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Civil Liberties Expert Argues Snowden Was Wrong (usnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes that in 2014, Geoffrey Stone was given access to America's national security apparatus as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Last week Stone, a staunch civil liberties supporter, moderated a live discussion with Edward Snowden from Russia, and this week he actually praised the NSA in a follow-up interview:
"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.
"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.
Good for pavement, I hear.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Obviously not.
""The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."
Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.
#DeleteChrome
"But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy"
That argument fails basic logic.
Because of Snowden we know the NSA routinely misled and outright lied to the democracy it was supposedly acting under the authority of?
The "authority of the democracy" had been thoroughly undermined by the NSA. Snowden brought this fact to light.
The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner. It is not, and never was the NSA people had specific issues with. The problem is the precedent this sets for future activities because sooner or later, someone comes along who isn't so diligent, and isn't so trustworthy, and they use these programs as precedent to justify all manner of nasty crap.
It should also be noted that the NSA is in a unique position to see what the worldwide effects of overreaching surveillance can be. They, of all the organizations on this planet, get a ring side view of just what oppression can come from universal surveillance. In a very real sense, they should have known better than to set the precedent they tried to set. They cannot justify their actions through the claim of combating terrorism because the situation this precedent would have created has the potential to be far worse than any terrorist organization could ever hope to achieve.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Turns out he's on the board of the ACLU among other things related to constitutional study.
I think the key words in his quote are "staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do." He's very carefully avoiding commenting on the ethics and morality of domestic surveillance and focusing instead on the legality of it. One could mistake him for a Chicago economist.
>"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."
"The more money the NSA give me, the more I'm willing to go out and schill for them in public."
You can find at least one person who will say anything out of any major group if you search long enough, it dose not mean anything, especially if you make friends with them or pay them for a while.
Also what democratic authority? These where secret programs, they can't be democratic, and their scope and scale was played down for the politicians who did know too. He revealed what could be construed as treason and this is somehow a betray of democracy. Whatever that guy is smoking keep it away from me!
30 pieces of silver he got to write this should weigh heavily around his neck.
Can't post as myself here right now, the so called 'bad karma' doesn't let me, hate posting as an AC though, need to find my backup account sign on credentials.
He enabled democracy by telling voters what the government was doing. It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.
NSA started the chain of events by breaking the law. They absolutely did not operate "with a high degree of integrity", or they wouldn't have been slapped down by an appeals court.
SJW
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do.
Authorised by whom? I don't doubt the U.S. government authorises them to do everything the U.S. government has asked them to do. However, quite a few of the NSA's activities seem to happen, at least partially, outside the U.S., where the U.S. government has exactly zero jurisdiction, rendering U.S. authorisation completely irrelevant.
"I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose... "
OK, identify one.
I, too, think national security types are like everyone else: (1) well-intentioned, (2) want to advance in their career. I get it, terrorist hysteria pays a lot of bills. But just because you cannot advance in your career by doing nothing, it don't mean nothing is as good as what you're doing.
So, tell me, how exactly does 'the authority of a democracy' exist when dealing with a program so secret that even the bulk of the congress knew relatively little about it, never mind the electorate at large?
It is nice that his conclusion(and he doesn't think that he is being arrogant in assuming his carefully curated little field trip is sufficiently accurate and representative?) was that the NSA was mostly abiding by the rules they made up, rather than going mad with power; but it's simply smarmy nonsense to pretend that anything that clandestine has any meaningful relationship to democracy. On a good day, such an enterprise might be an unaccountable black box more or less attempting to do what they interpret a democratic society's mandate for them to be; but you could say the exact same thing about a hereditary despot who tries to govern more or less according to the interests of the population as he understands them: aligned with the objectives of a democracy only by their own preference, if at all.
It's funny how this guy is so authoritarian that he actually thinks democracy is just another form of it, rather than a movement away from it. It isn't something you subjugate yourself to, it's something you participate in. How someone called an "expert" in liberty doesn't know this is plain scary. He must be so used to gargling ejaculate from authoritarian cock that he doesn't know what a clean mouth tastes like any more.
