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Snowden Ridicules David Cameron For Defending 'Private' Matter of Panama Papers Leak
An anonymous reader writes: Edward Snowden, a former contractor with the NSA who worked with journalist to reveal a number of classified mass surveillance programs, has criticized the UK Prime Minister's insistence that his father's implication in the list of high-profile tax avoiders was a "private matter." Ian Cameron's firm Blairmore Holdings Inc managed tens of millions of pounds for the wealthy but has never paid taxes on the profits. Cameron responded to the news saying: "This is a private matter, I am focused on what the government is doing." In response to a Reuters story on Cameron's response, Snowden wrote: "Oh, now he's interested in privacy." Snowden followed up with a second tweet after the Prime Minister of Iceland resigned over his implication in the Panama Papers leak: "Resignation of Iceland's PM may explain why the UK PM is so insistent public has no right to know a PM's 'private' finances."
And how does that devalue his point. Considering that David Cameron has been one of the Western leaders leading the charge against privacy with the British government's "Snooper's Charter", it's the height of irony and hypocrisy to then declare that he should be afforded privacy. If the average man on the street has no expectation of privacy, then most assuredly neither should any politician.
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Your point can be reasonably extended to any and all pubic servants...
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I think what GP was getting at is that Snowden's opinion on this is no more relevant then Brittany Spears'. I don't know if she actually tweeted on it though; if she does do you think it should make /. front page?
I thought that if you had nothing to hide then you would not care. I guess he has something to hide then. Privacy is only for those at the top, right!?
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Sorry. But in my book, Snowden earned the right to say whatever he wants about future large document leaks and privacy issues.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I agree. If the regular citizen has no privacy rights, then neither does anyone in government, or anyone else. If there are to be no secrets, then fair enough, let's have absolutely no secrets.
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Cameron is exactly the kind of smug corporate sleazebag with different morals prescribed for big and little fish who'd employ tax evasion schemes.
That's not what is putting me aghast. What's putting me aghast is how reliably the scum rises to the top and sticks there in Western democracies. Makes one almost suspect that one would have better odds with aristocracy instead. Not good odds, mind you. Just better than the processes governing the current representative systems.
Unlike say myself or jsut about anyone else, the private finances of a Prime Minster and his family ARE a thing of public interest. The man not only has to be seen to be doing the right thing but also the transparency of investments and where income comes from. So you know, make sure he is not being unduly "influenced" in policy decisions for his and his family's financial gain, ie handing out a govt contract that will boost the shit out oa shareprice to a company he or his family has interests in.
So basically Cameron, the question is -YOU are a public official and thence the expectation of privacy is much reduced. Your position is extremely important and you should be under scrutiny and that also includes your family. You dont get to plead privacy, you gave that up the moment you stepped forward to be Prime Minister.
"Nothign to fear if nothign to hide" is a common BS meme - good squads gets a fucking warrant if you think I've done something wrong so stay the fuck out of my life. However.... THAT does not apply to Mr Cameron. So Mr Cameron, what are you hiding? There is not an expectation of privacy in regards to the financial affairs of an elected Prime Minister.
Snowden is referring to Cameron's plea for privacy, as mentioned in the summary and linked tweet. He's merely pointing out the irony since the UK government has been invading ordinary citizens' privacy for possibly decades now. Why would the political elite be allowed special privilege privacy?
-SR
I agree. If the regular citizen has no privacy rights, then neither does anyone in government, or anyone else. If there are to be no secrets, then fair enough, let's have absolutely no secrets.
But I really really don't want to know exactly what kind of flatulence Cameron has.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Politicians need to have a healthy diet, with plenty of vitamins and irony...
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Your point can be reasonably extended to any and all pubic servants...
Leave the prostitutes out of this. They are earning their money the hard way.
I'm obviously not surprised that a dreadful shitsack like Cameron would have an utterly awful and self-serving hypocritical sound bite; but I am always impressed at how the professionals manage to keep their facial expressions so...neutral...when delivering this sort of tripe.
