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Conservative Site Argues Profiting from Snowden 'Treason' May Violate Law (judicialwatch.org)
"A federal appellate court has ruled that government employees, such as Snowden, who signed privacy agreements can't profit from disclosing information without first obtaining agency approval," writes the conservative advocacy site Judicial Watch. Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes their article:
This would make it illegal to profit from his crimes and the Department of Justice should confiscate all money made by the violators. Snowden is no whistleblower. In fact he violated his secrecy agreement, which means he and his conspirators can't materially profit from his fugitive status, violation of law, aiding and abetting of a crime and providing material support to terrorism.
In addition, they argue that both an upcoming movie about Snowden by Oliver Stone and the 2014 documentary Citizenfour "may be in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which forbids providing material support or resources for acts of international terrorism... It's bad enough that people are profiting from Snowden's treason, but adding salt to the wound, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it. "
In addition, they argue that both an upcoming movie about Snowden by Oliver Stone and the 2014 documentary Citizenfour "may be in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which forbids providing material support or resources for acts of international terrorism... It's bad enough that people are profiting from Snowden's treason, but adding salt to the wound, the Obama administration is doing nothing about it. "
This "Conservative site" is also profiting from Snowden with their bullshit click-bait article.
The current US administration has been caught spying in violation of the constutition. The penalty for treason includes death. I'm not sure why snowden gets brought up when I would like to see the current heads of the FBI and homeland security swinging from the end of a noose as justice demands.
You keep using those words, but I don't think you know what they mean.
How much money have they confiscated from the paid military advisors for the movie Blackhawk Down? While others have been accused, and found guilty, for releasing this same information they were allowed to cash a check.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Y'know what else was treason?
Back in the late 1700s, there was this infamous gang of subversives calling themselves the Founding Fathers. Oh, the things they did. It ended with bloody revolution.
Anyone that profits from anything they did back then should have all their assets seized, it is only right. Let's start with all the politicians.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Did Snowden have any choice? He couldn't blow the whistle as it would have been covered up and he would be in a very dark hole. What the government agencies did was illegal, unethical and they abused their powers without oversight. Should Snowden have remained silent?
The founding fathers certainly committed treason. The term doesn't necessarily mean something bad in every circumstance.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
You're going to grumble about how the way used are words nowadays don't fit some ancient definition nobody cares about anymore, while using the word "fascist" that way? That seems a bit odd.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Plenty of congresscritters, state legislators, justices of the court, prosecutors, law enforcement, and military personnel who similiarly deserve a trip to hangtown for taking actions in direct contradiction to their oaths.
Did Snowden take an oath, or did he merely get security clearance and an NDA? Because if it was the latter then he's a hell of a lot less guity of wrongdoing that the aforementioned parties.
Y'know what else was treason?
Back in the late 1700s, there was this infamous gang of subversives calling themselves the Founding Fathers. Oh, the things they did. It ended with bloody revolution.
Anyone that profits from anything they did back then should have all their assets seized, it is only right. Let's start with all the politicians.
When you overthrow the government you too will be able to say what is and isn't treason.
OK, it's a 'conservative site' that presents this argument against Snowden. And here, for a mostly progressive audience, it is presented as a troll to bait the eager readers to reply with venom. It is a common tactic at slashdot to rile up the readers and it's commonly called clickbait.
It's an election season in the US and more than usual we see the polarity between left and right, progressive vs conservative. And here we may be encouraging the divide between Americans to assure there is no middle ground.
I have always thought of slashdot readers as more astute than most. I don't do Fecebook or others because they seem less astute, more strident. I hope to see some balance in this particular discussion. If some consider Snowden to be a criminal, let's examine their motivations and see if there isn't some compelling reason for that belief.
...omphaloskepsis often...
We owed them the money for over 30 years, after all. That's how far from "new" it was.
The thing is, Iran paid us the money for military equipment right before they experienced regime change, and then afterwards we weren't willing to give them the weapons. However much we hate their new government, we do have to give the money back. They paid us real cash money for products that we refused to deliver. They were owed a refund.
But relations were so bad, even though we knew we owed them the money we never got along with them well enough to even be able to hand it over to them. Eventually it happened, because of the nuclear deal.
There is real diplomatic value in paying it, because it has always been an important propaganda point for them. Now the story is, in the end the Americans paid the money they owed, with all the interest, in the amount that was determined by arbitration. Because the American government always pay its debts.
And we had to pay in euros, because Congress. wtf, why does Congress hate dollars?
It's only treason if you lose. If you win, it's revolution.
It is a shame that Snowden isn't old enough to run for president. Otherwise, with our current two despised candidates, he might have been able to win for a third party. I would very much like to see him in the office.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The claim that Snowden's act constitutes 'Terrorism' is an example of the abuse of the term - and of legislation if it does - that needs to be highlighted. From first principles it can be argued that Snowden shouldn't benefit from his actions, or not, but the use of 'terrorism' legislation should be unacceptable...
Trump, as vile as he is, asked for previously stolen information to be turned over. Suggesting that Clinton's private email server is in any way related to "us" as in the United States is revolting. This concept that he asked Russia to hack the United States is partisan bull.
