is evidence" is a rumor. There are people whose full time job it is to spread those rumors about all NSA/CIA whistleblowers. It's standard procedure. As for claims about damaging the US interests this is also standard procedure against a lot of journalism. Where are you going to put the bar? With criteria saying you should be able to prove that what you're publishing cannot absolutely damage US interests you're never going to be able to publish anything that says "hey guys, our government is fucking us over". That is not how things should work, even if your government would very much like it that way.
Journalism should publish except in clearcut extreme cases.
You're absolutely right that he could have done this anonymously (like Deep Throat w/ the Pentagon Papers), and Glenn Greenwald bears part of the responsibility. It's obvious that Honk Kong's huge propaganda posters we saw early in his international escapades were *not* put there by citizens of China. His Russian girlfriend was obviously a cover...did you see the early reporting about their relationship? It was all a sham narrative.
He probably had good intentions, but let his ego guide his choices, which **put him in a place to be blackmailed**
I think we should bring him home to the US. I *do not* consider him a hero, patriot, or 'national conversation starter', but he's not a free man in Russia.
The Patriot Act text has been publicly available since 2001 (EVERYONE ignores the Patriot Act in this whole mess!!!), and USA Today reported on the NSA metadata program **in 2006** http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
Anyone who felt that they had digital privacy before Snowden's revelations was an idiot. No one here on slashdot felt their data was secure...just browse the 'Your Rights Online' slashdot section back to before the Patriot Act even. Just because idiot news producers were too dumb to report on privacy issues as front page news before this does not in any way justify how this went down.
I genuinely feel bad for him. In the past I could have let my hubris guide me to the same mistakes.
He's a victim of his own ego and hubris, and a victim of blackmail and espionage. We should bring him home where he belongs. I think he's probably suffered enough.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Shocked, that this is an unpopular opinion on Slashdot.
Listen: the prevailing thought here has been that while what he did was technically illegal, it was morally just, and he should therefore be exempt from at least most of the laws applicable to his situation. If it turns out that he was also involved in some morally abhorrent behavior in the pursuit of his "goals," which themselves may not have been motivated by the purest of intentions, doesn't that also count?
FUCK YOU.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
His point isn't just that Snowden didn't release any data on Russia, it's that Snowden a) fled to Russia (when he could have fled other countries), b) released no data on Russia's operations, c) claims that his sole concern is privacy rights, d) most of the information he has actually released has nothing to do with privacy rights for anybody (no government official has an actual right not to be spied on by other governments, but we spent about a week on Slashdot debating US and Australian spying on Indonesia, and Snowden's also released info on our operations in the Afpak theatre), and e) Russia is a country that has no privacy rights for anybody.
That's consistent with publicity hound who wants to be the most photographed man in the country, it is not consistent with ethical whistle-blowing.
And I don't mean that in a positive way. This is the first time I've seen where someone has actually expended some effort to write up something that seems convincing.
However, it is still full of holes. There are two very important ones that are hidden in plain sight, bold-faced lies said out straight so that most audiences won't even notice, much less question them.
The first is his "why didn't he reveal anything about the evil other guys? is he maybe working for them?" allegation, hidden in the two sentences
It may be telling that Snowden did not release [...] any documents detailing the cyber-operations of any other countries, especially Russia or China [...]If it turned out that Snowden did give information to the Russians or Chinese
Well, doh, he didn't work for any russian or chinese intelligence agency during his career, so he did not have an inside view or access to classified documents in any of them. Insinuating otherwise is like complaining that Putin didn't fix the US healthcare.gov problem.
The second crazy-ass hole is that the NSA also did good. You find that a lot these days, apparently it's been given out as a party line.
Well, that is a dramatically misleading statement, not because it is wrong but because it misses the entire point. Allow me to illustrate:
I propose we create an agency similar to the NSA, let's call it the NCA - the National Crime-Eradication Agency. It will have a budget of a billion US$ and one simple task: Buy as many guns and ammo as you can get for that amount, and then drive into every big american city and gun down everyone they meet.
Like the NSA, they will successfully execute a death penalty on many, many murderers, rapists and other criminals who escaped detection or conviction. Even many whose crimes we didn't yet know about because the victims kept silent or were never found.
All in favour?
Of course not, it's a crazy scheme. Just like the NSAs "total surveilance so we detect a few bad apples" approach. Destroying the privacy of several billion people is not an adequate price to pay for capturing a dozen or even a hundred bad guys.
Sure it did get them some. So would carpet-bombing New York City. Success alone is a worthless measure without taking cost into account.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Obama's Nobel Prize will turn your skin green.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
No matter what the damage and ultimate outcome of his treason results for the entire world, I will sleep much better once I see him hanging from a yardarm.
How about trying THAT on for size CFR? THIS is what results when the NSA breaks the law. National security is endangered. That's the REAL situation we have. Snowden would never have leaked anything if the NSA weren't breaking the law in the first place.
If you engage in mass illegal spying against Americans and work overtime to criminalize everyone who tries to correct your behavior going through official channels by firing them, raiding their houses, bankrupting them and filing bogus charges against them and throwing them in jail AND THEN AS A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of your illegal spying and your illegal prosecution / persecution of these people, a Snowden (of which there are likely to be potentially very many owing to your own actions) breaks rank and does what he can do to alert people of your illegal activities , well :
IT"S YOUR FAULT
YOU CAUSED THIS
YOU DID THIS
get it? Get it? This breach is YOUR fault , not Snowdens.
Bullshit.
Snowden is a civilian not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He couldn't be sent to GitMo because he's never had direct contact with terrorists.
His trial would be in the US Courts, and it would be every bit the circus of OJ's trial.
Did you read your own source? Yeah the Feds TRIED to railroad Drake, but they lost. This is because we are not Russia and the Courts are not a rubberstamp.
The "ethical" whistle blowers got nowhere. It took Snowden to get the message out.
Snowden didn't simply flee to Russia, he put out requests for asylum to multiple countries while already on the run and under a time constraint. Even his time in Russia has a fixed deadline. If he didn't take up with a US ally, it just might be because he couldn't trust any of them not to do a rendition.
If he wanted to b the most-photographed man, he lost big time. It always seems to be the same picture.
Besides, he's in Russia that honor belongs undisputably to Putin. Putin wrestling a bear, Putin single-handledly destroying terrorism, Putin staring down alien space invaders, Putin inventing the Flying Car, ect.
Over 50% of taxpayer funding of government is used for Warfare or Warfare related expenses.
Anything the exposes how this money is being sucked from the people and used to in teh addiction of the military industrial complex is OK!!!