An elite class has always failed, the Catholics couldn't do it, even when Rome had it all. The Germans couldn't do it, the Jews couldn't do it.
Why not just open everything up, the only possible explanation is to hide things that those leaders have done wrong in the past.
I realize the world is held together by shit, but why is that not something to focus on fixing rather than empowering?
I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned
Almost *all* gov programs are well intentioned, at first. Then it becomes a game of empire building and power. Take for example the TSA. Well intentioned, in practice a total cluster fuck of 4th amendment violations.
They are breaking the letter of the law to enforce what the think is the spirit of the law. But wildly missed both.
Things like 'get a warrant' does not mean get a 'super warrant'. It means yeah you have to do fucking paper work. You have to slog thru it *every* *damn* *time*. It means you need probable cause to get said warrant and not before the fact 'just incase'. The whole constitution is designed to slow the gov down and make the people running stop and think. Is this the right thing to do. Am I really making the world a better place for everyone or just me and my pals?
"Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones"
So what? Has it been used that way? Is there any evidence of this? Did Assange even demonstrate proof of concept of how this could be done?
"I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned..."
That's funny, I didn't realise it was the path to heaven that was paved with good intentions.
The NSA led Stone through a figurative Potemkin village.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
"This is not to say that the NSA should have had all of the authorities it was given. [...] The NSA did its job -- it implemented the authorities it was given."
Just did its job. I've heard something like that before. If I can only remember where...
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
He often says that scientists are not the best people to test charlatans. it is easy to impress an honest man. To detect a skilled liar you need someone like a stage magician... or in this case an ex NSA employee.
It's like religion. All religions are sincere and idealistic. Yet somehow we get child abuse, war and anti-science. You have to be on the inside for a long time to see how insidious and effective it is. I spent over 30 years in a cult-like church. These organisations only grow by coming unconsciously expert at PR.
Who do we believe? The fellow who worked at/for the NSA back when they still have the cover of secrecy of a "pre-Snowden" world? Or the fellow who went for a rid-a-long after the NSA had knew they were being watched? One of them provided a bunch of evidence of NSA behavior. The other tells us they mean well.
The moment we were hearing the words "Unconstitutional but legal" the debate should have ended.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Everyone knows I'm an expert! I'm as qualified as Martin Luther King on these issues, EVERYONE knows who I am!
I'm important god damn it! Especially to the European aristocracy!
There is really no way he can come to this conclusion otherwise. It is a bit like praising the Nazis for mostly restricting themselves to killing Jews. And they were well-intentioned in that as well, if you take into account their entirely perverted world view. (No, I am not arguing they were anything but utterly evil. I am arguing that they thought they were doing good.)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and loss of common sense.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
It may very well have started out with good intentions, byt the ends do not justify the means. The NSA is violating the privacy of billions of people and causing billions of dollars of damage to the victims of its industrial espionage programmes. This needs to stop right now.
He might have usurped the authority of a Republic, but no democracy. In fact, that is exactly the problem with it all: the political establishment determines the course of action rather than The People.
I don't dispute that most NSA employees are likely trying to be careful and exhibit integrity in their actions, but reality is that law enforcement types tend to be a little more heavy-handed, black-and-white types. This leads them to believe that "stopping the terrorists" justifies all their actions. I understand that it is necessary to a degree, but the nature of evolving communications is that their job gets harder over time. Once you remove the element of trust, this communication is destroyed. This will lead to bigger problems over the next 20 years.
He is a fucking KGB spy and should be brought home forcibly and tried for treason.
Anything from money to his continued autonomy (I hesitate to use the word 'freedom') is my guess. Oh, he's on some 'presidential committee'. That makes everything ok. The government checked itself and found nothing wrong. March on comrades!
This kind of soothsaying is all that it takes for some people, even some who are convinced that the government is doing something terribly wrong, to go back to sleep.
The truth about our culture is that we are rewarded for going along with it in at every small turn.
The truth is that every day you go through your routine, just relaxing and sitting down to eat with your family without even mentioning anything that's wrong with the social situation strongly conditions you all to accept it; every aspect of it.