He's living consequence-free in Putin's Russia, which the Panama Papers suggests has large number of government officials (including Putin himself) engaging in wholesale money-laundering of Russia's oil wealth. I'm sure we can expect him to criticize his hosts any tweet now.
I value his opinion more than 99% of modern journalists who are neither journalistic nor have integrity. Yet I don't hear you complaining about them writing their spew day in and day out.
When Brittany Spears is exiled from the US and all other allied countries due to her principles regarding government spying on its citizenry, then I'll listen to what she has to say regarding these sorts of topics as well.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Exactly. Now let's see Snowden turn that amusement and scorn of the irony onto Putin and his circle, who have been shown to have been a damn sight more rotten than Cameron's family (who, incidentally, acted unethircally but broke no laws; I say this as someone vehemently against the Tories for decades).
Oh, he seems really fucking quiet on that front! Maybe he doesn't care about this whole "special privilege privacy" quite so much as you think!
PUBLIC servants should definitely have fewer privacy rights than PRIVATE citizens.
Particularly when their decisions can affect the lives of millions.
Example:
In Australia, members of parliament are required to maintain details of financial investments in a public register. Private citizens are not so required.
Now I didn't say public servants should have no privacy rights, but they should certainly have fewer.
The bitter irony is that the regime in the UK - via the government mouthpiece, the BBC - is constantly assuring the British public that they live in a largely corruption-free society.
Just 1 leak reveals that the British PM's circle is involved with the stashing of massive wealth offshore.
And how does that devalue his point. Considering that David Cameron has been one of the Western leaders leading the chargst privacy with the British government's "Snooper's Charter", it's the height of irony and hypocrisy to then declare that he should be afforded privacy. If the average man on the street has no expectation of privacy, then most assuredly neither should any politician.
The 1%er / Corporatist mantra
Do as we say, not as we do!
Privacy for us, none for you!
Privatized profits when we succeed, public bailouts when we fail!
We strive for the good ol' past where only male landed gentry (or even better titled nobles) could vote!
Money is speech! (duh, because we have most of it)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
In Australia, members of parliament are required to maintain details of financial investments in a public register. Private citizens are not so required.
The same is true in the UK, and if it turns out that anyone hasn't been disclosing relevant interests properly then there can be substantial negative consequences for them. Given all the scandals around parliamentary expenses and the general them-and-us culture at the moment, if any top Tory MPs (or MPs from any other party, for that matter) turn up on the list or have close connections to anyone who does, they're probably in real trouble.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Actually, we don't know that yet. Pretty soon, we’ll know more about which of these important people were doing it for bad reasons and which were doing it for good reasons. But almost everyone is in trouble regardless.
Scum bags. All of them. Most of all the dirty politicians that partake in these schemes. You love your country enough to not feel you need to partake in it's financial stability...really? I can't think of any greater example of interest conflict. Tax evasion is stealing from your countrymen. For a political leader to do so of any stripe is ethically treason.
Sure. Everyone arrested by a cop should be provided with the home address of the cop, and the names of his wife and children. After all, that's just public information, and they shouldn't have any expectation of privacy. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Not that I'm advocating any special permissions, but that a blanket "no privacy" policy would probably not work out well.
Learn to love Alaska
Snowden ran so that he'd have all his appendages when he was exiled. The fact that the government has indicated he wouldn't get a fair trial, should he return, seems to indicate it's as close to an official exile as has ever been done in the US, as exile is illegal.
Learn to love Alaska
Let's ask the prime minister of Iceland how all that "power" is working out for him.
Outsiders pushing for change is rarely useful or productive.
It's up to the Ruskies to cleanup their own mess. Until they are willing to hang Putin and cronies, they can stew in it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I disagree. Unless I'm missing something in the snoopers charter it isn't about the government disclosing information to the public unless it is part of a criminal prosecution.