Had this funding been instead used to help friends..... there would be no Taliban, as there would be not incentive or motivation for such to be.
The Taliban is a CIA funded organization designed to fabricate reason (a sign of addiction) for warfare.
I'm saving this one for posterity. Someone needs to put this in a sig, or preferably fortune.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Is that you Baghdad Bob? Or are you Comical Ali?"
Is that you NSA shill? Or are you the CIA comic? Government ass-kisser certainly? Buzz off troll.
Slashdot is owned by neo-liberal atrocities, who look upon the USA's rolling program of wars across the planet with absolute glee. They know they cannot 'turn' well informed alphas, but that category does NOT describe 98%+ of the readership of this site.
So the tactic here is "wear them down"- the age old method used by those that consider they have all the power, but too little current support from the sheeple.
Sheeple think far too little for themselves, and ALWAYS seek authority figures to safely represent what they think is their "point of view". The trick, therefore, is modifying this "point of view" so each individual sheeple believes they willingly hold a position that, in reality, has been crafted for them by never ending propaganda campaigns.
"There are two sides to every story". NO!!!! there are not. Plenty of stories have "one" side only, and if you give way to the monstrous atrocities on the other side, you sink into a pit of evil.
NSA full surveillance is the same slippery slope that gave the USA Human Slavery. Once you accept the PRINCIPLE of slavery (the USA was the ONLY industrialised nation to do this), everything evil that flows from slavery must be accepted too. In the 19th century, a young black American child was CONVICTED by a properly convened State court (whose actions were authorised at a Federal level) and hung. Here crime was that, while heavily pregnant and attempting to protect herself from rape, she accidental killed her master. Her master had raped her hundreds of times previously, and she had already given birth to several children via rape by the same man. The court never doubted she was raped, or that she was defending herself against rape when the death happened.
The court ruled that as a slave, she had a DUTY to allow her master to rape her, and the US supreme court upheld this principle. There could be no such thing as REASONABLE slavery. And this was the 19th century.
NSA full surveillance is in the self-same category of 'abusive by definition, and therefore without limit'. When Bill Gates worked with the NSA to put incredibly sophisticated NSA spy sensors into the homes of millions of Americans, the owners of Slashdot rejoiced. Like Human Slavery, with NSA full surveillance spying you can ONLY be either 100% against, or 100% in favour. Full surveillance will ALWAYS travel to the extreme of what technology can offer the monsters for whom the full surveillance is bringing benefits.
Last time I checked, the founding fathers were all "hypocrites" who "ran away" or do you just have double standards?
The state is set up as a framework for a large group of people to live together in civil society.
Nah, it is setup as a framework for never-ending power grabs, under the illusion that the more the government owns, the better off the normal folk are. It is the God fallacy. Somehow serving an invisible non-existent being
will magically trickle down to better results for everyone below.
In a representative democracy, this authority is derived from the consent of the populace and the US has a comparatively good track record, more or less, upholding the fundamental rights to ensure this type of government works.
Not really. You are born into a system, with no choice whether to support it or not. The only choice is to "leave."
The authority is not derived from the people who set it up, those people are long dead. We just inherited the mess.
The whole idea of fundamental and inalienable rights is that they are NOT granted by a government, and that they exist independently of any government. The government cannot uphold them. That is precisely backwards.
Here is a line: ---------------
In the US, the idea is supposed to be the government is not allowed to cross it.
The government does not uphold anything. They are supposed to be the ones being held down.
Have we fallen that far?
The government is supposed to bow down to the people. If you want to argue situations have been reversed and the government does not serve the people but only serves itself, you are doing a good job of it.
However, what he should not have done was to run away to an unfriendly country claiming asylum.
The U.S. could have gave him asylum and chose not to. That is on them, not on Mr. Snowden.
He took an offer from the only country that *was* friendly to him.
You seem to live in a parallel universe where black becomes white and white becomes black in order to fit your pre-conceived idea of what the truth should be. You really expect people to not see through your lies?
And then to use his life in asylum to denounce the lack or rights and protections that those in the US enjoy
I like how you imply that only people in the U.S. should be allowed to criticize it. That way, there is bound to be abuse. Since anyone who we don't like we can just clamp down on. They are within our borders, so we know where to find them.
It seems like your idea of government is merely to subject people for your own aims. That is precisely the opposite of what government is supposed to be. Seriously.
Why does it bother you not having control over someone? Are you that scared of reality? Is this what living in "civilized" places does to people? You not only need a constant parental figure watching your every move, but everyone else needs to be supervised too?
Why can't you just leave him be? I imagine you would be the first to say "if you don't like it, then leave" if he was still here.
You might as well say only politicians can judge other politicans, and the people should have no say whatsoever.
You might as well say we don't need a better business bureau, since the corporations will just police themselves. Because only they are qualified.
It reeks of hypocrisy and does not go down well with the majority of people which aren't anarchists.
FTFY: It reeks of freedom and does not go down well with the majority of people which are hostages.
I fail to see how running away to another government somehow goes well with "anarchists."
Hypocrisy is calling a never-ending mess of incompatible governments "order" and "civilized."
Funny, the truth has a way of getting out.
An infinite number of countries, with an infinite number of made up laws, always in conflict, fighting war
No. What the Government and Snowden did were both wrong. The difference is that Snowden fell on the sword for this exposure.
All I had to see was "press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation" and it told me nothing the guy had to say was useful. The CFR is full of nothing but globalist elitists who are looking at for world domination and "the new world order" stuff. Just ignore this scum suckers article. Snowden EXPOSED some of the secret cr@p these people are up to and the don't like it.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
The U.S. had EVERYTHING to do with Al Qaeda! In fact the CIA were the ones who started the whole thing back in the 80'a. Back in the 80's when Russia was at war with Afganistan it was the CIA who was funding, training and arming the Mujahideen - and guess who was the leader of the Mujahideen? Yup Osama Bin Laden! The part of the Mujahideen lead by Osama Bin Laden eventually became Al Qaeda. The U.S. CREATED and for the most part has some control of Al Qaeda. Heck even Anwar Al-Awlaki (the Al Qaeda leader DINED at the Pentagon months AFTER 9/11!
