House Committee: Edward Snowden's Leaks Did 'Tremendous Damage' (nbcnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The U.S. House intelligence committee on Thursday unanimously approved a blistering report on the activities of Edward Snowden, saying his disclosures of top-secret documents and programs did "tremendous damage" to national security. "The public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions," said the report by staff members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrary to Snowden's statements that he intended to reveal programs that intruded on the privacy of Americans, the House report concluded that the vast majority of the 1.5 million documents he stole "have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests. They instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America's adversaries." The report said Snowden did not, as he claimed, try to express his concerns about potentially illegal intelligence gathering in a way that would qualify him as a whistleblower. The report was disputed by Snowden's ACLU-provided attorney. "This is a dishonest report that attempts to discredit a genuine American hero," said Wizner. "But after years of 'investigation,' the committee still can't point to any remotely credible evidence that Snowden's disclosures caused harm. The truth is that Edward Snowden and the journalists with whom he worked did the job that the House Intelligence Committee was supposed to do: bring meaningful oversight to the U.S. Intelligence community. They did so responsibly and carefully, and their efforts have led to historic reforms."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that ass fucks the government is right as rain for me.

the government doesn't hesitate to ass fuck you every chance it gets.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Try living somewhere with no government and report back to us. That is if you get out alive.

Re:Good

[wierd_w]

no such place exists on earth. naturally, i need air, food, and water to live, so space is not an option, even if i could get up there,

how about instead of being part of the problem, you become part of the solution?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Try living somewhere free and tell me you want to go back to the "freedom" in the USA.

Re:Good

[Gadget_Guy]

Try living somewhere with no government and report back to us. That is if you get out alive.

So you think the only alternative to a government that tramples over the rights of the citizens is no government at all? Did it not even occur to you that it might be nice to have a law-abiding, privacy-respecting government?

Just because "it could be worse" does not give the government permission to do whatever they want.

Re:Good

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's the same false "choice" being suggested in Europe: we are offered a choice between *this* EU, with lack of democratic oversight, officials that are appointed rather than elected, and drunken would-be despots like Juncker in charge... or no EU, which means war (which was the thread made during several EU related referenda: vote against, and "the lights will go out")

This is the same thing: suggesting that a government with sweeping powers to spy on and control its citizens is the only alternative to anarchy and chaos, and that Snowden's actions threatened the stability brought about by the Panopticon.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Why be part of the solution when you can be part of the precipitate?

Re:Good

[jopsen]

EU is older than 2001... so you need explain.

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[NuclearCat]

Lebanon, government close to non-exist(check news). Living here as a foreigner, and enjoying it. Yes it has some it's own problem, even while in middle of all problems - it's brilliant country.

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[silentcoder]

Mogadishu has not government to speak off. There's a group who claim to be the government but since they have no more power than any of the other corporations^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwarlords around this claim is fairly meaningless. There's no official taxation or law enforcement to speak off anyway.
What there is, is everything the world has always had before there was taxes and police and will always have where those are absent - warlords, slavers and absolute-rule-by-the-richest - the only thing making things slightly bearable to the average person being the amount of time the rich spend fighting each other - which would be even more useful if the bullet-fodder in their wars were not you.

That said there is actually an entire continent with no government at all - not even one that only exists on paper. It's called Antarctica. Not a lot of resources, terrible farming conditions... oh and there's that international treaty to ban anybody from claiming ownership of it or try to rule it but if you can get there, it's isolated enough nobody's going to bother to come take you away by force. At least if you stay far from the few research stations in the are. You'll pretty much have to hunt penguins and seals for food and how you're going to avoid scurvy I have no idea.

So year, places without government do exist. If you can't handle them - then what makes you think everybody^H^H^H^H^H^Hanybody else wants that ?

Re:Good

[silentcoder]

Yet another American who doesn't know the difference between the EU, EC and Eurozone.

He seems to think the EU came to be when the Eurozone was instituted with a common currency.

So to help him out:
The EU as an idea was born in 1948 after World War 2 and the long, slow diplomatic process of establishing it began then.
The precursor of the EU were the European Coal and Steel Community which was form in 1951.
In 1957 the Treaty of Rome was signed which in 1958 became the European Economic Community, which consisted of the 6 original members including Germany and France.
In 1965 the 3 market communities that made up the EEC was merged together to use a single set of institutions (courts and such) and this became known as the European Communities.
By 1973 this had enlarged significantly and in 1979 the first direct elections to the European Parliament happened.
The EU effectively reached it's current form in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union when East-Germany and other East-block nations started joining.

But in effect the EU dates back to 1948. And you may have noticed the absence of any major European landwars after world war 2 - the EU was created to avoid that, and in that regard at least, it has succeeded.

It's also weird that me, an African, seem to understand EU structures better than the parent poster - in fact the EU is one of the most democratic systems on earth. The European Parliament members are elected by voters in member nations. The EU holds referendums on any major issues allowing voters to override their representatives (in this regard it's more democratic than America where referendums are extremely rare events). Essentially the EU is much like the US Federal government with memberstate governments no unlike US state governments - but significantly more powerful and with a very direct say in EU governance, which state governments in the US don't get.
The parent poster, like so many others, confuses the EC for the EU and calls the EU undemocratic, which it decidedly is not. The EC is not democratic, but the EC is also not a government - it's an economic management commission that reports to the parliament. It's powers are strictly limited to purely economic matters: the currency, trade regulations and common standards.
In effect, the EC's closest US counterpart would be the Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury, neither of which is democratic THERE either - because it makes no sense for such institutions to be democratic. They need appointed experts who know what they are doing, not people good at winning elections and importantly they must be run by people who don't worry about winning re-election because such institutions *have* to be able to make unpopular choices at times.

Currently the EC is pushing austerity measures very hard - all the economics say this is a terrible idea but the current set of commissioners are sold on it. There is huge public unhappiness about this. But they are able to do this, which they believe is required to keep the economy functioning, despite the opposition. Now of course, the problem with experts being able to do unpopular things is that sometimes they do things which are unpopular because they are wrong. But that's still better than doing what's popular because it's popular - a great way to destroy an economy rapidly. It's not ideal, but it's also the best system we have for these things and until somebody invents something better - every other idea is even worse.

So no, calling the EU undemocratic is fundamentally ignorant. Confusing the EC with it's extremely limited powers undemocratic would be true - but meaningless.

Re: Good

[silentcoder]

Erm there was no treason. And you realize that if you choose to charge her anyway - then you also have to charge Colin Powel, who did exactly the same thing with HIS private mail server ?
Though I'd say charging him for his warcrimes should probably be a higher priority.