Furthermore I don't think Cameron was saying private as in you cannot know but private as in not part of the public sector in which he then says was his job. It's somewhat like asking your it guy about plumbing and he says he has to do computers and walks away. It sounds to me like he just didn't want to get drug into something not directly related to his job.
what a "ruling class" is, do you?
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special privileges they wouldn't be the elite, now would they? Don't you just feel silly now?
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I can't begrudge the guy not wanting to die a painful death at the hands of my countries brutal regime. He's still one of the bravest men alive, and a hell of a lot braver than most of American (which never fights a war without overwhelming tactical and resource superiority...).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I think much of the world already thinks pretty poorly of Putin.
I could see Putin declaring he'd find those responsible for the leak and incarcerate them or what have you, maybe threatening any news outlets in his country not to run this story, but I hadn't heard him bemoaning the loss of privacy this represents.
Yeah, Snowden used Russia as a shield when he released the documents.
I don't think that this means he believes Russia is a bastion of human rights, just that it was a bastion of not turning him over to the U.S. One could go 'round and 'round on the morality of this, but I doubt that the U.S. would do him the honor of a public trial of his peers. I think Snowden's trial would more likely be those constitutionally questionable secret court trials we really aren't supposed to do in this country.
With these high stakes issues, it may not do to bite the hand that helped you, even after the fact. Does he really need to in Putin's case?
So how is this different than members of parliament whining when they learned that all the surveillance laws they passed were being used on them as well as the plebs?
Who says that nobody should have any privacy rights? I think that this is a disingenuous reading of what the government of the US and UK are pushing for. There is a world of difference between the government having the ability, for example, to unlock encrypted phones under a legitimate court order and openly publishing everyone's private financial matters. Were the latter to routinely happen, you would find even fewer capable people taking leadership roles in government, you would only find sock-puppets for the rich.
As opposed to what we have now?
How is that different from the status quo?
Oh bullshit. This is about the tit not liking the tat. The reason the PM of Iceland (and now it seems the PM of Britain) wanted to keep things secret wasn't for our liberty in good government, it's because they didn't want their electorates finding out that while these people are making the average person suffer, and suffer mind you, in most cases for events the citizens had no control over, they had nice offshore accounts safely out of the hands of the taxman. They are hypocrites, and their outing was deserved and right.
Wanting to spy on every single thing a citizen types into a computing device is not some righteous cause. It's just a government spying apparatus that believes privacy and liberty should be dispensable at the merest whim. For fucks sake, there are secret fucking courts in several countries, whose sole purpose is to make sure the electorate can never have a clear picture of how many peoples' privacy are being breached.
Well you know what. If the authorities want that level of information, then I say force them to wear cameras and microphones 24 hours a day, which are constantly streamed to multiple web sites. Not a single activity, whether involve state secrets or taking a fucking dump will be permitted to be secret. That way we can make sure they aren't cutting deals that fuck over the citizens and then trying to justify it as "privacy", even as they work to destroy the privacy of millions of people who have done nothing wrong.
And you know the fuck what. If I write my private fucking thoughts down in a code that the FBI can't crack, then too fucking bad. Governments, even the judicial branch, are supposed to be limited, and not stroking each others' genitals in some big privacy destroying circle jerk. The politicians, cops and judges are merely human beings, not one tiny bit more important than anyone else. They are not gods, but if they choose to act like it, then strip them of every once of privacy. If they have a mole on their left testicle, everyone should be able to see it, and if they have a few million bucks in a tax shelter, at any moment every fucking citizen should be able to see the balance of that account. Their every intimate moment should be broadcast on hundred foot high screens.
Why is David Cameron's privacy even the tiniest bit more important than mine? Is he a god? Should we worship him?
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government spying is extremely lucrative, so these things are not separate. If you're spying on business deals you're going to profit immediately.
But I demand a 4K video of each and every occurrence!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
On the other hand, the PM of Iceland resigned. As he should.