The e-mails have already been stolen, the server has been offline for quite some time. Hillary would be insane to continue using any instance of Microsoft Exchange 2003 on an unpatched Windows 2003. It's impossible for the Russian to 'find' the e-mails by hacking into her offline e-mail server.
As much as I don't like Trump (or Hillary for that matter), I don't see in the quote where he says "please hack my opponent's offline server". He says, you got them, you find them and release them which I would prefer at this time as well (full disclosure). Most likely though, the Russians, not being as stupid or naive as most of our voting populace is going to hold onto them as a bargaining chip for when Hillary becomes president. "So you don't want us to have this nuke, well, I'm sure you don't want us to release the name of this pool boy".
Everyone should be asking both Hillary and the Russians for full disclosure (what was in the e-mails and what do you actually have respectively) because it IS going to come back and bite the US, perhaps even if she doesn't get elected.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a contractor to the NSA, at the time he leaked classified documents. Since he was NOT a government employee, he is not covered by the court decision mentioned in the article. Of course, Judicial Watch knows that.
And if Snowden HAD been a government employee, he would have been covered by the Federal Whistleblower law and would not be at risk of prosecution for the leaks, since he proved that the US government was breaking the law.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Did the Americans overthrow the King? Did they at least overthrow Parliament? Did they even get within 3000 miles of the King and Parliament? Or did a bunch of colonial governments in N. America decide to secede?
Secession is not a successful revolution.
Next people will be claiming that it is perfectly fine for the American Congress to pass laws limiting speech even though the 1st amendment to the American Constitution stops them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Pedantic distinction without a difference. The government of the colonies was British - a government that was overthrown. In the colonies.
If I were Snowden I'd be looking at every possible media outlet to get the word out about the disgusting things I've learned. Some of those media outlets require money/funding, and inevitably will return some kind of profit (ticket sales for movies for example). But them trying to play that card on Snowden in the first place is just proof that they need to examine his motives and his position as someone who wants to stop the breaking of laws and constitutional foundations that his country was founded on by its own government. Relating him, even remotely, to "terrorism" is appalling and insulting to his integrity and willingness to essentially throw his life away for the sake of informing people that their government isn't playing by its own rules.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Sir John Harington: A witty and erudite figure at the court of Elizabeth I, John Harington is now remembered mainly for two things. One is his cynical epigram on treason: ‘Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.’ The other is his invention of the flush water closet. ... His flush toilet did not catch on and serious improvement of lavatories in England had to wait for the 18th century and the coming of the S-bend.
(I'd actually prepared this one earlier - I'd intended to post the epigram as a reply to an earlier post - I knew the epigram but had to look up who'd said it.)
The DOJ ought to arrest the conservative advocacy site Judicial Watch for treason. Not treason against the nation but treason against their own conservative values.
Time was an authentic 'conservative' understood the need for privacy, individual liberty, and freedom. The government was potentially dangerous and had to be kept limited. Also, there's this little known and widely abused document called the Constitution that conservatives used to like a lot. Time was.
Snowden is more 'conservative' by these measures than Judicial Watch. Or maybe Judicial Watch just got a little too excited by the election season, saw a chance to take a shot at Obama, and went off their meds. In this explanation Snowden is just the bait.
Definitely, absolutely, without a doubt, and without having to look it up: multiple currencies, specifically not including the dollar.
And if in fact they were allowed to include dollars, it would have been all dollars.
Where I said something about Congress, that was the hint that there was something substantial to the comment. A reason for there not be dollars. You got hung up on a pedanticism; that it was a basket of multiple currencies used to pay the debt. True. But actually, it was given in multiple shipments, and the shipment being discussed in the news was mostly euros, and indeed most of the total was euros.
He did blow the whistle internally - his concerns were completely ignored, and he was instructed to do his job and stay out of things not his concern. That's why he went public.
Judicial Watch is... well, you could accurately call them a conservative website, but they reflect only the worst aspects of what conservative means. They also outright lie. A lot. They are responsible for starting and occasionally perpetuating a rumor that ISIS has a training camp in northern Mexico and the Obama administration is covering it up - according to unnamed 'sources,' of course. ( http://www.judicialwatch.org/b... )
Yes, it was treason and sedition and particularly pissed off the King, especially as it was triggered by the King proclaiming that all his subjects were equal (Royal Proclamation of 1763), the last thing that the American colonists wanted to admit as obviously Papists, Savages and Niggers weren't equal.
As for the Second, it is ignored or limited by everyone as it simply says that the People have the right to bear arms. Nothing about only some people having the right like the Bill of Rights of 1689 which only gave Protestants the right to bear arms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Actually, the legitimate government of Iran (the one headed by the Shah) paid the money.
LOL. TFTFY.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The signatories of that document 'turned themselves in' by publicly announcing their intentions to 'defy (British) authority'
That's not turning themselves in. If they turned themselves in, they'd have handed themselves over to the crown. Snowden, like them, associated his real name with his actions. Snowden, like them, did not hand themselves over to the authorities to be arested.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What makes you so convinced it's not true? Do you see any reason why secret courts with secret hearings should be considered legitimate? Do you find indefinite imprisonment without trial to meet Constitutional muster? Is there reason to believe it's legitimate for law enforcement and prosecutors to lie in court? How about the director of the NSA perjuring himself before Congress?