People are unwilling to imagine what can be done with the kind of power that total surveillance could offer an entity. And they are much less willing to voice any such conjecture for fear of their reputation.
Yet the threat is there for every one of us. As 'technology' progresses, what is required of us in our service to society and our lives in general is narrowed down further and lessened. Perhaps our bodies will never be obsolete in service to society, but many of our faculties have been obsoleted since the beginning of civilization. How much of your instinctual behavior can you give up before you reach a critical point and lose your identity? Before everything you are starts to fall apart? This is what every one of us should be reflecting on thoroughly each and every day. I think that most people, if they really pressed this question, would realize there is a very real danger to survival in going on the way things are.
Make no mistake: even the group of leaders with the best intentions would eventually fall prey to the temptation to use this data from total surveillance to 'guide economic efficiency'. The 'easy fixes' to the system that this data can provide is too valuable to resist, regardless of the trade-offs in freedom for all people, especially the politically unaware.
Total surveillance is the real-life version of the One Ring and our society has decided to keep it and use it.
Bringing democracy back into the hands of simple good people ("hobbits") is our only hope now.
If some one says anything like "you must be educated to vote properly" you must treat them viciously, especially if it is yourself! In governance there is no substitute for the good intentions of people who live a simple life and care most about happiness. None at all.
So, who is this "civil liberties advocate" Geoffrey Stone? First, he was the dean of the University of Chicago Law School when Barack Obama worked there. During the Bush Administration, he wrote articles about how NSA surveillance was illegal (2006). In 2011, he was appointed to "The President's Review Group on NSA Surveillance" and magically he wasn't so strident any more. He is to civil liberties what Larry Fucking Summers is to the economy. Just another jobber waiting for their turn at the helm.
He's a DNC liberal who loves civil liberties until he doesn't any more.
Fuck him.
You are welcome on my lawn.
that NSA hacked European politicians, industries, etc.? What kind of democracy would do that? One that is wholly and entirely self-serving, and is effectively considering everyone else to be a potential enemy.
"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do.
that's great and all but just because you can doesn't mean you should. i fail to see how he doesn't understand this.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
We already have one human rights activist, Glenn Greenwald, arguing that Snowden was right. Glenn G. did issue some articles on probably 0.1% of the materials he received.
After that he received and took a job offer that he could not refuse from a private company, that happens to be a major AWS services provider to CIA and other governmental organizations.
So, Glenn Greenwald shut up. But he still argues that Snowden was right.
Where is the truth, then?
I suspect that most people would say that:
1. They weren't authorized.
2. If they were authorized, the authorization was illegal.
A sock puppet?
is that it can be used ANYWHERE when an individual or a minority stands up to the majority. so a german who stood up to the nazis could have been accused of being "arrogant" and "usurping the authority of a democracy". both assertions could in fact be true but it says nothing about whether the act in question was justified.
Of course they were careful to not overstep their bounds, they were working with an outsider. If you believe them, you deserve whatever they're really doing when you're not around.
Geoffrey Stone was shown everything, Like the secrets they had from the beginning of the country. We were doing a GOOD THING giving blankets to the indians, and ISIS contaminated them with SmallPox. We also paid handsomely and fairly to the indians for every square foot of land we peacefully bought from them.
Also Geoffrey Stone was shown how every single slave brought to america was not really a slave but instead an independent contractor that was paid handsomely for their work.
Next week Geoffrey Stone will be shown how only really evil people like mass murderers are in US prisons and we would never put into prison someone for drug related minor crimes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Putin would personally make you his bitch, you sheltered little american.
Of course, whatever he was allowed to see was carefully orchestrated and NOT really what the NSA was up to. We all know this, why not Geoffrey?
Or, was there also a suitcase full of cash involved?
go watch Webster Tarpley's COINTELPRO 2016 Left Forum presentation from today. Homeland Security/military intelligence/law enforcement literally go around harassing people, gang stalking them, role playing, and doing other abuses.
Including misuse surveillance for this type of shit which is related to the Left Forum panel above. http://www.drrobertduncan.com/
I'll be speaking at my own panel Neoliberalism and the "mental health" system-the failure of the left tomorrow.