References:
Al Qaeda Leader Dined at the Pentagon Just Months After 9/11
http://www.infowars.com/al-qaeda-leader-dined-at-the-pentagon-just-months-after-911/
Dining with the enemy: Al Qaeda leader linked to 9/11 hijackers 'was invited to the Pentagon for lunch after attacks'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322397/Al-Qaedas-Anwar-Al-Awlaki-invited-Pentagon-lunch-9-11-attacks.html
Mujahideen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen
Sec. State Clinton Admits U.S. Created Mujahideen that Became al-Qaeda
http://www.infowars.com/sec-state-clinton-admits-u-s-created-mujahideen-that-became-al-qaeda/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Cc3LfhQ-o&feature=player_embedded
Mujahideen
Al-Qaeda
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=mujahideen+al+qaeda&aq=0&aqi=g1g-m1&aql=&oq=mujahideen+al&gs_rfai=C07tUp9QoTOWrHYuugATN08X2CgAAAKoEBU_Qpa0Q&fp=e0fa4b5da4f245a4
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/al-qaeda-terrorism.html
"The Mujahideen
Al-Qaeda has its origins in the uprising against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Thousands of volunteers from around the Middle East came to Afghanistan as mujahideen, warriors fighting to defend fellow Muslims. In the mid-1980s, Osama bin Laden became the prime financier for an organization that recruited Muslims from mosques around the world. These "Afghan Arab" mujahideen, which numbered in the thousands, were crucial in defeating Soviet forces"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen
US, Pakistani and other financing and support
See also: Operation Cyclone
The mujahideen were significantly financed and armed (and are alleged to have been trained) by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the administrations of Carter[5] and Reagan, and also by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq, Iran, the People's Republic of China and several Western European countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden
Claims have been made that the American government, and in particular the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are responsible for enabling "Afghan Arabs," and in particular Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
In mid-1979, about the same time as the Soviet Union deployed troops into Afghanistan, the United States began giving several hundred million dollars a year in aid to the Afghan Mujahideen insurgents fighting the Afghan Marxist government and the Soviet Army in Operation Cyclone. Along with native Afghan mujahideen were Muslim volunteers from other countries, popularly known
The Truth is a Virus!!!
He went on the run probably because he doesn't want to be severely punished. Just like you might go on the run if someone threatens to shoot you for claiming that 1 + 1 = 2. The fact that he went on the run doesn't indicate that he did anything wrong.
Maybe because it wasn't the government that did anything wrong.
Read the constitution, bootlicker.
What Snowden did was not wrong at all. It would've been wrong to not take that course of action, I say.
Where else could Snowden have reasonably fled to in the early stages of this saga? There are very few countries that won't take shit from the US, China and Russia being at the top of the list. Remember, a PRESIDENT couldn't land his plane in a few European countries because Snowden MIGHT have been aboard.
Also, believe it or not, Russians are humans, and thus have human rights, even if they aren't recognized by the government. Same goes for politicians.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Amen brother! Snowden is a global HERO! He may not be fighting these criminals with a gun but just the INFORMATION he has is mroe powerful than bullets!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
(when he could have fled other countries)
Oh? And even if he fled to Russia, that does not make him a traitor.
b) released no data on Russia's operations
Maybe he doesn't want to anger every government in the world. Not releasing data on Russia != supporting them.
d) most of the information he has actually released has nothing to do with privacy rights for anybody (no government official has an actual right not to be spied on by other governments, but we spent about a week on Slashdot debating US and Australian spying on Indonesia, and Snowden's also released info on our operations in the Afpak theatre)
Privacy is always relevant, no matter what the law says. I don't see spying on our allies or non-hostile countries as a good thing, so I'm thankful for what he did.
e) Russia is a country that has no privacy rights for anybody.
Completely irrelevant to Snowden.
Looks like these people are on a smear campaign. Only government bootlickers would agree with them.
I cannot believe the level of idiocy on here. Snowden was not a whistle blower. He is a traitor to the overall security of the U.S. and other nations. If it was just concerning domestic NSA work that should concern us-ok. But he copied extremely sensitive files and took a job with intent to destroy the NSA and our intelligence network. He even stated so. That IS NOT whistle blowing. I don't spying on me, but he wrecked some data collection of those who want to do harm to us and now our methods have been compromised.
He can argue his case honorably and with authority
Not in the Star Chamber into which he would be thrust. You assume that the people on the other side of the "debate" are honorable. That's an assumption that is, on its surface, laughable. I don't believe that lying to Congress is honorable. I don't believe that lying to the American people is honorable. I don't believe that unequal application of the law is honorable. Show me where the majority of the Executive Branch of the US Government has demonstrated honor, and I'll agree with you. From where I sit as a citizen, though, "honor" is conspicious by its absence.
With secret laws and secret courts in place, there's no telling what will happen to Snowden if he would come back. Try to get a guarantee from someone high up the chain that Snowden would be tried in a court of law. Do you think that will happen? The US is long past the point toward an authoritarian state.
Where else would he have to go to trial? As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Snowden is just a US dissident. No crime in that.
Ecuador. Venezuela. Cuba. That's just in Latin America. South Africa and India have never been our puppets. Quite a few countries near Hong Kong are not susceptible to US pressure. It's not like the Vietnamese remember us with fondness.
And keep in mind that he chose Hong Kong to start the saga. He wasn't forced to go there by the FBI. He knows Chinese, and HK is one of the few places Chinese is spoken that can called both a Democracy and not a US ally, so that's a sensible reason to pick Hong Kong, but why go through Moscow when you're leaving? Hell, why leave at all?
I'm not saying I have evidence he betrayed us to Russia and should be shot on sight, what I'm saying is there's no way to rule this out as long as he's in Russia and his leaks seem focused on outing the US and Five Eyes rather then the Russians.
who actively tries to hurt his countries' edge in intelligence and cyber warfare
with patriots like that you really don't need enymies!
yikes
(with greetings from a pro-US european who is still thankful for the marshal plan)
He provided the documents to a few members of the legitimate press, the Guardian being the most notable. He left it to them to vet what was provided, and release what they considered appropriate.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
........... (Epic Fail on this blog/posting)
This nonsense, and other nonsense:
http://www.cfr.org/presidents-and-chiefs-of-state/killing-conspiracy/p31884
Oh, wow, doods, we need listen to a CFR stooge, or a Bretton Woods Committee (brettonwoods.org) stooge, or a Peterson Institute stooge, or a Trilateral Commission stooge, or a Group of Thirty (group30.org) stooge......
Why not just say, The Plutocarcy Says..... as opposed to having yet another paid-liar claim crapola?
I was very careful not to accuse him of anything. My chain of logic is probable cause, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
So I'm a bootlicker engaged in a smear campaign, but the shining jewel of privacy activism is in no way a hypocrite for staying in a country that doesn't actually enforce privacy rights.