Re:Good

[Z80a]

The government is an service elected by the population to perform tasks that neither the population nor corporations can't do well or in a fair way, and is indeed a necessary piece of the system.

But if the population disagrees with the actions of the goverment, they should have the right to change it, radically and even rewrite the system if needed as easy as for example you should be able to fire your gardener for spying on you and selling your data to google.

Re:Good

[umghhh]

Two things.:
Assuming that GP was born in US means that asking them to live because they think their gov is dishonest and not interested in their well being is at least as dishonest as the US gov is.
The other thing is this. Complaining about own government does not mean that all government is bad and has to be abandoned. I do not read that in GP post either. So how the fuck did you arrive on that conclusion is beyond me. MOst of governments do evil things either because of incompetence or negligence or because of bd will. It seems to me that the amount of bad will in US gov. is quite overwhelming. More they say they support democracy, more I get afraid this shit will hurt me in some way.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The European Parliament members are elected by voters in member nations. The EU holds referendums on any major issues allowing voters to override their representatives (in this regard it's more democratic than America where referendums are extremely rare events).

Yes, we vote for members of parliament, BUT that parliament has essentially zero power.

The power at the european level is with
1) the european central bank
2) the european commision
3) the european council
4) the european court
(in that order)

The makeup of all european institutions with actual power has nothing at all to do with elections
The actions of all 3 have effectively no democratic oversight, the ordinary people of europe can't force any of them to do anything.

Yes, it's true that european parliament can dismiss the commision wholesale, It has in fact done so several times, but....
The effect of that has been zero because it's not parliament that gets to appoint new commision members, and the actual powers that be just apoint a new commision with the same goals, attitudes, and course of action as the last one.
In short that 'power' is a paper tiger that allows a bit of drama but has no real effect.

As to the referendums... everytime they don't agree with what the elites want...
they get ignored (because non-binding) or are stopped before they're held
e.g. most of the referendums for the planned 'european constitution' were canceled after the first two came back with a 'no', and they then accepted the same bad treaty under another name anyway.

There's possibly 1 exception, namely the brexit-vote. I say possibly because the jury's still out, they haven't left, and they keep pushing back the date of when they'll invoke article 50.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if it turns out that the invoking of article 50 gets pushed back till after the next British elections, and the newly elected British government then goes "nope, we're not going to invoke article 50, we're staying"

Re:Good

[F.Ultra]

Well you have to understand that the EU is blamed for all possible strange things by the European politicians so that might be why you as an outsider have a better view of EU than most of the people in it. I.e when national politicians wants to push some legislation that there is public outcry for they always say that they "have to do it due to EU" and for some reason people swallow this most of the time.

Just look at the Brexit situation, there the anti EU people somehow managed to convince Brittons that the a country the political and economical size of UK would have no say in any EU decisions and they all lived like slaves under Germany when the real truth is that there was probably not a single EU decision ever made that wasn't OK:ed by the UK government. And then there exists these millions of EU myths that even otherwise sane news media have published as being true, for example the ones brought up on the BBC QI show: http://qi.com/infocloud/the-eu

Re:Good

[Alomex]

officials that are appointed rather than elected

Is this any different than the current members of cabinet who are appointed by the PM?

Why such distaste with the appointed officers of the EU and yet deafening silence about the appointed members of the House of Lords?

I think you've been manipulated into focusing on a minor flaw of the EU, similar to ones you have at home, and believing it is somehow unacceptable and worth the unraveling of the union.

Would you agree with Scotland separating merely on the basis that the cabinet is not elected?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately I never obtained a Slashdot ID, so I have to post as an AC, but this post is full of factual inaccuracies and outright errors.
Let's start:

Yet another American who doesn't know the difference between the EU, EC and Eurozone.

He seems to think the EU came to be when the Eurozone was instituted with a common currency.

So to help him out:

Well, you could start by toning down the arrogant attitude: it isn't an American's job to understand the EU or the Euro zone and you yourself haven't really understood it either.

The EU as an idea was born in 1948 after World War 2 and the long, slow diplomatic process of establishing it began then.
The precursor of the EU were the European Coal and Steel Community which was form in 1951.
In 1957 the Treaty of Rome was signed which in 1958 became the European Economic Community, which consisted of the 6 original members including Germany and France.
In 1965 the 3 market communities that made up the EEC was merged together to use a single set of institutions (courts and such) and this became known as the European Communities.
By 1973 this had enlarged significantly and in 1979 the first direct elections to the European Parliament happened.
The EU effectively reached it's current form in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union when East-Germany and other East-block nations started joining.

But in effect the EU dates back to 1948.

The EU (European Union) took shape after the treaty of Maastricht in 1992. Before that, there was the EEC, which was the European Economic Community, a rather different, substantially less political beast. Note the bold face: the EEC was a primarily economic idea.

And you may have noticed the absence of any major European landwars after world war 2 - the EU was created to avoid that, and in that regard at least, it has succeeded.

Wrong. The EU was not created to end European wars. That was NATO's job; that's why NATO was created. The reason why we haven't had a major war in Europe is due in major part to American military presence to counter Soviet aggression after World War II and of course to the creation of NATO.
The EEC was a side-note here: it made a major war between European countries less likely by promoting the integration of their economies and raising the bar to wanting to start a war. The EEC did not prevent any war in Europe.

It's also weird that me, an African, seem to understand EU structures better than the parent poster - in fact the EU is one of the most democratic systems on earth.

While the EU is democratic, it does have very significant democratic deficits. Calling it 'one of the most democratic' systems is quite a stretch.

The European Parliament members are elected by voters in member nations.

Correct, but the European Parliament has very little actual powers. The real power is wielded by the European Commission, which is appointed. This is what bothers so many people.

The EU holds referendums on any major issues allowing voters to override their representatives (in this regard it's more democratic than America where referendums are extremely rare events).

The EU does no such thing. National governments can call referendums, the EU cannot.

Essentially the EU is much like the US Federal government with memberstate governments no unlike US state governments - but significantly more powerful and with a very direct say in EU governance, which state governments in the US don't get.
The parent poster, like so many others, confuses the EC for the EU and calls the EU undemocratic, which it decidedly is not. The EC is not democratic, but the EC is also not a government - it's an economic management commission that reports to the parliament. It's powers are strictly limited to purely economic matters

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>It's also weird that me, an African, seem to understand EU structures better than the parent poster

Have you ever SEEN the American K-12 education system? It increasingly fails to teach Americans about their OWN government, to expect its students to understand other governments beyond what they've seen on Faux News (ie: We're number 1 and the rest all suck) is a bridge too far. Weird would have been if he'd known what you were talking about.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That might be the theory, but things don't always work that way in practice.

