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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.'"
'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.
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.
I'm glad it's not just a one way street with the government thugs.
Only in the case where a regular moral citizen has some power to do something about it. For all the other cases, it is similar to:
http://m.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213
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.
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"
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.
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.
Yes, because having streets to drive on automatically means I have to agree to any and all things governments do. I like how delusionally violent you get at the mere mention that maybe unchecked government powers are not a good idea. Child.
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?
The military is NOT protecting me. Sorry, but the United States Military that exists today has NOTHING to do with protecting the citizens.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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"
really? Has any building been attacked in your city since 9-11? Believe me that AQ and others have been trying hard to do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.'"
O RLY?
There are a lot of people in New Orleans who would disagree with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russel_L._Honor%C3%A9#Hurricane_Katrina_and_Hurricane_Rita
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.
If you ignore the fact that the "islamists" are mostly fighting the US with the arms the US gave them then what you say almost makes sense.
Almost.
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
You know what would really be effective at stopping Al Qaeda? STOP FUNDING AND ARMING THEM!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/20/kuhner-how-obama-arms-al-qaeda/
It's no secret that the US and Saudi Arabia have been giving Al Qaeda weapons and money when they do mercenary work. Yet somehow no one wants to talk about how to prevent Saudis from funneling money into Al Qaeda.
Let's face it, Al Qaeda is the real life Emmanuel Goldstein: controlled opposition used to justify all the totalitarian legislation that the people in power want to impose.
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.
I have to say, I really do respect an honest interpretation of the harsh realities out there. It's so rare to see, you either get tub-thumbing from conservatives or extreme naivety from liberals.
I think though there is a better way, rather than fanatic vs whatever power side you pick. The US should be an example to the world, a positive role model that actually inspires people. There are plenty of people around the world who have grown up loving American ideals, and now hate everything it has become. Strategically, America is losing its European allies, it's morale, and it's bargaining position. I heard a good quote recently about how being conservative is about being scared and therefore doing what someone who is scared does. Does anybody want to live in a world where there is no real freedom and justice? It's not worth it. Loss of ethical behaviour is pernicious. You can see now every part of the political, judicial, media, corporate, and power, establishment, is eroding in lock-step. On the other hand, ideals can inspire and spread quickly. I think that is very real, not naive.
There's no reason America has to be a declining empire, people would support it again if it stood up for what is right. Continue using drones against militants, continue to have strong cybersecurity capabilities, continue to invest in new war technology - but do it within a framework of justice, transparency, and accept that freedom requires sacrifice. I would rather live free and be at risk of being blown up, than live under a fist. No doubt America does need to make some broader sacrifices - for example cut down on cheap imports made by controlled populations and foster greater (but more expensive) domestic production. Be honest and teach people this. Get people out from under their scared consumerist blanket.
So, there are enemies to be fought, but what really has to be defended, are principles and a positive future for us.
They want to criticize Snowden for not being more selctive in his release of information? But he offered discuss with the NSA what releases might compromise US security. They refused to talk with him. Now they say he released more than the minimum necessary to demonstrate that the NSA was breaking the law. What is a respecatble whistle-blower to do?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
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.
I think he means a real "tear the Bastille apart brick by brick" uprising, not a bunch of hippies squatting around playing guitar. And it was Nixon that eventually got the US out of Vietnam, not Johnson.
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!"
Please tell me this a subtle satire in the style of 1984 and Dr. Strangelove, and that you truly don't see the World in such black and white terms. We are in a cold war with China? Really? Over "balance of power"? Is that a war you expect one side to win, or do you think "we will always be at war"?
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
A balance of power competition is not a war, and it is deeply misleading to characterize it that way.
The biggest threat to the US are the US corporations - the ones who are shifting know-how and manufacturing resources to China. I am talking about a massive hemorrhage of technology and capabilities. Just read some of the comments this thread.
And all this without even starting to look at the damage that US financial institutions did to the US.
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.
Meanwhile we are supporting it by assisting Saudi Arabia which is funding and organising that spread. As an example, their recent huge donation of weapons and money to a group with that mindset in Lebanon will probably spark a new civil war. 12th Century mindset with modern US made ordinance.
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.