As for spying on non-hostile countries, don't you understand that this is fucking America. We don't fight fair. Unlike the French, Russians, and Chinese we don't pretend to be fair. If other countries don't like it they should have included some explicit language on espionage in the UN Charter rather then relying solely on the abstract BS that could mean anything.
I have wrote it before and I will write it again; Nothing Snowden released was a mystery to most IT people. All he did was wake up a bunch of sheep that will continue to slumber. I do not agree with a lot of things my country does but when you put yourself into a position like Snowden did in a country that has nukes aimed at us IT PISSES ME OFF!!! You can praise Snowden all you want but personally I would shoot him in the face.
Let's examine a typical Kaplan spewing:
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/kaplan-jfk-conspiracy-theories-don-t-add-up-1.6468431
Any sane person, with an IQ above 100, who has actually read all the volumes of the Warren Commission report, with all their variances, obvious and glaring never-followed up questions, and massive discrepancies, knows it to be a pile of Rockefeller-paid for drivel!
Now the IRS, FBI, state and local police organizations, etc., routinely use tax returns to go after criminals at the lower levels so let us use the same process to identify the super-criminals at the highest level:
The tax returns of Allen Dulles and John McCloy, the top dogs and chiefs of the Warren Commission, across their entire lives, shows the majority of their monies and employment derives from the Rockefeller family and/or Rockefeller-owned businesses (McCloy would later be chairman of David Rockefeller's Chase Bank, while Dulles' brother also happened to marry into the Rockefeller family).
The Rockefellers OWNED the Warren Commission, so the outcome was most predictable!
Case Closed! (What scumbags for hire like Kaplan will never do, is actually read the Warren Commission Report [like Mort Sahl early did, which convinced of the criminal conspiracy he became enamored with, as would any ethical and sane American] and also read Conpiracy Theory in America, by Lance DeHaven-Smith, and James Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable [which completely destroys the article cited by scumbag liar Kaplan] and David Talbot's Brothers and the recently released Rockefellerocracy: Kennedy Assassinations, Watergate and Monopoly of the Philanthropic Foundations, by Richard James Desocio [Plus the one book, while not about the JFK assassination, fully explains his administration: Donald Gibson's Battling Wall Street: the Kennedy presidency.)
You can't rule it out, but it would be among the stupidest course of actions to take. Snowden is one of the most well known people in the world now, and the NSA is doing everything they can to find out what exactly he leaked. That's not anywhere near the best tactic for Snowden or Russian intelligence. The only reason that he would take this path would be that it's just crazy enough to work, which has a much better success rate in film than real life.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
but the shining jewel of privacy activism is in no way a hypocrite for staying in a country that doesn't actually enforce privacy rights.
The country he stays in is 100% irrelevant. His goals are what is relevant.
As for spying on non-hostile countries, don't you understand that this is fucking America. We don't fight fair. Unlike the French, Russians, and Chinese we don't pretend to be fair.
If we want to claim that we're "the land of the free and the home of the brave," that we're exceptional, and that we're the best, we really should stop doing things just because the other guys are doing it, and maybe we should even start playing fair and stop taking immoral courses of action.
If Snowden indeed would have disclosed only domestical information, than the same people would argue that he is painting incomplete story and that it is impossible to understand the reason behind NSA's domestic spying without knowing of what it is doing overseas.
He is a traitor.
No. The traitors are the ones running this country without regards to either the Constitution or the best interests of the people being governed. The traitors are the ones who do what they're payed to do solely in the interest of personal gain.
Who is John Galt?
The US will not let Snowden have a free card. If they nab him it will be the last time the public will see him. If he is shot in a foreign country the US can deny and blame it on who ever they like. Might as well face it Snowden will be forever checking behind himself. He will never ever be a free man.
The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran (1953, for BP, then called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), Guatemala, Congo (during Eisenhower's administration), Brazil (Operation Brother Sam, during LBJ's administration), etc., etc., etc., leading to the recent coup against democratically elected government of Honduras, while Hillary Clinton was chair of the MCC, which finaned it (Timothy Geithner, deputy chair), etc., etc., etc. Ain't no soldiers fighting for anyone other than the banksters, who own the oil corporations.
i'll burn some karma to try and get the parent sentiment modded from 5:informative to 5:insightful (i assume that is possible with enough over the top/max +1 insightful mods)
So the Cubans would turn him over to the US under what circumstances? Because I'm pretty sure that they've been pissed at us since we tried to assassinate Castro in the 60s. Just because the list short, that doesn't mean he has to end up in fucking Russia.
As for the logic and intelligence of Snowden, what about his actions makes you think he's actually good at this? He brought a major controversy to China, a state that hates controversy. In a system of government that is designed so that conflicts with the Executive can be resolved by the Legislative he complained directly to the media, which ensured the Legislative was on the Executive's side and that he would fail.
He's basically ensured that a) he will never leave Russia, b) everyone will claim to have solved the NSA privacy violations but make a point of not solving them, c) a lot of countries who don't like the US know how our SigInt ops work, and d) a lot of countries that liked the US know we're spying on them. Basically this is only a win for him if, for the entire time, his goal was to defect to Russia.
He's saying that there is evidence that Snowden is not some heroic patriot, but just a regular old spy that got paid off by the Russians or Chinese,
If he is, he's not a very good spy. A good spy would have stayed in his secret location and continue to spy.
Of course, there probably are actual spies doing that right now. So this wouldn't help China or Russia much at all.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Are we trusting the Council on Foreign Relations now?
They are a bunch of neo conservatives bent of exploiting everyone for financial gain. Not worth listening to them!
Is it open season for every intelligence agent working for the US to be able to release whatever classified information they want to the world?
I'd say yes to that, actually. My reasoning:
1. People who choose to work as an intelligence agent presumably go into it wanting to be good at their job. Part of being a good intelligence agent is to keep what we know secret from the other side's intelligence agents. If classified information shows up in the New York Times or Pravda, that means that the intelligence agent in question just ended his career to give away that information. That's not something anybody does willy-nilly: you haven't just lost your job, you've guaranteed that you will never work in the same field ever again, and may not work at all ever again. That's a pretty severe punishment.
2. If the organization is leaking secrets all over the place as a result of this policy, then they have bad hiring practices, bad internal controls on classified information, and/or bad policies that these now ex-agents think have to be leaked. No matter which it is, I can be equally certain that the management responsible for any of those mistakes will use top secret classification and a mountain of useless data for the politicians to go through to prevent anyone from being held accountable, unless these leaks happen.
I am officially gone from
It isn't just the U.S. Unfortunately for you you've already been disarmed.