The reality is that most of the real power still lies in the EU infrastructure outside the Parliament. When you see news about a big business being chased for a fortune in taxes or investigated for their behaviour, it's not an MEP announcing it. When yet more expansion of copyright is being introduced or VAT changes that will hurt small businesses across the EU are being made, it's not an MEP driving through these measures. Negotiations on major trade deals are carried out behind closed doors, and even MEPs have had extreme restrictions put on them so they can't scrutinize the process effectively. It wasn't an MEP giving a big speech this week calling for a European military force. It isn't MEPs who are going to be negotiating on the terms of any post-Brexit deal.

I'm not sure which EC you meant in the latter parts of your post, but if it was the Commission then the closest counterpart in the US would be the executive branch of the federal government. The unelected Commission is somewhat like having the President of the United States chosen by part of Congress using some secretive process no-one really understands, having each state's government nominate one person with no democratic accountability to become a cabinet secretary, and then giving Congress an option to object but only by blocking the entire group and starting over.

Re:Good

[vel-ex-tech]

It's also weird that me, an African, seem to understand EU structures better than the parent poster

That's the power of the alt-right. They are quite literally insane. Yesterday, we had somebody with a UID disputing that smoking tobacco causes cancer. They believe the idea that cannabis has medicinal uses is nothing more than political correctness. I wouldn't be surprised to read that the idea that the Earth is older than 6,000 years is now just politically correct nonsense as well.

I haven't been able to nail down the year that they want to return us to, but I'd hazard a guess of somewhere around 1950, possibly right before that 1951 date.

This is the end of Western civilization. When this many people decide to reject any ideas that have happened since 1950 as "political correctness," it's the end. It's the insatiable desire to repeal any and all progress, and while 1950 may be a good estimate of where they're going now, they won't be happy until slavery is instituted again and women don't serve on juries or own property. They won't get that far by the time it all collapses, but they are the unaware architects of the coming shitstorm, culminating in nuclear war some time around 2025, followed by the year from hell.

Read this essay about a phenomenon the author calls thar. It's beyond authoritarianism, beyond machismo, beyond honor, beyond all sense. It's what's wrong with Middle Eastern cultures and why migrants are failing--refusing--to integrate in Europe.

Abandon all hope that this will turn around. There's no need to fear a Muslim invasion. This mental illness is contagious and spreading, and the alt-right will be happy creating a thar society to call their very own or at least rabidly rioting and killing to try to make it happen. Muslim? Christian? Does it matter whose Sharia law?

It's quite a lot like watching a zombie apocalypse start. First it's a few people here and there. "Boy, that AC has some strange views," one thinks to oneself. "Wow, that guy at the gas station was a nutter! Why does he obsess about the government tracking sexual orientation instead of talking about the whole panopticon?" But it spreads and spreads. British people harassing and assaulting other UK citizens because Brexit passed? They seriously thought that Brexit was going to cause Muslims and blacks with UK citizenship to get rounded up and deported the next day??? People who had rational opinions begin to turn. Once somebody has been infected with the T virus and turned, they are no longer capable of rational thought, and I mean that in a very clinical sense. Then one day, one realizes that this is the new normal. One is surrounded by bloodthirsty intellectual zombies. Either kill zombies or be killed.

Re: Good

[dwillden]

No he did not do the exact same thing with his server. He did not put classified information onto his private email, which was a commercial service and was allowed at the time he was Sec State. A couple emails were determined to contain information that was classified after they were sent but no data that was classified at the time he sent it was sent over his private email service.

In contrast 8 communication chains contained information that was classified as TOP SECRET at the time she sent the emails, over 100 contained SECRET information considered such at the time the emails were sent.

You are right that her crimes do not amount to Treason, but they are none the less felonies. Felonies that, contrary to Dir Comey's statement, do not require intent. If entrusted with classified information you are required by law to know when and how to protect it and mishandling is a felony, failure to protect is another felony. Neither of those require intent. However transferring TOPSECRET info from the physically separate network and computer systems to her unclassified system cannot in anyway be a negligent act. You don't do that. Air-gapping is always an intentional act which carries a greater penalty than the mishandling and failure to protect crimes. She needs to be indicted, not running for President.

Re:Good

[eric_harris_76]

The obvious response to this stupid-ass comment is to make the stupid-ass suggestion that you go to North Korea, if you love government so much.

A better one would be to ignore stupid-ass comments from Anonymous Cowards. But I don't always do what's best.

Re:Good

[orgelspieler]

In all fairness, there are a lot of Europeans who get confused by these things, too.

Re: Good

[david_thornley]

: Are you sure Powell never had any classified information on his email? I'd think he'd have done a better job of keeping it off than Clinton did, but if he used his email to communicate with diplomats from other countries there was likely secret information on it from time to time. At least some diplomatic communications are classified automatically, and so any Secretary of State using email not secured for classified information (like Clinton and Powell) would be likely to have Secret and Top Secret information on the wrong systems.

I never did get a good feel for what classified information was on Clinton's server, but there are ways for it to be there without intent on her part. They could have been sent to her, or they could have been "born classified" on her server.

There is no precedent for felony prosecution for anyone who did what she did. That, as a matter of practice, seems reserved for those who deliberately put classified information where it shouldn't be. The worst I've seen for someone who was negligent was a misdemeanor charge that was dropped. I'm not going to opine on the law here, but if she were criminally prosecuted it would have been special treatment.

Re:Good

[hyades1]

One of the best comments I've read here in years.

Re:Good

[silentcoder]

Everything you just said is an example of a pure economic policy decisions which fall under the umbrella of 'should be done by appointed experts who don't have to fear doing unpopular things'. This is the kind of stuff where democracy would be a terrible idea. No personally I am not a fan of what their policy's are, but the whole idea is to be able to have policies that are unpopular because *every* economic policy is unpopular with some people. Interestingly the left hates the EU's economic policies for not being liberal enough - while the right hates them for not being conservative enough. The left complains about insufficient regulation, the right about too much... so maybe they are actually finding good middle ground ... well except for the absolutely insane compulsion to keep trying austerity despite the fact that in all of history it has never ever achieved anything except to make whatever economic problems were used as an excuse to implement it get much worse. The only way out of a recession is to spend - a lot. Austerity turns a recession into a depression, and will keep that depression going indefinitely unless government starts to spend. Just as it did when the great depression hit - it didn't end until world war 2 finally forced the US government to actually start spending and stop with the austerity bullshit. No. Spending in a recession cannot cause hyperinflation. It can't even cause inflation. It's mathematically impossible for increasing the money supply during a recession to cause inflation because by definition a recession is a shortage of liquidity - it happens because there's too little money in the system. No the Weimar republic does not prove others. No neither does Zimbabwe and neither does Nero's Rome. Those are always the examples cited because they are the only ones available and it conveniently ignores what *else* was going on - Rome had been sacked twice in 20 years and then had a plague, the Weimar republic had just lost the second biggest war of all time and Zimbabwe had a complete social collapse.
In no example, ever, did printing money during a recession cause hyperinflation unless there was another - unrelated - example first which destroyed the country's
entire productive capacity. Printing money when nothing is being produced to buy with it - that will cause hyperinflation, printing money in a country that *could* produce if only there was somebody who could buy - that does not cause inflation - all it does is prevent the hyperdeflation that turns recessions into depressions.