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
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.
are you forgetting kent state? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings - Sure it was cambodia not vietnam but it changes nothing, in 1970 the US military killed college students in america. Now obama kills americans with drones.
sorry but if you dont think that th eUSA is capable of committing atrocities as well you need to get your head out of your ass
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
-I side with the US because the US is the only remaining real Western power.
You were doing just fine until that line. All of western, and even parts of eastern, europe are VERY real western powers. So, is Canada and Australia.
And Ukraine is a different issue. The ppl of Ukraine voted in what they considered to be the lesser evil and now have issues.
We kind of did the same thing in 2000.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
I agree with you. In fact, I support building keystone pipeline, taxing the oil that flows through it and using that tax to subsidize new nat gas and electric vehicles. Why? To get us out of importing oil from the middle east and venezuela.
Likewise, we need to help Europe, Japan, and South Korea get out of importing oil from the middle east. Then and only then will AQ fall.
BUT, we have to deal with the fact that it will not happen overnight AND deal with the fact that AQ WILL attack again and again.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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
No, you seemed to miss my intention. I don't mean we should merely slowly wean ourselves off Saudi oil. The US leadership should inform the Saudi government that they need to stop supporting terrorism and start arresting people who do provide money to terrorists or they will no longer be allies and instead be targets. "Some nice buildings in Riyadh, shame if something happened to them. You fund Al Qaeda to bomb people, the USAF will bomb you."
Prince Bandar bin Sultan has admitted to being in control of the Chechen terrorists. Yet he remains at the head of the National Security Council of Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden had 1 main objective in all public statements: Remove US Airbases from Saudi Arabia.
2001? Mission Accomplished. Bin Laden 1/ USA 0
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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
So, you think that American bases are gone from Saudi Arabia? Really?
And that was NOT the reason why he attacks the entire west (if not the world).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We are in a cold war with China? Really? Over "balance of power"?
Yes, exactly that. That country is still run by a tyrannical authoritarian bunch of thugs who have people jailed (and worse) for simply speaking their minds about their form of government. That country is 100% completely responsible for the ability of places like North Korea to run a Stalinist-style death camp of a nation, attack other nation's vessels in international waters, and engage in all sorts of lovely nuke-making, etc. Likewise China deliberately aligns itself with regimes like the late Chavez's (no replaced by an even bigger fool!) who have wrecked Venezuela in the name of the same ideology that China's government ostensibly promotes, and who are trying their hardest to spill that same poison elsewhere into Central and South America.
China is now trying to take over more international waters, and only quieted down in that most recent stunt when actively confronted in the region by our military.
Yes, that sort of tension is real, and it won't go away until the regime in that country stops operating in its current mode. Eventually enough Chinese folks will recognize that they might be able to change things, and it will change. And they'll see that doing business with (for example) Japan is better than threatening it. The cold war with China's totalitarian regime will be won in exactly the same way it was won against the Soviet Union. It's a matter of push-back and patience as it collapses from within.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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
FUCK YOU.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
On behalf of the men and women who serve in the military, I think your comment is ill advised.
Regardless of whether you, I or they agree with our government's actions, they risk everything to protect you the best way they know how. Don't blame the military for what you don't like. Become involved in politics to put decision makers in office that order the military to do what you believe is right.
I'm old enough to remember the shameful way that veteran's were treated returning from Viet Nam and I hope that horrible chapter in history is never repeated.
The fact that your comment is modded insightful to the max is pretty disturbing.
Greed is the root of all evil.
The next Nobel prize alumni meeting would be of particular interest, Obama, Assange, Snowden and Manning in the same room exchanging chit-chat over a drink !
Also, his country wants to throw him in jail for exposing foul play, so he is forced to flee. Some other country offers shelter, perhaps in exchange for information, and so an idiot says "oh, that kind of betrayal is unforgivable". Really? Hey, US, protip: want to avoid the risk of defection? Then don't treat your own like enemies to start with.
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.
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.
The only war going on here is the US' war with itself.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
Apparently you don't pay much attention to the details of this scandal.
