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Snowden: 'Governments Can Reduce Our Dignity To That Of Tagged Animals' (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden writes a report on The Guardian explaining why leaking information about wrongdoing is a vital act of resistance. "One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint," Snowden writes. "They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: what begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sought to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice." He goes on to explain the importance and significance of leaks, how not all leaks are alike, nor are their makers, and how our connected devices come into play in the post-9/11 period. Snowden writes, "By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they are in our pockets."
What? Government abuses the power it is given to control and oppress its own citizens?
CLEARLY WE NEED TO GIVE THE GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE POWER OVER OUR LIVES! #FeelTheBern
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
By creating a planetary network, mankind on Planet now has the ability to share information at light-speed. But by creating a single such network, each faction has brought themselves closer to discovery as well. At the speed of light, we will catch your information, tag it like an animal in the wild, and release it unharmed-if such should serve our purposes.
Datajack Sinder Roze, Alpha Centauri
No, the traitors are the military personnel, who swore to defend the constitution from all threats foreign and DOMESTIC, and then sit at their desks at the NSA, figuring out better ways to spy on us.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
I think it already had reduced beyond dignity. Just visualize airport lines.
A traitor to whom?
To the government that tries to usurp your freedoms? Most certainly.
To you? Most certainly not.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nothing has changed since Snowden's revelations. Politicians like Diane Feinstein continue to support mass surveillance and The Patriot Act, even making new statements like the government should "censor the Internet" to deal with terrorist communications and recruitment.
As citizens -- as voters -- we're complicit in our government's actions because we continue to reelect the same people.
You mean invade a sovereign country that is hosting him? That will no go over well with the international community, many of whom are starting to tire of America's shit. The only traitors are those who are opposing "We the people", those who are violating their oath to protect America and her citizens from threats both foreign and domestic. He exposed wrong doings when others remained silent. He is a hero and frankly more need to do as he does. Don't like it? Tough. What have you done for humanity?
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
You ask, "How is that different from Google?"
Show me where you take an oath to defend the Constitution, when Google hires you.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I thought it was funny when they put up a statue of him and no one knew who he was.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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Some people that have posted here seem close to realizing the government is less and less the holders of power, and the corporations like google, are more and more in a position of authority.
I would merely caution against whom you anger, for in a post government corpocracy there will likely be no enforceable laws preventing corporations from seeking 'damages' from negative 'feedback'.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Which avenues could Snowden have taken? Keep in mind that Snowden claims that he did raise his concerns with a legal division at the National Security Agency but was rebuffed; this happened years before he leaked to the public. Keep in mind that NSA staffer Thomas Drake tried to use proper channels to report allegations of improper contracting but wound up the target of an investigation.
There is this analysis that shows that Snowden couldn't take any other avenue.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/14/hillary-clinton/clinton-says-nsa-leaker-snowden-failed-use-whistle/
What kind of foreign intelligence efforts could possibly be compromised from the public knowledge that the government indiscriminately spies on the people? That's utterly stupid.
To be fair, he wasn't asked to right any wrongs this time. He was asked to write the forward to a book about drone warfare, which he did, probably for money. This "press release," as you call it, is just a reprint of that essay.
Breakfast served all day!
Sadly I think the quality of discussion on Slashdot regarding the intelligence community and abuse of government power has been steadily declining since the original Snowden revelations two and a half years ago. I'm not sure why that is, but the impression I get is that many of us both inside and outside the North American information technology community are just sitting and watching/waiting for 1984.
It's actually pretty cut and dry. If you are part of the government, and you are intercepting communications without a warrant signed by a judge with probable cause, you are a traitor to the US Constitution. This is coming from a former Army Officer. I don't give a fuck if you think you are protecting people because if we look at the record of the 3 letter agencies, they suck donkey dick when it comes to actually stopping attacks. Fuck, the FBI can't even make a bust on a terrorist they didn't create, and those they create are mostly mentally ill morons that they practically had to whip to get them to make illegal purchases from them.
TFS: [...]people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency; who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint [...] They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths.
1984: And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink."
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
He held a clearance. To do so, it was required that he make several legally-binding promises. Among them, he would have promised (in no particular order):
There is no wiggle room.
He did report through appropriate channels and in the correct order. The reason he had to go through the other appropriate channel was because the first one turned out to be a traitor. Snowden would never have leaked the information if the first channel had followed the law.
And no, there is no wiggle room, the constitution goes above the others. Negotiating away the constitution or suppressing it would make you a traitor.
So you think exposing and revealing state secrets willy-nilly harms no-one and is totally desirable?
The same goes for any other crime. Exposing crimes harms the criminals and is undesirable to them. Systematic and wide-spread violations of the Constitution of the United States by government employees who are paid by the people to uphold the Constitution they have sworn an oath on is highly criminal, and we are talking about organized crime on a large scale here.
So why are you mad at those crimes on the payroll of the American people being exposed? Are you a participant?
If Google was working for the government or a TLA, I don't think they would have enabled strong encryption by default in their mobile OS or made a concerted effort to encrypt all their own web services, and then adjusted search result rankings to favour encrypted sites.
Of course a conspiracy theorist would argue that those changes are all for show and the government has a back door anyway, but given the hassle that the FBI has had recently with Apple (who were listed along side Google in the leaked NSA slides, having "joined" the programme even earlier) it seems unlikely.
Aside from some innuendo ("many believe"), do you have any proof?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC