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When Snowden Speaks, Future Lawyers (and Judges) Listen
TheRealHocusLocus writes: We are witness to a historic first: an individual charged with espionage and actively sought by the United States government has been (virtually) invited to speak at Harvard Law School, with applause. [Note: all of the following links go to different parts of a long YouTube video.] HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig conducted the hour-long interview last Monday with a list of questions by himself and his students.
Some interesting segments from the interview include: Snowden's assertion that mass domestic intercept is an "unreasonable seizure" under the 4th Amendment; that it also violates "natural rights" that cannot be voted away even by the majority; a claim that broad surveillance detracts from the ability to monitor specific targets such as the Boston Marathon bombers; him calling out Congress for not holding Clapper accountable for misstatements; and his lament that contractors are exempt from whistleblower protection though they do swear an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.
These points have been brought up before. But what may be most interesting to these students is Snowden's suggestion that a defendant under the Espionage Act should be permitted to present an argument before a jury that the act was committed "in the public interest." Could this help ensure a fair trial for whistleblowers whose testimony reveals Constitutional violation?
Some interesting segments from the interview include: Snowden's assertion that mass domestic intercept is an "unreasonable seizure" under the 4th Amendment; that it also violates "natural rights" that cannot be voted away even by the majority; a claim that broad surveillance detracts from the ability to monitor specific targets such as the Boston Marathon bombers; him calling out Congress for not holding Clapper accountable for misstatements; and his lament that contractors are exempt from whistleblower protection though they do swear an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic.
These points have been brought up before. But what may be most interesting to these students is Snowden's suggestion that a defendant under the Espionage Act should be permitted to present an argument before a jury that the act was committed "in the public interest." Could this help ensure a fair trial for whistleblowers whose testimony reveals Constitutional violation?
There's no way companies are paying Alexanders new company a million $ a month to consult. He's not allowed to reveal secret info, and public info is free. So what would the be paying for. There's no way the current NSA CTO is moonlighting for it and nobody in the NSA bats an eyelid. You would never have a part time employee in that position in the NSA, the money would be a conflict of interest.
What does make sense, is if this company is a conduit from banks and telcos to NSA.
You can't legally search US bank records, but if his company received those records and resold them, then a conduit like that could conceal the source of the data. So this is what makes a more plausible role for that company that would be worth the millions per year, laundering the source of the data into the NSA.
A data broker for data that the NSA legally can't obtain from the original source. When they ask the NSA if it obtained US Bank data, it says no (pretending it doesn't know the data it bought from this conduit company came from banks), when they ask them if they obtained telco data they again say no.
Likewise foreign partners like GCHQ, are spying on Brits via companies like BT & Vodafone and sending the data to the NSA. But suppose instead they simply sold data for some company to process, and that company happened to resell that data to some other company which then lands in the NSAs database.
Q. Did NSA get any data from Vodafone.
A. Not to my knowledge.... says the NSA man.
A million dollars worth of plausible deniability. Now that *does* seem a more plausible role for his new company and its what I suspect is behind it.
1. He has to reveal himself to make it impossible for the U.S. government to deny everything and call it FUD/hoax/lie/whatever. By revealing himself and explaining it the U.S. was forced to act against him and thus actually confirm his leaks.
2. He had to go from Hong Kong as China advised him to go to avoid kerfuffle with the USA. (This even China was bullied). Russia was Snowdons only viable option as Russia is (surprisingly) the only nation where US law doesn't apply and the USA can't to jackshit.
Benjamin Franklin opened other colonist's mail for intelligence purposes in the Revolutionary War. George Washington ran a spy ring during and after the Revolutionary War that spied on other colonists.
It seems there is more to establishing and keeping the American Republic than you understand. Perhaps you just aren't capable. What a pity.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What he did was illegal, but I can't say that it was wrong.
I'm not in the least convinced that it was illegal. Revealing classified info which reveals the existence of criminal behavior is not necessarily illegal (at least as of one of my early briefings when having a clearance bestowed upon my august presence).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
and I disagree 100% with you on this cold. not everything, but this one I feel you are dead wrong
tell me cold, if you were in the NSA, and you were witnessing the constitutional wrong doings, and you had no legit way to get that information to the american public who rightfully deserved to know the abuses being done in our name??? not a trap i legitimately want to know how you would go about getting us the information in a way that, in your mind, does not make you a traitor (saying we dont need to know is not an answer)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same