The entire point of the NSA is Signals Intelligence. that means intercepting and decoding signals. You can't do that if you don't have some idea how the other guys operate, which means the NSA has to have some idea how the Russians and Chinese operate. Moreover Snowden was actually a guy they depended on to train their other guys on Chinese tactics. So Snowden doesn't actually need documents to say a lot about the Chinese, because it's in his head; and he could have gotten pelnty of docs on the Russians if he'd wanted.
Whether Snowden could release the info we have on them without destroying our intelligence apparatus is both countries is an interesting question, but it seems to me that if he wanted to hurt them he could release some fraction of what we've got as disinformation.
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.
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!!!
I'm done making a distinction between the people who serve and the people who command. I don't support the troops, not anymore.
The actions of our military would not be possible without the complicity of those who serve. At this point, the misdeeds of the military are well documented and anyone serving is giving their tacit support to those misdeeds by enlisting. The US political system is fundamentally flawed and unlikely to change things. If we start directing our ire at those in the military, perhaps the specter of shame and disdain will cause future enlistees to reconsider their choice to join up and a lack of "boots on the ground" will curtail the obnoxious behavior of the military in a way that no amount of voting or political activism can.
I do agree that some of the treatment of veterans is wrong and I do sympathize with them, however it's an issue that I won't support for the above reasons. Unlike Vietnam vets, all current vets have voluntarily sided with a government that they had no right to believe would treat them ethically. They've chosen their side and it's in opposition to mine.
Note that everything I've said above applies equally to any white-collar worker in the defense space. If you work on weapons systems or in the intelligence community, you've sided with people I consider morally bankrupt and I consider it your ethical duty to extricate yourself as soon as responsibly possible.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Wouldn't even need to deploy smart bombs, the FBI could yank them right out of class. "If you fund terrorism then your family gets kicked out of university, and gets deported."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304830704577492450467667154
really? Has any building been attacked in your city since 9-11?
You could use the same reasoning to conclude we were perfectly safe before 9/11. And in the grand scheme of things, 9/11 was absolutely nothing; it is our reaction that caused us the most damage.
These are most certainly not wars of defense.
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.
Ever notice what happened to NSA people who took the "legal" whistle blower route? They got ignored and marginalized. If the US wants people to go the legal route in order to expose wrongdoing, then they need to make it work effectively. Else this sort of thing is blowback for sweeping dirt under the carpet.
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.
The problem with that strategy is geography doesn't protect against little raids like S11, the Islamists seem to have strong support in their own countries, and certain bits of Western culture (notably the fact that sex is everywhere and women are empowered) enrage them.
In other words if we're annoying them with a constant barrage of Beyonce from VoA they ain't gonna bother conquering the Swedes, they will join Al Qaeda.
Exactly what I'd expect from the "land of the free and the home of the brave": cowardly pieces of trash that care about security more than freedom.
If you ignore the fact that the "islamists" are mostly fighting the US with the arms the US gave them then what you say almost makes sense.
Almost.
#1 That's not as true as you imply. All Taliban and Iraqi insurgent arms are Soviet-made. Some proportion of those were paid for with U$, but that was generally decades ago when we were fighting another war with a much different enemy.
#2 That's not uncommon with insurgent movements. While we were fighting in 'Nam with heavily armored vehicles the Portuguese were fighting in their African colonies with horse cavalry. In both wars most weapons used by the rebels were originally "acquired" from government sources, so the Portuguese faced significantly less firepower then us. In some ways it would have made a lot more sense for us to arm the South Vietnamese with Pre-WW2 weapons and not send in our boys with M-16s, but it's very hard for a Democracy to send troops into battle with inferior equipment. Their families tend to object.
Too bad you were never consulted about having a military protecting you or a street to drive on. Asshole, rest assured that I would be the first person busting down your door with a .45 caliber if there were nothing to stop me. Stockpile more shit please.