What is Kaplan saying here? That Snowden should continue to be labeled a spy and traitor? So what I gather is that Kaplan insists that despite the question of the massive illegality of the NSAs programs, the person who brought this to light should NOT be granted the right to a fair trial? Why? Well, Kaplan provides the links we see here. However, I'd say that still doesn't preclude a real legal procedure since it's a Right and further more, his reasoning is just that. I don't see any actual proof of what he claims.
Kaplan writes about foreign policy and his record has always been someone who's towed the Washington line. In fact, in the past he's been known to just make things up, such as in one article where he implied FOXnews reporter James Rosen revealed a CIA agent in North Korea who "may" now be dead. Kaplan had no facts and just threw that out there to smear Rosens record as a "serious journalist". This was at the time Rosen's phone was flat out being tapped by the Justice Dept.
So here we have Kaplan once again towing the Washington line with claims about the harm that Snowdens actions have caused, without any proof. AND implying, as Kaplan is fond of doing, that Snowden is PERHAPS a spy for Russia and/or China because of actions that, erm well, never happened. What kind of logic is this??? Well, seems to me that the articles posted as proof of all this by Kaplan do not demonstrate his point or his, shall we say, inferences.
Seem to me it's a massive rationalization against the right to a fair trial in a country that supposedly loves freedom and the rights of the person above all else.
The hypocrisy of the NSA defenders is mind blowing. They go on and on about how there really ain't nothing wrong with spying, and everyone does it, and it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it, then they whine because Snowden had to break a few eggs to make his particular omelet.
Play Command HQ online
if you don't have the courage to be a martyr, don't demand it of others.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Actually in certain cultures and areas of the world your friend is in fact the 'traitor'.
Its not a mindset common in western cultures but certainly in the Middle East this could easily be considered an appropriate response. It revolves around privacy and your friends invasion of it. Basically your Friend is involving herself in something that is not her business and she is behaving inappropriately by involving herself in a private family matter. Depends how close a friend she is.
He specifically entered the NSA because he -- being one of those faux tea party libertarians that are all the rage nowadays -- believed the US Government didn't really need a spy agency. He intentionally went in to sabotage the US's intelligence network, and has admitted as much in interviews. He then took it upon himself to do as much harm as humanly possible to the United States and it's Intelligence Programs because as a Libertarian, he doesn't believe the Government has a right to exist.
We have a term for people who intentionally try to sabotage the government's effectiveness during wartime, and it's not Whistleblower.
It's traitor.
His press agent Greenwald is no better. Invariably Greenwald stories take the following route:
1. Greenwald makes some claim with the evidence of "trust me" or brings up a topic we already knew about. ("The US is getting the phone records of known terrorists and their contacts in the US.")
2. Greenwald immediately takes it to the illogical dystopian conclusion ("THAT MEANS THEY'RE RECORDING EVERYONE EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME!!!")
3. Small, tactic admission that he has no evidence of this leap in illogic or that there's some flaw in the reasoning ("Yeah, true, they have to have warrants, and there's oversight, and the privacy of American citizens is kept secure via obfuscation, but, yeah! ALL THE TIME!!!!1!111")
4. Other news agencies pick it up as gospel and distort it further for ratings ("US to record everyone on planet since development of telephone using new TARDIS technology! No one is safe from The Scary Black President(tm)!!!!!1")
5. Greenwald hits up Twitter browbeating and trolling any news agency that pays too much attention to #3 until they perform #4.
6. Greenwald's paper edits his article to be a little less batshit 2-3 weeks later (without actually issuing a retraction).
Every single "scandal" that Snowden and Greenwald have shat out have followed the same damned template. Outrageous or "no duh" claims, taken to some sort of 1984-style conclusion, with the parts of reality that don't fit this narrative filed off. In almost every case, the missing parts of reality are the fact that they need warrants and they have congressional and judicial oversight at all times.
This isn't journalism. It's a cult of personality. The village and the conspiracy nuts in the loony wing love Greenwald and Snowden. They're going to be absolutely shocked when Snowden is arrested once China and Russia get tired of using him to embarrass the US.
Lots going around on this!
NSA is Legal!
NSA is Illegal!
Clapper committed perjury! Or just a fool.
Alexander is lying or just an idiot.
I like the idea that NSA's activities are legal and that we can reverse engineer their methods and that a computer science project at Stanford proved that metadata can id source.
Means that we can and will find out the "habits" of each member of the US Congress and Cabinet Departments and Supreme Court Justices and Obama REAL soon.
By the way, Is Michelle getting the divorce papers finalized in Hawaii? We will KNOW real soon.
It might be considered that the people who control the NSA, and the supporting government, are the actual traitors...
FTFY
I come here for the love
Citations? Please.
Edward Snowden did not steal anything, he liberated the truth.
I'm sorry, but this hippy-dippy mindset is what drives me insane. Snowden did two things: he released classified material that exposed illegalities against American citizens - that is civil disobedience and, on that issue alone, I can see your original point. Second, however, he released material that had absolutely nothing to do with American citizens and unconstitutional behavior, but instead damaged both our national security and safety of people living abroad, some of whom were not even Americans. For that second issue, he deserves pay the piper.
Snowden had a level of trust placed in him by the government which, for the health of the country as envisioned he violated on issue 1 and, for his own agenda violated on issue 2.
Not everyone is martyr or murderer. Many lie in the grey area inbetween... this guy is no different.
There's bound to be a wikipedia article about the Airbus vs Boeing industrial espionage thing since it was mainstream news and attracted a bit of attention, so it should be easy to find.
You are expected to know a bit about the subject matter before writing "The ONLY thing" - it makes you look silly when the thing you've missed was high profile enough to get a lot of time in court and a lot of press.
> I'm sorry, but this hippy-dippy mindset is what drives me insane.
Wow, you're a hypocrite.
There's a practical aspect to information collection and sifting. Unless you know the details of how he obtained, stored, and divided the material (you do not, because it's not fully known), why would you criticize the types of information he released? Do you expect him to sift through every record and discern which is relevant and not relevant to his concerns (including supporting documents). Maybe he should have spent man-years sifting before he released select parts? That thinking is idiotic. Nobody has a full understanding of the "why". We have general ideas and communicated snippets. People criticizing for oversights and collateral damage is expected. There's a cost in choosing to survive when getting the important work done of demonstrating authoritarianism. He clearly wanted a timely release (for verification and immediate effect) and probably expected a better outcome. The information on some existing US missions wasn't particularly damning, which is statistically going to happen with any documents not "censored". See how censoring the records might be counter-productive? That's the point of the article. Some people think it was warranted, despite the impracticality. This view is not unexpected but is also not a compelling reason to prosecute. The alternative is idiotic.