Sorry, I digressed. Anyway there is one exception to the list you gave, the speech about an EU military. That would not fall under economic policy, but on the other hand the person who made that speech has no power to act on it. All he did was share an opinion - only the parliament could actually create a European military if they believed it was a good idea.
In the near future - it may actually become a good idea. See Trump has said some things that have made NATO allies very nervous and suggested that NATO would be hugely weakened and deprived of most of it's US support if he were to be elected. In such a scenario, the defence pact that Europe has relied on to keep itself safe may very well no longer be reliable. Then the EU may indeed want a European Military supported by their various national military forces to take the place of NATO without the US.

Now that's an unlikely scenario, Trump almost certainly can't win the election anymore and even if he did it's highly unlikely he could actually get such a policy past congress - but it's no longer an unthinkable one. So thinking about it is not a bad thing and there's no reason you can't think about it, and give speeches about your thoughts, just because you're not part of the government that would have to make the decision. The members of the commision has just as much right to try and convince parliament of their views as you do, they are citizens as well after all.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

At some point almost all politics is about economics, even (unfortunately) military actions. But taking your argument to its logical conclusion, that means we should all be ruled by (ideally benevolent) dictators who are economics experts.

There are plenty of flaws in that theory, but the most obvious one is that the people running the show in Europe evidently aren't experts at all. They failed for years to anticipate the worst financial crisis in a generation as it built all around them. Their response when the inevitable finally happened was catastrophically bad, and literally led to rioting in the streets and bringing down governments. To this day, they still haven't figured it out, and nearly a decade after the crash there is still a sword hanging over the head of European economics.

You can argue that that was a one-off situation in extraordinary circumstances, though again, given that it's nearly a decade later and the mess still hasn't been cleaned up, those circumstances are looking a lot like business as usual now. But even then, numerous other economic decisions have been made at EU level that are simply bad policy. Those VAT changes I mentioned were supposed to make things more difficult for large multinationals who were playing games to take advantage of lower rates in some member states, but in reality they shafted almost every small business within the affected markets that trades internationally, and they did so not least because by their own admission many of those supposed experts you support so strongly didn't even realise that many thousands of small businesses like that existed.

When your major policies and infrastructure are leading to rioting in the streets, and your minor policies about harmonisation actually mean that small businesses have to be experts in 28 member states' tax systems instead of just one, I think you've pretty much lost any credible claim to being sufficiently expert to run the show unchallenged. The difference between us seems to be that you're happy to trust the fools running the show to continue with their foolishness anyway even though it's unpopular (and with good reason), while I see no moral or practical reason that sort of dictatorship should be supported or condoned.

In short, as has been said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others we've tried. Appointing experts instead requires that the experts actually be experts and the powers responsible for appointing them actually know that, and I'm not sure that has ever happened consistently in any society in human history.

Re: Good

[hackwrench]

Somalia? I hear there's no government there.

Re: Good

[hackwrench]

Some other post made the same argument you did about there needing to be people who are free to make unpopular decisions, but this time it clicked why this is a bad idea. When you have a group who is free to make popular decisions, the system is freed from the obligation of educating people about the reality they have to live with.

Re: Good

[hackwrench]

For me what is more important than the classification of any of their emails is that both of them evaded their communications being entered into the public record subject to declassification.

Re:Good

[silentcoder]

There is a point where democracy comes into play - but it's not in directly appointing the people charged with overseeing the economy - it's in holding to account the government that does appoint them. If the experts are bad - then punish the politicians until they fire them and replace them.

Exactly that happened in South Africa in December. The president fired the minister of finance (ministers are appointed by the president - not elected and are meant to be experts in their portfolio) abruptly and replaced her with another, completely unknown person. He didn't really like the former minister of finance because she was actually doing her job well and not letting him loot the treasury at will so he was trying to replace her with one who will not stand in the way of his corruption.

The population was outraged, there were protests, the rand fell to it's lowest level ever as the markets panicked and the stock market took a massive dip. Within a week he was forced to fire his new minister of finance. The previous one, however, had already found other work and wouldn't take the job. So he was forced to reappoint the one before her - who is well respected and did a good job while he was there the first time.

That's where the democracy is. In holding the politicians to account. It is a GOOD thing that the minister of finance is NOT elected, it means he can do things that the party doesn't like, that are not the most popular policies (those are not always the best ones), and importantly - things the president doesn't like. Sure the president can fire him - but if he does so willy nilly he has to answer to the voters, who have shown that they can and will force him to appoint competent people.

The stunt cost him dearly. In August we held local government elections and it was the worst election the ruling party has had since the advent of full democracy in 1994. Their over-all vote level fell to 53% - it's never been below 60% in any election before - and the lost governorship of the most important metros in the country. They lost Cape Town back in 2006 and the province in 2009. But until now there was only one other town in the country they didn't rule at the mayoral level. But now they also lost Nelson Mandela Bay metro (which must sting) - the most important industrial harbour, they lost Johannesburg (the economic heartland of the country - that's like the ruling party in England losing London), they lost Pretoria - the capital (meaning that parliament now sits with a majority party in a city where they don't govern) and they lost Ekurhuleni (where the biggest manufacturing industries are). Basically - it was a massive blow, and they look set to be seriously hurt in the next national elections. I don't think they'll lose power yet, but they will have a LOT less of it.

When the wrong people are appointed to expert positions - that's not undemocratic because the people doing the appointing are still accountable to the voters, it's them you have to punish.

If Europe's voters are not outraged enough that the politicians who appoint the commission are worried about the risks of not replacing them with more competent people - then they can't be *that* incompetent.

Re: Good

[silentcoder]

There is an upper limit to the average level of education a society can have. No society is devoid of stupid people - and they bring the average down. You can't deny them the vote - we've tried that in various ways for centuries, it was always a disaster. So THAT is the reality we have to live with. Sometimes the best decisions will simply not be popular - and it could take years before people experience why they were the best decisions.