Most people have concluded that the military has been crafted as a tool to protect politicians, corporations, and from their own complicit, fowl foreign policy and this has effectively stood since Vietnam. So yes, it is in the interest of the people in protecting themselves. I see the roads, I also see roads that kick the crap out of my car, I see NSA military force turned upon the people of the US while not under any announced martial law. I see snot nosed inheritors of power in the ranks of the elite lacking insight to damages rendered by erasing the lines between military force and the people, I see oil company's getting their way and contaminating water tables and water aquifers in land used to grow food and where people once lived. I see DHS (a domestic agency) purchasing over 2 billion rounds of .223 and armored personnel carriers. So if you'd like to step up as a responsible party for all that this situation will bring the people, don't let "nothing" stop you, come and peddle us your "safety". It is interesting the see the government start a small arms race with it's own people, I'm waiting for them to piss off the scientists. Government selling "safety" is nothing more than snake oil, or better know as fraud.
The law was wrong and irrelevant; it has nothing to do with morality. Any legal methods would have resulted in citizens not knowing what was going on, and the whole thing would have likely been swept under the rug.
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.
Actually, we caught a few at the border, by border guards who thought they were acting suspiciously.
Some failed on their own.
A number of airplane bombers were stopped by passengers, who have generally learned the "security mob" mentality required in those situations.
A bunch of Americans attempting to be recruited by terrorists were instead recruited by the FBI in stings.
So as far as the terrorist threat goes, the military is not really involved, except in blowing up distant places and making people hate.
But I'm in Oregon. Without the military, I'd be speaking Japanese.
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.
Imagine how different the region might look if we had let Hussein invade Saudi in `90.
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.
Actually, his focus was on removing all US military personnel from Saudi Arabia, which he failed at.
His secondary goal was to destroy the ruling family for the crime of having invited the US in.
He failed at both of those. He did reduce the US footprint there, at the expense of increasing it in the region generally.
So what was the reason? Al Qaeda attacked only US targets until the Iraq war when they also targeted the UK and Spain which is hardly the entire West in any case.
fowl foreign policy
I blame the chickenhawks for this.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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?
Actually, Snowden claims to have gone through the normal channels, except the problem is, he didn't go to anybody. He claims that simply having mentioned his concerns to his boss and co-workers, and not getting any response or shared concern, means that he "tried."
He could have, for example, gone to Senator Wyden, who was publicly critical of the program, has the security clearance, is on the Intelligence Committee, and was already warning that the program was bigger than people knew.
We'll never know what Congress would have done with the truth, because they didn't find out until the same time(*) that the Russians and Chinese found out.
* - or later
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.
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.
Thank you, just as the NSA, CIA and DIA are all about financial intelligence for the plutocracy, and command and control of the populace (by various means) for the plutocracy! Case closed!
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.
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.
That is just it, some of them might join some fundamentalist sect, but they won't attack us, they will be to preoccupied trying to get the young women there to but the Hajab back on and the young other men to stop watching the free porn to do anything about us. The culture war is a losing one, freedom and self fulfillment always win once the possibities are really understood
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I agree. But we're talking about Snowden here, not the head of the NSA.
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."
You are able to express this opinion openly because military force has in the past protected your right to speak freely.
Bin Laden's real reason was to be the big scary bugbear that would justify massive military spending after the Soviets were no longer a sufficient threat while simultaneously justifying the US military directly engaging the enemies of the Saudi Royal Family. Mission fucking accomplished.
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
A Military is a necessary evil, but it's still an evil. We take ordinary folks who either want to help their country or just want a job and teach them to be murderers. There's no getting around that.
Play Command HQ online
The military is what it does, not what it's supposed to do or wants to do.
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.
I don't know if you're serious as someone else rated you funny, but as the lack of terrorist attacks since 9/11 is cited often enough as reason to justify all of our countermeasures, I'll assume you're serious.
While 9/11 was a tragedy, let's also not forget that it was a singular event. Would a huge expansion in the intelligence community have stopped it? Who knows. Personally, I think the thing that would have had the greatest chance of stopping it would have been a commander in chief who would have taken memos from his intel guys that said things like "al Qaeda training to use planes in the us", "bin laden determined to strike at the us" and "all the alarm lights are flashing red" seriously might have done the trick. Instead, he sleeps on the job and our massively expanded intelligence apparatus is turned against us instead.
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.
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
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.
If there was an uprising of people inside the USA against the government and it's policies, they would be deemed terrorists and all killed or imprisoned.