He just followed NSA procedure. Take everything you can get your hands on relevant or not.
He may not have committed crimes against "justice" he did however violate a contract he entered into willingly with one of the largest military-industrial complexes in the world. Because this is /. and everything must devolve into a poorly worded car analogy: saying Snowden should walk away scot free is akin to someone buying a car from a dealer on in house credit, but because they don't like the dealer's rates they refuse to pay him and then claim it's unfair when the repo man comes to take the car back. It's an 800,000lb contract, but it's still legally binding.
You know, I would seriously buy into this whole hero mythology building around Snowden if he had just remained on US soil and represented himself as a citizen. Snowden is now living as a guest of Russia—a country who's record on human rights, freedom of the press, individual freedoms, etc. is fucking abysmal—, and I'm supposed to cheer him on?
Yes, Snowden released a bunch of secret information on secret intelligence programs. So what? I now have confirmation and more details about things people who read slashdot already suspected were happening, but I have no more freedom than before.
My math says the Russian dictatorship benefits by Snowden's actions more than anyone. US politicians are safe to sidestep real reforms to protect my freedom because Snowden deserted his country and distributed troves of secret information to who knows (Vladimir Putin?).
questions.
"why did snowden go to hong kong (as noted, a chinese protectorate) and then to russia?"
seriously? moron... because they have no extradition with the u.s.! christ, what a dummy.
"There are people whose full time job it is to spread those rumors"
Ah yes, where is Cold Fjord? that is his paid gig!
Unfortunately, the mass media won't really acknowledge your primary point, because it's still not considered acceptable to label our government a "police state". Doing so gets you categorized as a fringe element, which impacts advertising dollars negatively as well as potential readership/subscriptions/viewers.
Nonetheless, it's increasingly difficult, IMO, not to come to that conclusion. In fact, I believe it's those OUTSIDE the U.S. borders who may best understand it. Just the other day, here on Slashdot, an American born individual who now resides in Canada talked about his fear of crossing the border to visit the U.S. anymore, despite having an interest in seeing friends and places here in the USA. I don't blame him! I remember as a teenager attending a computer convention in Chicago where a number of Canadians were in attendance. Back then, crossing the border was really no big deal. You didn't need a passport to do it, and customs consisted of a guy stopping your car for a minute and asking if you "Have any items to declare today?" An answer of "no", and you were waved on and told to enjoy the rest of your day.
There's a practical aspect to information collection and sifting. Unless you know the details of how he obtained, stored, and divided the material (you do not, because it's not fully known), why would you criticize the types of information he released? Do you expect him to sift through every record and discern which is relevant and not relevant to his concerns (including supporting documents).
That's exactly what I expect and that's what he swore to do, protect information. He didn't and he should pay for that. If you don't want to play clean-up then you take the hit for not doing so. It's up to him if the price he pays is worth what good may come. I'm just tired of all of the apologists.
He committed plenty of crimes against justice, the fact that he also committed crimes against the police state doesn't actually change this.
OJ's trial was a circus because his lawyer was a publicity-whoring clown, and the incompetent judge allowed the trial to become a circus. The decorum of a Snowden trial, if the US government actually let him live long enough to come to trial, would be largely dependent upon the government deciding to try him in a dignified and honest manner. That leaves only the defense attorney to screw up the works.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The first thing the government's lawyers would try to do is to get as much damning evidence as possible defined as state secrets. That prevents the evidence from being introduced in court or used as the basis for a decision or finding. They've done this before, see this story, for example. For a breakdown of the various types of secrets and how they are handled in a court see this piece which is part of a series on Ibrahim vs DHS, the first challenge on a "no-fly" order to make trial.
If you can't work out that I was not writing about the intelligence community and not Boeing in the second paragraph, even with the specific mention on the CIA, then you are too stupid to remember how to breath.
Since you are still alive to type you are obviously just pretending to be an utter fool in order to play games. WTF is wrong with you? Where is that honour? I used to have some respect for you from your earlier posts but what I see here now is an empty clown with no jokes.
ummmm he left a country whose record on human rights is arguably even worse than Russia's. The US is responsible for some of the worst atrocities, many of which they do outside of the US borders simply to avoid being in breach of their own laws.
Thanks for that FUD-piece.
What never ceases to amaze me is the intolerance of people who claim they are tolerant and liberal. Snowden is a classic example of the combination of a bias blind spot and confirmation bias. They made up their minds about Snowden and no amount of contradictory information about him will make him any less of a hero to him. He could, infact, have fucked children and been a filthy pedo (to borrow your +5, Insightful words), and still be venerated as a patriot. We laugh when the religious do this, and call them backwards, but when it's our own idols and icons being put on the chopping block... we react in pretty much the exact same way, while claiming it's totally different in this case.
In every article about Snowden on Slashdot, people have pointed out that he stole classified documents, caused considerable harm to American interests, and his disclosures assisted terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies to conduct high level attacks against the country. They've pointed out how his motives and actions are completely inconsistent, and how "whistleblowing" is a poor adjective to describe his actions. And yet, he's labelled the "Tech person of the year" by the media, and venerated by millions.
To the point, I don't think anyone actually believe Snowden's a hero -- I think Snowden is nothing more than a puppet to vent our frustrations at an authoritarian complex that has abused and punished us with a decade-long recession and an endless series of political debacles that have brought ruinous fates to millions of middle class, while the rich profit enormously. We're angry, and rightfully so... and Snowden standing up to the super secret spy agency makes us feel like we won one over against "The Man". It's purely an emotive reaction, but god help you if you point this out. People desperately want to believe they're logical and rational... even when it's quite apparent that they aren't.
Maybe it's nice to see The Man take a kick to the nuts... but try not to forget: He also kicked everybody in the nuts. Cisco posted a 25% loss of revenue due to Snowden. By 2025, it was expected that Cisco's revenue would make it the largest company on Earth, and eclipse that of over half the countries on the planet. Because of him... that isn't going to happen. All that wealth that would have poured into this country setting up internet throughout the world? Gone. Poof. And that's not the only economic damage he's caused. By the time this is all done, we may be looking at Snowden's long-term effects on the economy as being equal to that of our first war in Iraq. It's going to cost us many billions.