It's the same reason the US doesn't elect the judges on the supreme court - you can't have the people who are charged with keeping government in check being subjected to the same incentives as government. You can't have the people who are charged with defending everybody's rights be subject to a vote - that automatically leads to them only protecting majority rights - because that wins elections.

Democracy without checks and balances is just a dictatorship of the majority. That's the first problem. The second problem is that an election is a terrible way to ascertain ability. It's a great way to choose who gets to govern - because government works best when it's held in check by the consent of the governed, but it's a terrible way to appoint people to technical jobs. That's why nowhere on earth is that how it works. People appoint the government - but the actual work gets done by people who are interviewed and selected based on CV's.
Hell even in the parts of the US that's not supposed to work that way it's how it actually works. The director of a federal agency is generally little more than a figurehead. They are political appointments, and they pretty much only do P.R. the job of actually managing a federal agency is done by the deputy directory - who is not appointed politically, typically got there by working his way up from the bottom, has years or decades of experience in that agency and actually knows how the place works.
The director of an agency like the CIA or the Treasury works for 8 years at most, every president replaces all of them with his own picks. You simply CANNOT have them actually be in charge. They may only be there 4 years - they come in with no idea how anything works - it would take a year just to get them trained up enough to understand the operations - then 3 years with a leader with no experience. The two term presidents may have some guys who are marginally competent in their 8th year and just as they get good at the job they get fired.
On paper, they are in charge - in reality, just about the extent of their "in chargeness" is that they are the ones who get blamed for scandals so they have an incentive to tell the deputy to make sure there aren't any.

Frankly - if more *companies* were still run by people who had field experience doing what the company does - the business world would be a much better place. If only boards of directors had figured out what the government has - the CEO is a figurehead, the department heads who were *promoted* (not hired from another company) are the only ones who understand the business well enough to actually make good decisions.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If Europe's voters are not outraged enough that the politicians who appoint the commission are worried about the risks of not replacing them with more competent people - then they can't be *that* incompetent.

I'm sure that was a lovely explanation of how you'd like things to work, but unfortunately it's totally divorced from reality. There is no effective mechanism through which the people can control or remove a European Commissioner who is incompetent, directly or indirectly. The people are so far removed from the individual Commissioners, there are so many levels of appointed or indirectly elected power in between, that there is no meaningful democratic mandate or oversight at all.

Representative democracy has its flaws at the best of times (so does pure democracy, or any other form of government I know) but what we have in the EU today is very far from representative democracy in any meaningful sense. It might as well be a dictatorship for all the difference that would make to accountability or control by the people the EU administration is supposed to represent.

Re:Good

[silentcoder]

>I'm sure that was a lovely explanation of how you'd like things to work, but unfortunately it's totally divorced from reality

Except that I just showed you a real life example, i.e. reality - from just months ago, proving what I'm saying.

>There is no effective mechanism through which the people can control or remove a European Commissioner who is incompetent, directly or indirectly.
There is no way whatsoever for the people of South Africa to remove or control the minister of finance - yet they were able to get one removed. Vote for different politicians - who will appoint different commisioners.

>The people are so far removed from the individual Commissioners, there are so many levels of appointed or indirectly elected power in between, that there is no meaningful democratic mandate or oversight at all.
Ultimately, the commision may decide economic policy but it's the politicians who decide the nature of the policies. Who appoint commisioners that share their views about what kind of policies are good or bad. If you don't like the policies the commisioners are pushing - vote for different EMPs. They will fire a bunch of commisioners and appoint others - from the top down, simply to get commisioners who share their views about how the economy should be structured. You want people with the expertise in implementation on the commision - but ultimately it's the politicians who choose what they implement and who will appoint commisioners that share their views on that.

>It might as well be a dictatorship for all the difference that would make to accountability or control by the people the EU administration is supposed to represent.
How did Europe forget, so soon, what dictatorship is - that you can use the phrase so lightly. The idea that you can have a dictatorship about so narrow a thing as just the economy is ridiculous. Quite recently much of Europe was ruled by dictators who controlled literally every aspect of your lives, every second from birth to death dictated - including choosing the time of death. Who plunged Europe into the biggest wars the world has ever known - not once but twice in 20 years ! Some of them lasted very long - Franco of Spain remained in power until the 1980s !
Right now - Europe over-all is perhaps among the most free societies on earth. The libertarian nutjobs won't think so because they think labour laws are oppresion but sane people realize that the very things they decry as oppressive are, in fact, the very things that make the majority of people free. That give them any freedom at all. To have freedom you need protection - not just from government but from all wielders of power - including economic power. You need regulations on the rich - or they will be the ONLY free people. Indeed, I would go so far as to say, that the less free the market - the more free the citizens.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I'm going to stop now. It's clear from your last post that you don't understand very much about how the EU authorities work and how people come to power within them, because you keep proposing things that aren't actually possible to deal with people who shouldn't have that power any more. You might like to read up on how European Commissioners and the President of the European Commission are appointed and then reconsider your position.

As for your comments about freedom and dictatorship, obviously no-one serious is suggesting that the current actions of the EU administration are comparable to the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. The fact remains that the EU administration is full of officials who wield influence yet are practically unaccountable to the common citizen, which immediately fails my standards for having any legitimacy as a government. In many cases, they also have no particular qualification as experts in the field they now administer, which apparently fails your standards as well.

liars gonna lie

[TheGratefulNet]

too bad those that we trusted to uphold the constitution failed us SO MISERABLY.

even their lies are transparent and shameless.

Re:liars gonna lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is extremely ironic to talk about 'Tremendous Damage', when the government/corporations (we're under an oligarchy after all) are the ones doing tremendous damage, every single day.

Re:liars gonna lie

[HBI]

Oh, I think they are actually telling the truth when they say Snowden did them "tremendous damage". He gave away methodologies, which benefited us all, but caused harm to the intelligence gathering efforts they are making reference to.

His attorney is taking quite the wrong tack here, and instead should have criticized the program rather than differed with their characterization. Everyone knows the characterization is quite true if you are fan of constant surveillance of the citizenry.

Re:liars gonna lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, this story reads as 'Known liars caught in lie lie about lie.' Well that's no surprise.

Re:liars gonna lie

[thestuckmud]

Technically the NSA was not doing anything illegal with it's efforts to collect call meta data because they were not specifically barred from doing so.

The problem here is that NSA is a foreign intelligence agency, specifically prohibited from domestic intelligence collecting. So, it actually takes a great deal of effort to justify wholesale collection of data on US citizens by the NSA. The way they did it was by redefining the meaning of "collected" so that it no longer refers to data acquired through surveillance. Only data viewed by an NSA analyst is consideder "collected" under this scheme. Brilliant!