You need to read up on some history of protests which occurred in the U.S. during the Viet Nam war. Mass protests DID happen, and the government ( Johnson was president at the time ) DID NOT kill or imprison them all. Rather, the government changed its policies with respect to Viet Nam.
Just because you are a spineless pessimist doesn't mean all US citizens are, and you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT speak for anyone but yourself with your cowardly prognostications.
What a great copy-paste job you did there shill. Hey, what the fuck is COINTELPRO? It's government counter intelligence program that seeks to silence anti-war activism, women's rights activism, and civil rights activism, and others they deem "radicals" -- You know, like using PRISM to expose porn habits, etc. That evil shit is still going on you dolt. Get real you moronic shill.
...you've sided with people I consider morally bankrupt and I consider it your ethical duty to extricate yourself as soon as responsibly possible.
After all the ethical people leave the military, who is left? And do you want those leftovers in complete control of our armed forces?
Cynicism, like dogmatism, can be an excuse for intellectual laziness. - Susan Shirk
Sometimes I think that too but I realize that there hasn't been a full-on war in the continental US since the Civil War
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.
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.
A Military is a necessary evil
If by "military" you mean standing armed forces, the founders didn't think it was necessary. They instead intended a militia-based system with provision for federal command and control when actively needed. They even tried to make it hard for Congress to establish a standing army by limiting its ability to appropriate funds more than two years at a time. Of course, since appropriations ended up being done annually for all sorts of reasons, that didn't actually work.
Personally, I think the time is ripe for a return to the Constitutional structure of the armed forces. We'd need to keep some full-timers around for the high-tech elements, and it might be wise to maintain a cadre responsible for creating and maintaining the training and integration plans that would be put into effect during a call-up of the unorganized militia, but even most of that could be delegated to the states' organized militias (AKA National Guard). But given the state of the world today, there really is no need for 1.5 million people on active duty. The Cold War notion that our goal should be to be able to "project power" and fight two foreign wars simultaneously is outmoded (if it actually made sense even then).
Of course, my thinking is based on the idea that our national defense strategy should be one of defense, focused on preventing the incursion of foreign armed forces onto American soil, rather than one of offense. Given that model, it is both more cost-effective and much less likely to embroil us in messy foreign wars if we focus on being prepared to train and equip the 120 million members of the unorganized militia. If we institute basic rifle marksmanship training as a standard part of secondary education, plus fund shooting ranges and marksmanship competitions, and buy and warehouse, say, 25 million battle rifles plus ammunition, with appropriate callup and distribution plans (with the weapons already well-dispersed, perhaps secured in various already-existing federal buildings, like post offices), then I think on fairly short notice we could have 50 million armed adults with rudimentary training, ready for further training, organization and deployment. Or, if necessary, self-organization and training.
I like to call this the "rifle behind every blade of grass" national defense strategy, in reference to the apocryphal Admiral Yamamoto statement "You cannot invade the mainland United States, there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass". You can try to argue that a modern military armed with tanks and aircraft overmatches any group of rifle-armed mostly-civilians, but "quantity has a quality all its own", and given that any foreign power with a prayer of success would have to transport their quantity across oceans (and through the non-trivial Navy I would propose we continue maintaining -- it is a Constitutional standing force), we should be able to massively outnumber them.
Not only would this approach cost a small fraction of our current expenditures on national defense and make the US an even harder target for invasion than it currently is, it would also make it very difficult for US presidents to involve us in foreign misadventures.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
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.
extrajudicial killings are not always the best way to solve the problem and I think you overestimate the evil side abilities. They are by no means omnipotent as you may think. They are also quite often incompetent to the point that one thinks there must by a higher level plan that makes them do things. Besides even if executed properly such action may backfire causing more damage. As for now they can still find friendly judges on federal level, they have their secret court and as far as we know they just over-interpreted the law. There are two major problems in this one is: they do not much different things that FB et al do already and second is: the current way of doing things with voiding privacy on grand scale and secret courts etc is paving way for a future evil regime. This may but does not have to come. Besides there are other lesser evils than say Pol Pot level bloodshed but they are still evils which shall be opposed. I do not overestimate the influence of the whole affair on my life - but I am still shocked that the tin foil brigade was right all along about this.
Not to mention that DVDs (even with player included), magazines, etc. are much cheaper than bombs.