But hey... he did kick the man in the balls, right? So yay. I guess.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Snowden need to arrange things so that if he's ever prosecuted someone will release all the documents UNCENSORED directly onto the Internet. All releases so far has been censored to protect individuals and current operations etc. but if the NSA pushes things he should push back and put it all out there. It will of course pretty much destroy most of the US intelligence system but then they could decide not to go for him and just leave him alone, and then accept the slow, controlled and censored release of information.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Ahem. For each person who is paid for character assassination stuff there are very many people who very much want to believe the FUD. No need to start seeing hired slashdot commenters everywhere.
not only that, they are probably the only 2 countries that also have the power to "actually" provide protection from the US. There are many other countries he could hide in but he would probably suffer from a fatal accident or suicide shortly after arriving.
All I can say to Fred Kaplan, the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
"you can't have people running around exposing classified documents as they feel like."
Why?
And don't give me "they're classified for a reason" shit, because the classifications are being rubber stamped on ANYTHING.
For the same reason that most of the world thinks they're perfectly within their rights to conduct espionage on US soil. That is to say, in the entire recorded history of humanity, governments have never taken a principled opposition to breaking another government's laws when it suited their interests. Your viewpoint is not enlightened, it's just ahistorical and naive.
Amy Davidson of The New Yorker completely deconstructs the entirety of Fred Kaplan's argument.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2014/01/did-edward-snowden-break-his-oath.html
So he can have the media grossly misrepresent the trial (assuming they covered it at all)? I'd rather take a foreign country's media, even if it does rag on the U.S. a bit harder than I'd like.
Just the fact that I'm seriously talking about state-influenced media in the U.S. makes me sad.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
That said, I think he would be far more effective in his efforts as a martyr instead of a perceived outlaw.
How's that working out for Aaron Schwartz? Martyrdom is ineffective in fomenting real change. If you want to make a difference, you have to do it yourself.
Kaplan is saying that while he thinks it might be good that Snowden published that the NSA violated the rights of U.S. citizens (who, in theory at least, chose the government that hired the NSA), he thinks it is not good that Snowden also published that the NSA illegally violated the rights of other people?
Snowden broke the law and has probably put many people's lives in danger. That is not up for debate in my opinion. But, we CAN debate the law, the function of the NSA, and the oversight of surveillance. The political establishment in the US failed. Claiming they were 'lied to' is a copout. All politicians who were part of the oversight should be thrown out of office next election. Next time someone throws an Obama T-Shirt at you and talks about how big government is good, ask them why the NSA is running amuck.
Wow... can't quite connect the obvious dots that make Oil and Empire imperatives to your freedom?
Try living one day without oil and it's uses and derivatives. Here is a hint. You will have to walk outside, with no shoes, clothes or shelter. No food or water save what your naked self pulls from the Earth by hand. No tools save what you fashion by hand.
Oil is the second air you/we breath.
I for one, and happy we have people fighting for and protecting the thing that drives 100% of all industry and daily life.
PS... if you respond to this... you are proving my point because the real way your information goes online and back to me is via OIL. (plastics for the computer, oil and diesel for the shipping, oil and diesel for laying the transmission lines, etc, etc...)
There is no honor among thieves. If you really believe he would be coming back to a court case you really need to reassess your government. They will crucify him in an enclosed space and he will go down. The very fact that he ran to Russia can in itself be used to incarcerate him for life on the very possibility that he gave them data.
Come on, look at history. Political America does not play fair and they are already painting him on public media as a criminal and spy. Why would you expect it to change if he came back now?
Let's see the timeline here:
1) NSA breaks law a little bit. Gets away with it. /Now/ it's claimed that the /whistleblower/ did the damage.
2) Asks that law be rewritten for the first action to be legal.
3) Does it again and again, to the point that it simply doesn't care about laws now. It can always, at some needful time in future, either pass more laws legalising its actions retroactively, or kick off another war and create the "need" for their actions from the fear of the enemy.
4) A whistleblower blows the whistle on it all.
5)
I submit to you, don't break the law in the first place. Submit to sufficient oversight. Be transparent instead of invisible. Allow public discourse on the degree to which the taxpayer will allow you to operate.
Then, and /only/ then, can we make the conversation about Snowden.
Don't want to get caught? Don't break the law in the first place.
Trying to shoot the whistleblower, whether successful or not, doesn't change the fact that the law has been broken time and time again. Limits were surpassed and usurped time and time again. The commission the president created to make suggestions about spy reform (skewed though it was) actually came through with some decent suggestions, and the hawks on the hill started shouting that /those/ should be ignored.
It's /not/ Snowden that has done the damage. It's the crooks who have been running the "intelligence" agencies all this time, and the bent politicians who allowed them to create a fourth branch of government *completely* independent of the other three branches we all learned about in school.
It's not the United States of America. It's the United Spies of America now.
If I disappear in the middle of the night, /this/ post is why.
His initial releases up to being charged with espionage only included data pertaining to unconstitutional overreach by the NSA. Once charged he seemed to lose any last vestiges of respect for a government that sought to condemn him under they same rule of law they completely ignore - despite the fact the are sworn to defend it. Until the government revokes the power(espionage act, etc) to prevent whistle blowers or any others seeking to use their freedom of speech to bring light to unconstitutional practices from coming forward, they have no ground to stand on.
to legitimize the ability Congress has granted these organizations to make anyone they want to disappear without a trace or recourse.
The seven major corporations that own virtually all US media have their talking heads in place constantly telling the public "Snowden baaaad".
The vast majority of our cowardly and essentially useless whore elected officials are silent on the subject of the police state in which we now reside.
Is this the USA or the USSR ? I really can't tell the difference. Ahh, right, we have MUCH better PR.
I have looked at a lot comments concerning this and the surprising thing about it is the number of people who just assumed that everything that Snowden did is write and everything that the NSA did is wrong. I understand that this is predominantly liberal media, and believe it or not, I am predominantly liberal. I voted for Obama. I believe the Republicans are working very hard to destroy our Democracy. I believe many of the Democrats are eager to help them.
However, I can say this with absolute certainty. Who gave him the right? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.
Snowden, by any description, by any definition is the bad guy here. He is a traitor. It doesn't matter that his results are good. It doesn't matter that the NSA takes a couple of hits or did some bad things. He could mitigate his damage by coming home and facing the music but he doesn't. He threatens that the "Worst is yet to come." These are not the acts of a hero. These are not the acts of a man who should be given clemency.
Face it, this is a bad scary world. Russia and China are not our friends. They know that. They look out for their own best interests. When you don't look out for your own best interest as a nation then you turn into Portugal. A used to be great country with a few good Bed and Breakfasts and some really great Scenery.
Snowden will never be given Clemency. At this stage in his life I would suspect the only thing keeping him alive is the fact that there is the threat that something he has which might be "Really Big" hasn't been released. It's probably a pretty big something because if it weren't he might have an unfortunate accident. I for one wouldn't miss him.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The NSA are a bunch of cunts.