Come one, come all, and fuck anyone who lies and claims NSA isn't being used to harass, torture, and monitor 'activists' 'whistleblowers' 'lawyers' 'reporters' etc.
NSA whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, William Binney, and Russell Tice back us for very good reasons and they've backed everything I'm saying now. http://www.williambinney.com/ russelltice.com
If this guy isn't just lying and doing psyops himself, he's been conned and has been shown the fake side of NSA and had all the secrets (real operations) kept from him.
go watch Webster Tarpley's COINTELPRO 2016 Left Forum presentation from today. Homeland Security/military intelligence/law enforcement literally go around harassing people, gang stalking them, role playing, and doing other abuses.
Including misuse surveillance for this type of shit which is related to the Left Forum panel above. http://www.drrobertduncan.com/
I'll be speaking at my own panel Neoliberalism and the "mental health" system-the failure of the left tomorrow.
Come one, come all, and fuck anyone who lies and claims NSA isn't being used to harass, torture, and monitor 'activists' 'whistleblowers' 'lawyers' 'reporters' etc.
NSA whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, William Binney, and Russell Tice back us for very good reasons and they've backed everything I'm saying now. http://www.williambinney.com/ http://www.russelltice.com/
If this guy isn't just lying and doing psyops himself, he's been conned and has been shown the fake side of NSA and had all the secrets (real operations) kept from him.
The idea that just because *someone* even someone people think are irreproachable says something absurd like this doesn't mean you should accept it. The NSA is an organization *setup* to violate peoples civil liberties. Regardless of the justification that is what they are suppose to do. The idea that you can be pro-NSA and be a civil liberties person is contradictory in nature. I can't be like "Well, I support privacy and anonymity, but not for pedophiles and terrorists". As soon as you do that your not really a civil liberties person. Your an impostor and hypocrite at best. You don't get to pick and choose who gets privacy and anonymity and who does not. It doesn't work that way.
Captcha: consent
I'm saying exactly the same thing about you, Mr Stone.
But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy.
The problem is that the classified portions of the government lie outside of the reach of democracy. While it may be unavoidable to some degree, government secrecy eliminates the first prerequisite of meaningful democracy: an electorate informed about the actions of their government and the consequences of those actions. For all intents and purposes, the intelligence agencies, the greater portion of the Department of Defense, and increasingly civilian law enforcement lie outside of our democracy. They are authoritarian states-within-the-state that we permit to exist because the majority of us have been convinced, rightly or wrongly and likely some of both, that their existence is necessary to our survival.
But this being the case, it's difficult to consider Snowden's actions illegitimate for the simple reason that those states-within-the-state lack the legitimacy of democracies. What his actions did accomplish was to subject at least some of our authoritarian agencies to democratic review. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether those agencies are symbionts with or parasites upon the larger democratic state.
In the case of this particular story, as many others have noted, a parasite who has the opportunity to give you a carefully-controlled guided tour of its activities is always going to look like a symbiont. Only leaks of the sort that Snowden managed make it possible to tell the difference between the two.
"Expert". What the fuck does that mean? That this asshole knows more than us so we should accept what he says without question? And the article overlooks that if you stick anyone in an group with a certain view dare I say extremist one their own views to fit the group? And anyway, I'm not prepared to trade my civil liberties because some self-declared expert tells me to surrender them because I should trust him because he knows what's best for me.
Stone is correct about NSA. They really are out to stop terrorists, spies, etc. Yeah, there was some issues, which is what snowden FIRST brought up. That is why I have said that he deserved a medal for that.
BUT, the rest that snowden outed should have made him eligible for a bullet between the eyes. He was a true traitor to America, as well as the west.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The NSA guys that were spying on their wives and ex-girlfriends were well intentioned as well. Lol. Wtf does good intentions mean when you are doing wrong? You realize that even the guys that strap bombs to themselves or drop bombs on little kids all have good intentions.
... Have they let his family go?
If you put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat, it eventually JUMPS OUT. This has been tested.
Slippery slope: Yes
Frog boiling: No
Nothing was usurped.