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?
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.
sigh.... Its always gotta be race with you people. Frankly no, I was ignorant to the issue, I do plan on educating myself so thank you for that. But you pointed out the number one problem I have with liberals these days. So because I point out kent state, which is well known and was only used as an example, and I didnt say anything about jackson you jump to the conclusion that I could be racist before you even consider I could just be ignorant to it, while completely ignoring the fact that my statement was in no way incorrect as to what was asked.
So instead of talking about the topic, now you have switched the mood to race. This is what the democrats do every single change they get. Dont agree with obama? well you must be racist! It cant be that you just dont agree with how he runs the country you MUST be a racist. The shit is really getting old folks
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Why is this at +5, and the post you replied to at 0? It should be the reverse. There is the difference between "killing some" and "killing all", which in this case is the difference between a good point and a strawman.
I find it shameful to use this incident to argue for defeatism and rolling over in advance, when the very people who faced it back then did NOT: http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/collections/exhibits/arch/1970/70Images/Kent2.gif
I doubt what happened at Kent State even put a dent in the protests, maybe even the opposite.
If everybody protests, who is going to do the killing? You're aware the leaders of the world are depending on a lot of misled people working for them, right? Chauffeurs, pilots, cops, soldiers, doctors, nurses... the list is very long, and the so called elite are basically sitting ducks once the lies wear off.
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
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.
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 military is NOT protecting me. Sorry, but the United States Military that exists today has NOTHING to do with protecting the citizens.
You are an idiot.
Militarily speaking, the reason why you think that the military does nothing to protect the citizens is because it does it better than any other military in the world. 2.5 Million men and women, many of whom spent way too much time away from their families in the past twelve years because their country asked them to in countries they hate, not fighting for the most part but building infrastructure such as roads and sewage systems (I have friends who spent time there). You do this so that people there feel hope and maybe don't hate us quite so much.
Our military has a command structure designed over fifty years that spans the globe which watches for threats to Americans so that you can go almost anywhere in the globe and when you try to get a Visa to some country in the middle of nowhere the Embassy can say "Hm, no that's not a good idea, denied." and maybe they just saved your life.
You can go anywhere in the world almost and walk almost any street in the world and you don't even know that the reason why you can do it safely is because just maybe the people there like you as an American but maybe they hate you because you're a snot nosed American with a self important attitude that thinks you know better than everybody else and maybe you just walked into a really big drug deal but nobody is going to kill you because just maybe that might spark a drone attack.
When Genghis Khan ruled China it was said that you could walk from one end to another without fear of Bandits. This is what the US Military brings you outside of the United States. Safety. This is the reason why
Beware the wood elf!!!
... 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.
I agree with you. However, we're talking about Snowden here, not the heads of the NSA.
Um DUH! what do you call all the article links. Try READING the whole post! "anonymous coward"'
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Because this is one example of what happens when this occurs.
By walking into Sen. Wyden's office with his data, instead of taking it to China and then Russia. Seems like it would actually be much less risky. Also, this whole idea that whistle-blowers are "picked up" is nonsense. If somebody was arrested for trying to deliver information about national security to a Senator with a security clearance, that would actually be a much huger story to more people than what we have.
The reason so many people don't care about the NSA actions is that so far there is no known Watergate-type of abuse of power related to it. That it sets the stage for a future dystopia straight out of sci-fi is something that mostly resonates with nerds, or other minorities that read books. That it sets up a situation where a coup would be much much harder to reverse, that just doesn't resonate with most people. Contemporary abuses of power, however, resonate with all sorts of people.
If Snowden was in jail, he'd be a hero. He's not. He's in Moscow. You can't know, I can't know, that he isn't actually a Russian spy from the beginning. We can't know.
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
> 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.
Good to hear that you have a worldview of a political simpleton. It helps explain the rest of the post.
> 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.
If we followed your logic, we won’t have whistle blowers. Who gave Daniel Ellsberg the right to leak Pentagon Pagers to NY Times? Was he elected? Did someone make him king? Did God anoint him? Access is not permission to steal.