Now Putin should resign and the president of China too.
Why would you expect him to do that - aren't there other people in the world who can do their bit? Snowden is an individual who did some stuff. He is hardly large enough to tackle all governments, all the time, without consequences.
I suppose if I were to help you financially, I should help everyone financially until I have nothing left?
man... yes.
Oh bullshit. This is about the tit not liking the tat. The reason the PM of Iceland (and now it seems the PM of Britain) wanted to keep things secret wasn't for our liberty in good government, it's because they didn't want their electorates finding out that while these people are making the average person suffer, and suffer mind you,
I don't even think you have to argue whether his policies are good, bad or otherwise. A national leader should present a image of respect and integrity, this is now gone so he should resign for the sake of the country. Better men have fallen for less, he deserves no special treatment.
In Australia, members of parliament are required to maintain details of financial investments in a public register. Private citizens are not so required.
Now I didn't say public servants should have no privacy rights, but they should certainly have fewer.
I did a spell in the Australian Government. Most agencies with any real power will require security clearance for all staff, and mine required disclosing my financial interests, every job I had in the last 10 years, every country I'd visited, what I spend on my groceries each week, even the history of my immediate family etc etc. And if anything changed during my time I was required to report it. So yeah, this already happens.
The problem is not your silly feelings. Its that cops who are not nice have a tendency to leave a trail of corpses in their wake. You cant get a fair trial if you do not survive the unjust arrest.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You havent been paying attention. The means of avoiding taxes is the means of hiding transactions. As a simple matter of course most of the money involved in these leaks are dirty money because slave traders, gun runners, warlords and cartel bosses have more need for this than anybody else. There have aready been some heads of state linked to transactions with such people through this leak but even where that isnt shown these wealthy and powerful elites knew this. In the case of politicians instead of following their oaths to uphold the law and reporting a massive global money laundering scheme - they used it themselves to avoid paying the same taxes they claim from us and allowed their wealthy friends to fo the same. Its a fundamental corruption of the highest order that was used to cover up and profit from extreme atrocties. The global profit from violent crime is higher than the top 50 fortune 500 companies combined. How do you think all that money: a substantial portion of global GDP can be laundered ? Its literally a mathematical impossibility. Unless tge majority of fortune 500 listed profits is tge *same* money. Welcome to the real world of the super rich. The only path to billionairehoid is through a lake of blood.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I can sense that this is something you care about - that's good. I'm not sure I agree with you, but it is a lot better that people care enough to have an opinion instead of just oozing along in whatever direction the flow goes.
In my view, privacy isn't a black and white issue; there are things that should not be private and things that definitely should be, but many - most even - are in the grey zone where it depends on circumstances. Should the tax affairs of an unimportant person like me be made public? Probably not - I don't have things to hide, but how much would it benefit society? On the other hand, should the tax affairs of the most influential man in UK be in the public domain? I can see strong arguments in favour, but I'm not entirely sure. It is certainly necessary that we feel we can trust him, and if doubt has been raised, then it is reasonable that he is willing to answer clearly and fully.
Should the government spy on its citizens? I don't think so - we all do things we would feel embarrassed about if they were known publically, and nobody likes the thought that some unknown civil servant sits somewhere in a grubby office, leering over our private lives; it somehow feels wrong, like being fondled by a stranger in a crowd. But more importantly, I think the substantial amounts of money and effort it would require could be better spent elsewhere.
There is a general culture for employees to not discuss salary for a particular role, and when it is discussed it tends to be a fuzzy number rather than an exact one.
That lack of transparency in pay deals is what allows employers to pay women less for doing the same role, it allows executives to be paid orders of magnitude more than the average employee because an awful lot of people don't realize just how big that gap really is.
I realize I'm talking about pay and you are talking about tax, but they are closely related. Having that sort of information publicly available would help a lot with equality in society.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Cameron is spectacularly good at hypocrisy though. Remember a few months ago, when he wrote to his local council complaining about the reduction in local services... caused by the 'austerity' measure that his government had pushed through to cut local government spending?