Rather, the 9th and 10th Amendments (rights retained by the people, rights reserved to the people) gave Snowdon the authority to act as he did. His actions were consistent with the highest law in the land, the Bill of Rights.
Given that this point has been discussed at length on this forum, and thus is easily findable by an Internet search, anybody that doesn't understand it has no business working for the government, or having an opinion on this issue.
propaganda: "unduly arrogant"; didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge; "usurp the authority". These are not objective phrases. They are used to reinforce opinions and bolster negative emotional responses.
And just one day later:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-...
Very senior DoD official was finally pushed out of his own job, protecting whistleblowers, because he kept, you know, trying to protect whistleblowers. He's now testifying that multiple senior officials broke the law in at least three ways to abuse and ruin Thomas Drake, the guy whose fate caused Snowden to practice civil disobedience.
If Geoffrey Stone was in front of me now, I'd tell him that I don't give a rip if he is right or not right about the NSA's programs. The issue is that neither he, nor secret courts, nor faceless bureaucrats should be making the decisions about what is acceptable or not. If it's truly a democracy and not a sham puppet of dark forces, then the people should get to decide that. The fact that he had to get deep insider knowledge of the NSA to come to his own private conclusions tells you right there and then that something is very wrong.
First, Stone fails to imagine the possibility that his exposure to the workings of the NSA was a sanitized charade. Once the data is collected and stored, there is no limit to how many groups can make use of the data in its raw form.
Second, Stone fails to grasp the potential for such data. With this data, an incumbent and his cabinet can identify potential troublemakers, sort them by level of influence, and then simply selectively watch them until they break some obscure law, and prosecute it aggressively. Or even accuse them of having child pornography, since we already know that juries, the press and the public lose objectivity the minute the subject is raised, and the burden of proof goes right out the window. It allows the State to form an Enemies List, to know who dislikes what policy and how influential they are on social media or within their circle of activists.
From now on, we'll never be totally sure, when a politician or activist is prosecuted for something, that he was caught through the normal happenstance of law enforcement or whether he was expressly targeted because he opposes an incumbent or moneyed interests.
Any argument for the use of arbitrary power that relies on the integrity of the current users of that power is fundamentally flawed. The secret capacity to spy on large swaths of US citizens inverts the relationship between the people and the government. Every monarchy until the advent of constitutional monarchies was a dictatorship. There are decades when those dictatorships works well and people were relatively happy - good king and court, good country.
The problem with arbitrary power is - bad king or bad court, bad country. And it can happen overnight. The problem with the power of that king being derived from espionage against the many decision-makers who are supposed to be in power is that the king can exercise that power without public knowledge.
How do you know that EVERYONE in the NSA is using that power responsibly? How do you know that someone isn't being secretly exploited? Our intended investments, our contacts, our intimate conversations, our whereabouts.... That's a lot of information and a lot of power.
Every rule has more than one consequence.
Someone was definitely usurping the authority of a democracy, but I am not convinced that it was Snowden. I also believe that most of the people who work for the NSA have good intentions, but intent is irrelevant to the impact. If I unintentionally kill someone, that individual does not suffer a lesser harm as a result. He is still just as dead as if I had meant to kill him.
The NSA would have us believe that the trampling of Constitutional rights was simply incidental, and that may well be true, but it doesn't excuse the act of creating a program in the first place where such incidental harm was apt to occur, the lack of candor regarding the existence and degree of such harm, and the ongoing efforts to rebuild and expand such programs in the face of widespread disapproval.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Snowden was most likely a very controlled action at the top level. He's gotten WAY too much press, and most of it just creates controversy.
There is no controversy. You don't fucking spy on your own god damn citizens just cause, ya know, terrowitz!
We are not all 'suspects'. We are not guilty until proven innocent. End of story. Period.
Snowden was the great 'legitimizer'. Nothing more. A controlled legitimization of always on surveillance.
Did people take to the streets with their guns and over throw their corrupt government?
No...
Most of them said, I have nothing to hide.
and that's EXACTLY what snowden's REAL purpose most likely was...
A silent announcement to the world that...
you DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO HIDE ANYMORE... because everything about you is already known...
end of fucking story... it's 2016... message received...