Of course, our foreign partners at GCHQ are said to have unfettered access to this trove of data, which remain conveniently uncollected until NSA sees it.

To make matters worse, this Orwellian justification for extra-legal domestic surveillance was kept secret from both the public at large and most of Congress. And top intelligence officials (I'm thinking about DNI James Clapper) lied to Congress about it when asked.

"Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

-- George Orwell, 1984

Re:liars gonna lie

[rtb61]

Keep in mind he exposed a global crime spree by a criminal organisation that broke laws on every single country on the planet. We are literately talking about tens of millions of crimes being committed by that corrupt organisation. The core intent of the crimes, the total control of the planet and turning it into a slave nation via a permanent state of political blackmail. Really sick stuff.

Inherently electoral laws, the prime laws when it comes to democracy were broken upon a massive scale. Corrupt politicians and government officials were seeking to keep secret their criminal activities at tax payer expense when they knew full well those secrets would have a huge bearing upon the voters decisions. Wake up, we do not serve government, the government is our institution meant to serve us and tell us the truth, so we can choose whether or not to replace them at the next election based upon their true actions during their time in office. It is against the constitution and electoral laws for the government to keep secrets and lie to us when that would have an impact on elections.

Re:liars gonna lie

[dgatwood]

Technically the NSA was not doing anything illegal with it's efforts to collect call meta data because they were not specifically barred from doing so.

You mean except by that pesky thing called the fourth amendment, where it says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized," I assume.... That specifically bars them from doing so.

The term "papers" as used in the fourth amendment referred to all forms of non-face-to-face communication. At the time the Constitution was authored, the current state of technology limited the forms of such communication to printed matter, such as pamphlets and snail mail (as affirmed in Ex Parte Jackson, 1876).

These days, private long-distance communication can also take the form of phone calls, Internet communication, and so on. These new forms of "papers" are fundamentally the same sort of construct as personal papers and letters—the very things that the fourth amendment was explicitly designed to protect. As such, there is absolutely no plausible legal reasoning by which one could rationally argue that these newer forms of papers should be treated differently from the forms that existed when the Constitution was created, for precisely the same reason that your Internet communication and phone calls are protected under freedom of speech laws even though they are being carried over wires as a series of ones and zeroes—something that the Founding Fathers would never have understood as being speech at the time.

Therefore, it should be clear to any reasonable person that third-party doctrine is fundamentally flawed reasoning. Any argument to the contrary must involve some plausible reason why the law should treat a company's personal papers (telephone logs) differently than your own.

Re:liars gonna lie

[HBI]

You can't characterize something as a "global crime spree" when it's obviously not. At least if you want credibility. The surveillance program is and was legal. That's the problem. Nothing about that has changed. So I don't know what everyone is on about in regards to "Snowden's impact". He let people know, but do you really believe NSA is doing business any different now than before in regards to purview?

Re:liars gonna lie

[Anonymous Coward]

The surveillance program was and is unconstitutional, which makes it illegal. The Three Letter Agencies and their political masters have endlessly tried to paper over that fact. They have passed unconstitutional legislation. They have enacted unconstitutional policies. They have had useful idiots write unconstitutional legal opinions. None of this addresses the unconstitutionality that is at the heart of their wrongdoing.

What is sad is that the President was a constitutional scholar. There's a story to be told there. Whether we ever hear it is another matter.

Re:liars gonna lie

[HBI]

What part of the Constitution bans online surveillance? You're going to rely on the definition of 'unreasonable' in the Fourth Amendment here? Unreasonable means different things to different people.

A bit of self-awareness is required here. I don't think anything in existing US law actually rules out the surveillance program. And thinking that it should be illegal is great, but pretending that there's something in law to stop it when it expressly isn't the case is just delusional, and totally ineffective in getting it changed.

Re:liars gonna lie

[david_thornley]

I see no clear and definite violation of the Fourth here. The NSA did things I consider violations, but that's my view of it, and it's possible to argue otherwise.

What's a search? In some cases, the NSA stored information without anyone looking at it, and accessed it only with a warrant. I'm not happy about that, but I can't unequivocally call it a search. You may consider it a search, but I can make an argument that it isn't.

How about metadata? The government is not allowed to open my letters and read them without a warrant, but they are allowed to note what's on the outside of the envelope.

One really big problem is Big Data. Before this century, the government typically had to expend significant resources to keep any sort of surveillance going, and that was an inherent limitation on the government's power. Nowadays, a police car can drive down the street, automatically note license plates, and keep complete files as to which license plates were where when. This allows the government to be much more intrusive without changing the law, and that was completely unforeseen by the Founding Fathers.

The impression I get is that the NSA is normally careful not to do anything that is clearly and definitely illegal, and will push right up to that line.

Re: liars gonna lie

[hackwrench]

The Bill of Rights were specifically written by that scoundrel James Madison to give the illusion of protecting stuff so that people like you and me could say that accordingly certain things are illegal while the government continues on its merry power grab. According to James Madison, if men were angels we wouldn't need government, but I say men don't need to be angels for us to have as little government as we can live with.

Edward Snowden Leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided a vital service to all people of the world and deserves a presidential pardon, post haste.

The US government is the villain and Snowden is the hero. Nothing but a full presidential pardon will be acceptable. Heck, I'll sleep on my couch and he can move into my bedroom, for free.

Re:Edward Snowden Leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Hero? Really? You do realize that he is sleeping with a Russian model right now in some place very close to the Kremlin? This guy criticizes every thing American government does, but never commented anything about what Chinese and Russian governments are doing (which are 10 times worse). He not only disclosed domestic surveillance operations (which may or may not be justifiable on civil liberty ground), but also disclose large portion of US foreign operations (which is totally unjustifiable). If this isn't treason, I don't know what is. He is just fortunate that he is a citizen of a civilized nation, not Russia or China. That's the only reason he is still alive right now.

If you are not a US citizen, then may be you have no business telling the president what to do.

Re:Edward Snowden Leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

I at first misunderstood this post. I thought "Why are you talking about Trump in a Snowden thread?" Then I saw the irony ;-)

O no

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean he leaked nasty stuff you were doing illegally but you don't think are related to the other nasty illegal stuff you are doing?

Re:O no

[Z00L00K]

They claim that it caused damage, but they didn't clarify what the damage was specifically.

It looks like too many were figuratively caught with their pants down when on the loo and then they got embarrassed by that.

Re:O no

[david_thornley]

Specifying what the damage was could cause further damage. When classified information is leaked, the government has a legitimate interest in not providing further context, so they're not going to identify what they kinda wish hadn't leaked and what they really wish hadn't leaked.