Edward Snowden committed no crimes against justice, he committed crimes against a police state, a big brother state that is and was becoming worse by the day. Edward Snowden did not steal anything, he liberated the truth. His continued freedom is proof that many others can achieve the same acts non-violent acts against a criminal state and work together to bring it down and put the minority that distort and corrupt democracy the world over finally behind bars where they belong.
Edward Snowden does not deserve clemency, he should not be charged in the first place. Until such time as he is called as a witness to testify against those who committed real criminal acts the world over, then he would be doing more harm than good by returning. His continued freedom is proof positive that you too can work to bring down a corrupt elements destroying you democracy, your freedom and your rights and do something that has been celebrated since time immemorial escape to fight another day. Each and every time Edward Snowden appears in public free to challenge those criminals is a victory.
Funny how most of you Snowden lovers have not addressed the major points of the article which are that Snowden only released information harmful to America and did not release information concerning the habits of spying by Russia and China against America and other countries.
Snowden was a mole planted by our enemies to do us harm. He is a traitor in the spirit of the Walker family and Alrich Ames
... He deserves a sainthood.
As I understand it, at least for the Roman Catholic Church, a person can only be recognized as a saint once they are dead.
I would rather wish Mr Snowden has a long, comfortable, happy, free life.
--
I'm trying to think how this could end well.
Um DUH! what do you call all the article links. Try READING the whole post! "anonymous coward"'
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Yah know, I think Ed shoudl get in trouble for every person he got killed (ljust like Eric holder).
He should also have to face the congress for violating national security agreements (like Pres. Obama, Hillary, and John Fing Kerry). snowden should be hauled into court about removing confidential information from a government facility. Liek Sandy Berger did for President Clinton.
Snowden should be brought up on charges regarding consorting with known enemies of the USA (same way President Obama (then Senator) helped to topple Kenya's government and put a relative in charge....while serving as US Senator.
Finally Snowden should be held accountable for leaking national secrets just like Valerie Plames case. Out of all this, only Scooter Libby saw sanctions. WHY?
We have an administration who routinely deals in arms to foreign countries (mostly enemies ad terrorists) stomps on the constitution, and thumbs their noses at the American people....and Snowden is guilty??? REALLY????
I gather from your comment, that if I want to keep my private parts to myself and should avoid flying over any part of the United States or the various puppet states it controls. So which card is mine?
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Some food for thought.
Ryszard Kuklinski defected Poland to provide a trove of strategic Warsaw Pact defense information to USA. He was (technically) a traitor of not only his own country but undermined security of the whole group of countries, yet he was hailed hero by USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kukli%C5%84ski
Snowden defeated USA to provide a trove of information about breaking the law to the public. He was (technically) a traitor of his own country, yet he is not hailed hero by USA.
Basic hypocrisy?
Kali steals cow = good deed.
Someone steals cow from Kali = bad deed.
Kuklinski was eventually pardoned many years later based on "acting for a higher need under special circumstances".
Same can happen with Snowden in, say, 50 years (it will likely take much longer for that highly marketed CHANGE to happen in USA than it did in USSR).
Yeah, OK shill.
Minor correction: Snowden isn't costing corporations money, the NSA is.
it's a sign of Snowden's nobility that press wh*res like the NTY scribbler whine that he's a bad guy.
How about this one, the NSA are out of control criminals and outside of their legal authority, and Snowden is a traitor and a Russian spy.
Snowden doesn't become good by the NSA being bad. If he had only leaked the stuff that shows the NSA breaking the law, he'd be a hero. But a spy who released important overseas operational information can't also release some domestic stuff and somehow become good.
I agree with you this far:
Snowden is as patriotic towards the US as George Washington was to the UK.
Actually there are a huge number of lawyers who already have solid security clearances. Also, there is no recent history of the government trying to keep lawyers off of cases. And the list of lawyers that would be happy to have him as a client, that is basically every lawyer in a related field.
Even the secret courts are releasing some of their rulings. Turns out the judges in the "secret" court are actually the same judges in the regular court, not different people, and they only like the secrecy as long as the government is following most of the rules. A major criminal case is not going to happen in secret, you've been watching too many movies.
Just because you're likely to be convicted doesn't mean you didn't get a fair trial. What if he really DID leak secrets about security operations in Pakistan, and other such examples? If he really IS the source of those leaks, then a "fair" trial would likely result in his conviction. Especially if he has confessed on international TV.
Why is there presumed to be evidence "in his favor?" What evidence there is or isn't is a physical fact. Does he deny having leaked operational intel from Pakistan and the middle east? No? So, what sort of "evidence" are you hoping for? Mitigating character references for sentencing?
He's admitted being the source of the leaks in public, on video. There have been no claims that I've heard about him not being the source of the damaging overseas leaks.
How would a fair trial result in other than his conviction? Mandela, Ghandi, Aung San Suu Kyi, Daniel Ellsberg, they all faced jail time for standing up for what they believed in. That is part of how they created change.
"I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision." -- Daniel Ellsberg
Clemency my ass, Snowden should get a medal and a monument in DC! This "fellow" from the fucking CFR has already decided that Clemency and Leniency are the correct words to use. Perhaps those woyld be corerect when speaking of the traitors who raped the Constitution in the first place! The head of the NSA who broke one of the proud traditions of that agency ..."Never Spy On Americans!". The POTUS in plural who encouraged him and in particular, Those who made the US a traget with incredibly stupid foreign policies.
Who here is even certified to debate this topic?
This is like listening to teenagers talk about who has the better car. I am cringing at literally every single post here and I am embarrassed to be a citizen because of all of you. Everyone is so disconnected from the reality of the world thanks to what you have been given by the USA. Maybe if we lived in an area like Israel where we had danger phase zones and every soldier was required to carry their weapon no matter what you would realize how important this is; however, our situation isn't even close to being a fraction of how obvious their's is -- so your assumptions based upon what you think are free thoughts are clouded by social media, curiosity, group think, the news, and plethora other sources of mis/disinformation...not to mention having not a single fucking ounce of understanding of how this affects the multitude of programs and operations it supports. Instead go back to your six-thousand mile fantasy world protected by the invisible bubble provided by the intelligence community and other assets which you will never be aware of during your entire existence on this planet.
The only reason you know this 1% of information (which you somehow feel qualified to comment on) is thanks to someone who doesn't even understand the operational side of the documents and programs which he is releasing for which he only has and knows of due to working in a job which had to support the infrastructure supporting these documents. fuck this earth and the people on it.