Were you fine with him then? Ellsberg believes that Snowden, given current legal climate of the Obama administration, did not have a choice to do anything differently.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_story.html
You seem to just not like these leaks because you are a hyper-partisan.
> Snowden, by any description, by any definition is the bad guy here.
Don’t confuse your opinion with universal facts. In my opinion, there are no real bad guys. Snowden is not a bad guy; neither is NSA. Things can go horribly wrong without bad guys and someone to hate.
> He is a traitor.
Look up the definition of a traitor. He does not fit at all. His goal was to help US citizenry and the rest of the world, not help US enemies. You can argue that he was naïve (which I don't think he was at all), but you cannot argue that he is a traitor. But hey, these days it is fashionable to call people you don't agree with - traitors (Assange was called a traitor to US, even when he was not a US citizen). There are plenty of articles written on this by now, including in yesterday’s Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-make-a-deal-with-snowden/2014/01/06/33fb8e2c-770a-11e3-af7f-13bf0e9965f6_story.html
> 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.
Explain.
> He threatens that the "Worst is yet to come."
Cite.
> Face it, this is a bad scary world. Russia and China are not our friends.
Neither is it cold war era. Don’t forget that China is the biggest trading partner for US, that Chinese culture is fairly popular in US, as is US culture and universities among Chinese elite. You need to shed this “us vs. them” mentality.
> They look out for their own best interests.
Duh? They would be fools if they did not. You might have forgotten Opium Wars, but the Chinese did not. China is a suspicious friend of US because it got bitten before.
> When you don't look out for your own best interest as a nation then you turn into Portugal.
And US best interest is to have rule of law (can’t have life destroying treatments for whistle blowers like William Binney and expect that there won’t be whistle blowers like Snowden next) and not turn into a surveillance state. After all, that is what was supposed to separate US form the communist bloc of the old.
> 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.
Snowden already made it clear in the Gellman interview that there is no Deadman’s switch.
S
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).
I apologize for the lateness of this reply, but you are demanding that Snowden take a huge risk while ignoring that his words, just like those of previous whistleblowers might get ignored just as they were for previous whistleblowers who went the legal route. By doing it the way he did it, he insured that he wouldn't be ignored. I take it you don't like that, but if you want the matter to change, then legal whistleblowing needs to be more effective.
Great post. Wish I had mod points.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I agree that enough civilians with good enough weapons and the disposition to use them is adequate to deter most invasions, I just don't think invasion is the only threat we need to confront.
Play Command HQ online
I was in no way arguing that we should not protest because of issues like kent state. I was simply making the point that the government has in the past been willing to use deadly force against its own people in america.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I agree that enough civilians with good enough weapons and the disposition to use them is adequate to deter most invasions, I just don't think invasion is the only threat we need to confront.
What else? Terrorism? I posit that our foreign military adventures create more risk of terrorism than they prevent. Plus foreign terrorism is a negligible risk anyway.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'm not really sure your point. Is it that he is a sociopath who feels some sort of need to force others to not "ignore" him? It really isn't clear at all.
Part of the situation of whistle-blowers is that no, they cannot be sure people will care. That is entirely besides the point, and not solved or even addressed by giving national secrets to foreign governments.
And actually no, the focus of most people is to make sure that whistle-blowers have legal protections. NOT that anybody who claims to be one gets to have a bunch of "effective" changes made to placate them. That would be highly anti-democratic. I want to elect leaders, not have some game of whistle-merit where your favorite whistle-blower gets to choose the laws.
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
No. Russia, China, "the Islamists" -- none of these bogeymen currently pose a threat to the US.
No Mr Anonymous Fascist, I'll actually insist on my civilian elected officials to determine who the threats are.
Is it that he is a sociopath who feels some sort of need to force others to not "ignore" him?
I wasn't aware that whistle blowing was supposed to be a popularity contest for sociopaths.
NOT that anybody who claims to be one gets to have a bunch of "effective" changes made to placate them. That would be highly anti-democratic.
So whistle blowing is also anti-democratic? What I think is anti-democratic is secrecy. Whistle blowing hinders that anti-democratic tendency.
I want to elect leaders, not have some game of whistle-merit where your favorite whistle-blower gets to choose the laws.
So did you vote to have the NSA spy on your personal communications?