" their efforts have led to historic reforms"

[fustakrakich]

*cough* Say what??

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Naw, that's just ridiculous. Snowden is not stupid and he did not keep the stuff with him. Nor can he possibly recall everything he saw, though he would make up some great stuff with a bit of torture.

Putin likes Snowden on the loose because that embarrasses the heck out of America. (Well, more like a leash than the loose.) His intelligence value is negligible, but the political embarrassment is priceless.

If Snowden became a nuisance to Putin, then he would be disposed of instantly, and without any regard to possible gratitude for any information he had brought with him. You can bet Snowden is smart enough to know that and is not going to do anything to piss off Putin. He may still get thrown back to the States if Putin decides it is politically expedient.

Chelsea Manning

[Anonymous Coward]

CHELSEA MANNING should also receive a FULL pardon from President BARAK OBAMA. She is being tortured by the US Navy and is being DENIED access to her attorney and the internet and a cell phone and a laptop. She is also being force-fed through a tube because she refused to eat because she is being treated unjustly and has come down with several throat infections. When you forcefully shove a tube down someones throat, this causes irritation and ultimately leads to infection. She is denied linen and clothing and lives with a bright halogen light on in her cell 24 hours a day. SHE IS BEING TORTURED. What is America going to do about this???

Re:Chelsea Manning

[MooseTick]

" She is being tortured by the US Navy and is being DENIED access to her attorney and the internet and a cell phone and a laptop."

Is access to a cell phone, the internet, and a laptop a right for prisioners? At least she isn't being imprisioned in Texas in the summer without air conditioning where it can get to 115+ degrees. I even feel bad for the guards in that situation who have to work in those conditions.

http://www.npr.org/2016/09/12/...

They are right

[Archfeld]

Snowden did do our government a disservice when he posted those documents online. What the report didn't state was that our government did the US people a HUGE disservice when they acted as they did to force his hand. Torture of POW's ? The violation of US laws to support US interests. The means does not justify the end and just because they chose to take the acts out of the US doesn't absolve them of the guilt.

Re:They are right

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden didn't post any documents online. That is what Manning did. Snowden gave his documents to journalists that reviewed them and release curtailed information.

[citation needed]

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll save you the time - the article is devoid of any reference to what "tremendous damage" was done.

Re:[citation needed]

[zugmeister]

Sure wish I could mod you up. First thing I thought when I read TFS was "Ok, so did they just make claims or did they back them up with verifiable evidence?". Well, that's about what I expected...

Re:[citation needed]

[cbhacking]

Yeah, it's just like those "blood on his hands" lies they keep spouting; there's no actual evidence of harm, but they seem to think we're not going to notice this.

Re:[citation needed]

[gweihir]

That is part of the creation of a "big lie" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie): Do not give specifics, because otherwise people may notice that the claims made are complete fabrications. Just keep repeating it and eventually many people will believe it.

Re:[citation needed]

[gweihir]

To be fair, many people are far too stupid to notice this little problem. They believe the fabrication without ever doing even very basic verification.

Re:[citation needed]

[wiredog]

Yeah, well, it's classified. No sense revealing who we didn't go to war with because of successful data gathering if that would cause the war we avoided.

If he'd just stuck to revealing domestic data collection activities he might've been OK. But he had to reveal sources and methods used against targets outside the US and its allies...

And if you think Russia wasn't using those same sources and methods, well, I have a bridge to sell you. Nice view of Brooklyn. I bet he has "depression" and will eventually "commit suicide".

50/50 chance his next of kin get a bill for the bullet.

Re:[citation needed]

[david_thornley]

Telling what damage had been done would have provided a lot of context to the leaked materials, and make the leak even more harmful. The government's best move when classified material is leaked is to provide as little information about it as possible.

No it didn't

[Lord Apathy]

Bullfucking shit. Snowden's leaks did no such thing. It was you god damn bastards illegally spying on American citizens and foreign citizens that did the damage. If I had my way I would fly Snowden back here and pin a medal on his ass.

Re:No it didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Although I think I would pin it on his chest... :)

Re:No it didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

If our government didn't do anything that was wrong, they'd have nothing to be embarrassed about. Therefore, they were VERY embarrassed!

Re:No it didn't

[Jiro]

Spying on Americans, sure. Spying on foreign citizens is their actual job. There's nothing wrong with it (as long as they don't trade information with their foreign counterparts, giving each other what amounts to domestic information.)

It just gets a lot of publicity because foreign governments have lots of resources and media access, so they can manufacture outrage over it (while not bothering to mention to the same media that they themselves spy domestically.)

Re:No it didn't

[Lord Apathy]

Good point

Re:No it didn't

[TiggertheMad]

If I had my way, I'd hang the architects of the domestic spying program for treason. Those are the real traitors to the country. It is the only punishment that is justified by such a monstrous crime.

Re:No it didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly government. If you have nothing to hide, then you don't need privacy.

maybe we need "pardon snowden" rallies?

[wierd_w]

This is an election year. they wont dare be authoritarian against such rallies. it would force them to eat the crow.

Re:maybe we need "pardon snowden" rallies?

[wierd_w]

You might be surprised.

Or, does the idea of such rallies fill you with existential dread?

But we'd have to kill you

[Tablizer]

[House Committee claims] documents he stole "have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests. They instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence ... The report was disputed by Snowden's ACLU-provided attorney [who said] the committee still can't point to any remotely credible evidence that Snowden's disclosures caused harm.

I'll bet the House's rebuttal to ACLU is, "it did, but the harm is too secret to show you."

For example, maybe Putin now has our Roswell technology?

It's okay, we already swiped their 1908 Tunguska Saucer crash tech. Share and share alike.

Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[silvergeek]

If the NSA does not want the hassle of whistleblowers, then it should simply follow the law.

Re:Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[wierd_w]

because laws are for the governed, no the governors.

those that embarass the govenors are traitors, because the governed are the natural enemies of the governors, and one must be among the elite to get such dirt to share.

this is very simple to understnd.

Re:Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[UnknownSoldier]

Mod +1 Insightful.

Typical government reaction shenanigans:

Shoot the messenger, ignore the message.

Re:Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[gweihir]

The law (these days in the US) is mostly a tool to control and oppress citizens. It has lost all usefulness as a tool to protect citizens a while ago. One of the defining characteristics in a police-state is that the law almost never gets used to put the government and its agents into place, it gets only applied to citizens that do something "authorities" do not like. A free society looks different. No, that there are worse police-states and even full-blown ideological or religious fascist states does not excuse this evil in any way.

Re:Whistleblowers Happen When the Gov Violates Law

[swillden]

If the NSA does not want the hassle of whistleblowers, then it should simply follow the law.