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I wonder how many of these tax avoidance schemes were done on a computer. I wonder that if the level of spying that the government wants would have found this without the leak... I wonder if a different standard of spying would be applied to regular people as opposed to the rich and those in government.
I didn't even know there were official flatulence charts to allow you to assign types.
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From what I've read here and there, the PM of Iceland did not officially submit his resignation, but termed it more of a temporary 'break'. Given what a manipulative, deceitful greed pig he is, I wouldn't be shocked if that's what he did (or didn't).
If the average man on the street has no expectation of privacy, then most assuredly neither should any politician.
I've argued (admittedly somewhat rhetorically) that lawmakers that vote for government spying on private citizens should be required to have all of their phone calls, text messages, IM logs, and emails published immediately on public websites and licensed to the public domain. If the argument is, "Your privacy should be sacrificed for the benefit of the public welfare," and "If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear," then it should work both ways.
They'll argue that the can't have their communications be public, that they're conducting sensitive business, that they deserve to have a private life, that leaking their communications could cause embarrassment to themselves and their loved ones, etc. And they're not wrong in those arguments. It's just that all of those arguments should apply to my private communications as well.
That's not really the issue. The issue is that the most powerful man in the UK believes British citizens should not have any meaningful expectation of privacy from the state. If that is the case, then why precisely should he be afforded any privacy at all. If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. If there needs to be a "snooper's charter" that can haul all the electronic data of damned near everyone, then why is it precisely is he feels his family's offshore financial activities, designed specifically to evade British taxes, be secret? In fact, coupled with the general attitude of the British government towards tax avoiders who aren't worth millions, it creates a double-sided hypocrisy; of spying and unfair treatment. As I said, is David Cameron a god, that he should have the rules he insists his government needs for security and financial stability turned off because, well, he's a millionaire and a PM?
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Should Obama be held accountable for everything his father did? Or would it be ok for him to say that it's a private matter and has nothing to do with his functioning as President? Cameron's father is a private citizen unless he is a member of the government, isn't he? Saying it's a private matter doesn't mean that Cameron says there is a connection to him, but he wants it to remain private. He is saying that the connection he has to the individual (his father) is private and is not related to his function in the government (the Prime Minister). As long as no wrong doing is claimed by the PM himself, why shouldn't he continue to insist that his father is his father (even if he is by some chance convicted of some crime such as tax evasion)? His relationship with his father is still a private matter -- not a government matter.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
So do I. When a cop utters the words "If you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide", the public should expect that someone in a position of authority over them like that cop would also be expected to have nothing to hide and would willingly submit to scrutiny in the event that anything untoward would appear to have occurred. Instead it's quite the opposite with cops doing their damndest to keep their affairs from ever seeing the public light.
> Snowden's point is devalued when from the protection of the Russian state he criticizes the UK Prime Minister for his dead father's activities, but says nothing about Putin's close personal connections to several living Russian oligarchs who clearly stole and laundered money from Russia.
I'm not sure you're aware of this, but Russia isn't the US. Everyone and their dog knows Putin and crew are into shady shit, and most people with two brain cells to rub together also know that if Snowden started flinging that accusation around he'd probably meet with some unfortunate accident not long after. Calling out Putin as a crook when everyone already knows he's a crook and getting killed (or tossed out of Russia where he'd certainly be scooped up by a CIA black team and disappear forever) by the crook for the act would be the height of stupidity. Snowden isn't stupid, and he has no intention of tossing his life away for an ungrateful American people on a pointless gesture.
You don't see the flaw in forgetting that most of the fortune 500 companies are multinational ? They may have been founded in the US but they are decidedly not American companies - they haven't been for decades.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
LOL... and my posts got modded down as "Troll." Mods here are a riot with anything involving Snowden.