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Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras Win Truth-Telling Award
An anonymous reader writes with news that Snowden has received the Ridenhour Truth-Telling award. From the announcement: "We have selected Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras for their work in exposing the NSA's illegal and unconstitutional bulk collection of the communications of millions of people living in the United States. Their act of courage was undertaken at great personal risk and has sparked a critical and transformative debate about mass surveillance in a country where privacy is considered a constitutional right."
The award will be presented at the National Press Club. It is hoped that Snowden and Poitras will be able to appear remotely (Poitras is in effective exile in Berlin). In related news, the ACLU has indexed all publicly released documented leaked by Snowden. You can even full-text search them.
It would go a long way towards making up for that embarrassment of giving Obama that award before he had even done anything.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
We are in sad shape when we give awards to traitors.
Are you talking about Snowden or the many criminals in the NSA and CIA who have won awards over the years?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Since the Supreme Court refused to rule on the latest challenge http://jurist.org/paperchase/2... we don't know if it is or isn't. In my opinion the original judge who said "that the program is likely unconstitutional" was correct, so the program continues to operate and probably faces years more worth of legal challenges.
Ok, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction. Let's try to be more level headed.
You know what's most astonishing about an award to a "traitor", given by the very same country he "betrayed", really is? That it is given. Think back through history. Can you imagine an award for Julius Rosenberg, given by any kind of US institution? Or let's be less "dramatic", any idea how a criminal of any kind would be given an award by his own country?
Can you imagine what kind of support for a "crime" it takes that the "criminal" gets an award for it? And we're not talking about a spy having backing in the country he spies from. That the Rosenbergs were seen as heroes in the USSR is a given. But we're talking about support for what he has done, without a doubt against the interests of the US government, and the support that he gets for it within the US.
That alone tells me more about the US government and how well the US people feel represented by said government than about the "criminal".
A government should represent its people, and the will of the people. That's the only reason, the only right, a government has to exist if it is supposed to be just and justified. If a government does not do that and instead prosecutes someone who does actually execute what is identified as the will of the people, then I have to admit it is kinda hard to tell for me who is the criminal here, the whistleblower or the government.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know who Snowden betrayed, but as an American, he certainly didn't betray me. However, those supporting the NSA's disgusting activities certainly are betraying the American people.
The NSA spying on the rest of the world IS DOING THIER FUCKING JOB.
Stop repeating things that aren't true. Unless that country is actively at war with the US, then no. The NSA's espionage and computer fraud (writing malware, sabotaging systems, leaving other vulnerabilities that can be abused by anyone) are an illegal act of aggression and breaks our treaties. Might I remind you that not too long ago, the very same president that is supporting the NSA right now had also called out China for illegal hacking and himself called it an "act of war."
This kind of bullshit being posted here just goes to show that shilling wins. I can't believe this kind of mindset has actually taken foot here.
Its amazing how you can't distinguish between an organization and the people in it.
Organisations are like soylent green: made of people. If "the NSA" is doing bad stuff that means people in the NSA were doing bad stuff.
not everyone at the NSA is the same.
Quite so. They have recently had at least one good, honourable person in they employ: Edward Snowden. That proves that not everyone at the NSA is necessarily bad.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
WHY WE WILL NEVER LEARN
Thomas Polgar, the last CIA station chief in Vietnam, died in March at the age of 92. His obit is in today’s New York Times. And here's Polgar himself, remembering the fall of Saigon. As well as, in this brief aside, the war criminal Henry Kissinger.
One day I had an opportunity to ask Mr. Kissinger what he thought of our intelligence. Not speaking of Vietnam, but generally. He was getting this big flow of intelligence from CIA world wide at the time. What did he think of the value of it? And he thought for a moment and then he said, "Well, when it supports my policy, it’s very useful." And I think we are here at the heart of the problem. It is that American policy is not formulated in response to what the intelligence shows. We first formulate the policy and then we try to find the intelligence to support it.
It is interesting to speculate what might have happened if Truman had decided to let the country continue to bumble along, as it had somehow since 1776, without any "intelligence" agency at all. No Shah of Iran, hence no hostage crisis and no Ronald Reagan. No U2, hence no refreezing of the Cold War. No Bay of Pigs, hence no Cuban Missile Crisis. No arming of the Taliban, to teach those Russians a lesson. No Weapons of Mass Destruction, hence no The list goes on and on. The CIA stands in relation to the White House as the drug dealer stands to the addict.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."