"Simply follow the law" isn't really good enough, because people who want to justify their actions can almost always construe the law in their favor. The NSA is an excellent case in point: they simply determined that "collected" meant "looked at by a human", leaving them free to hoover up everything and to process it all electronically, presenting it to human eyes only when they could be reasonably certain that it involved something they were authorized to "collect". That's a rather ludicrous definition of "collect" but everyone wanted to accept it, the people in power got attorneys to say it in writing, and off they went, all quite convinced that they were following the law.

No organization of humans can be trusted to follow a set of rules they'd like to work around unless there is oversight. Government employees are quite scrupulous about following the law as they understand it, but without oversight they have a tremendous amount of flexibility in how they interpret it.

We task Congress with the job of overseeing the actions of our intelligence organizations, which makes them directly culpable for any creative interpretations of the law. This seems ideal, since you'd expect the body that makes the law to be the best possible authority on what it actually means. But what happened was that Congress, and in particular the House and Senate intelligence committees failed utterly at doing their job.

Snowden showed the world how badly those committees had failed. We shouldn't be surprised that their response is to excoriate him, because the alternative is to castigate themselves and they're not going to do that, especially not in an election year.

Who to?

[AHuxley]

Contractors reputations as they design, build and service vast illegal domestic spying systems?
The well educated staff at US computer brands that allowed the US gov and mil to get plain text from their best encryption efforts globally? PRISM
The top academics that hid the junk quality encryption systems and educated generations into thinking decades of US junk standards was best practice?
The political leadership that never kept up with the findings of the Church Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... on the domestic actions of the NSA, GCHQ and CIA?
The fourth estate, the media, the press, the profession mentioned in the US Constitution that could not like reporting on junk encryption, total domestic collection?
Lawyers who never bothered to uncover the true origins of their cases based on illegal domestic spying and parallel construction over the decades?
The US hardware manufactures than shipped junk hardware with weak encryption over generations of product lines?
The weaknesses in wifi that allow OVERHEAD to capture all and exposed all wifi users to more poor quality networking standards?
Not seeing a lot of harm, just generations of people who designed and shipped junk globally or never bothered to publish any findings or solutions.
Decades of junk hardware and software has now left networks around the world wide open.
The damage was in the practice of collect it all. Now academics, the private sector and smarter staff working for real brands can start fixing decades of plain text access to networks than anyone could enjoy thanks to decades of policy and global exports.

Damage to Whom?

[WillAffleckUW]

To the Unconstitutional and Illegal actions of the NSA against American citizens in our own country?

To the terrorist creating Saudis, Yemenis, and Pakistanis who continue to create terrorism worldwide today but pretend to be our "allies"?

Look, I knew directly about what they were doing since the 1980s. Your gorvernment is still lying to you, and still ignoring the US Constitution.

Re:Damage to Whom?

[WillAffleckUW]

lol, I mispelled government

Show of hands

[nehumanuscrede]

With whom would you place your trust ?

Mr. Snowden or ANY member of our bought and paid for leadership ?

Dead simple answer for me. No matter what they claim he did, his actions had a more positive impact for this country than all of those buffoons combined.

The only thing a polititian does is for the benefit of a polititian. Period.

1.5 million documents?

[Areyoukiddingme]

...the House report concluded that the vast majority of the 1.5 million documents he stole "have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests. They instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America's adversaries."

Since when did they know what Snowden copied? The NSA publicly stated they don't know what he got and had no way of knowing. Their systems were wide open to administrators, and they said as much. So... were they lying then or are they lying now?

Considering who was speaking then and now, I say they're lying now. They don't know what or how much he got. They're just making shit up. The 1.5 million is at best a probability, but is most likely a wild-ass guess. Anybody who has worked in any human enterprise for a few years knows that the whole system runs on WAGs, and where engineers and mathematicians refuse to guess, outright lies. There is a lot less certainty in the world than anyone in power wants to admit.

And this report? Pure gamemanship, waiting in the wings for precisely this moment when Congress knew that the ACLU would be pushing for a pardon. Now the talking heads have something to babble about, to drown out the ACLU. There doesn't have to be a true word in it for it to serve its purpose. House Intelligence Committee? There isn't a true word in it. Even the bylines are lies. It was written by spooks for spooks, not by Congress or congressional aids.

Re:1.5 million documents?

[thegarbz]

Since when did they know what Snowden copied?

I'm sure they do know what he stole. What worries me more is that they are essentially saying he didn't get all the stuff.

Re:1.5 million documents?

[whoever57]

So... were they lying then or are they lying now?

Yes.

[You present a false dichotomy. The NSA always lies]

Bullshit

[jxander]

We now know that we're being spied upon (which most of us probably already suspected)

As a result, we've begun encrypting our data, websites are using https as a default, and the nation has become generally MORE secure.

This is the digital equivalent of the gestapo bitching about the 4th amendment making their jobs impossible and protecting criminals.

snowden is Russia's prisoner

[Anonymous Coward]

He just doesn't know it yet. Maybe he knows it, but is not able to do anything about it.

If Snowden truly believes that being a whistleblower is a noble thing, then I would like to see Snowden call for Russian and Chinese whistleblowers to reveal state secrets.Surely Russian and China must also be spying on their own citizens.

Snowden is Russia's puppet. They will use him as long as he dutifully continues his anti-US stance. If he even remotely suggests that Russia(or any country that is NOT the US)) is pulling the same shit, he will promptly and quietly disappear.

I hope he enjoys his well deserved holiday in Russia.

Re:snowden is Russia's prisoner

[Anonymous Coward]

If he even remotely suggests that Russia(or any country that is NOT the US)) is pulling the same shit, he will promptly and quietly disappear.

Snowden has frequently criticized Russia.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Snowden-Russia-surveillance/2016/09/10/id/747641/

This was five days ago. Pretty sure he hasn't disappeared yet.

Re:snowden is Russia's prisoner

[moeinvt]

AFAIK, neither Russia nor China are Constitutional republics. They don't have a "Bill of Rights" which prohibits the government from acting against The People in these ways.

In the USA there are clearly stated limits on government power. The government cannot rightfully claim "state secrets" as a cover for lying to the public and engaging in blatant criminal activity. That's why Snowden's actions are both noble and patriotic.

If a whistleblower revealed that the Russian and Chinese government are engaged in mass surveillance against their citizens, it's a leak, but I doubt that it's considered criminal for openly authoritarian governments to do this. That's what makes the Snowden revelations important. The U.S. federal government is operating in exactly the same manner as oppressive regimes like the former East Germany.

Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pardon

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden

Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and is the author of 12 novels, including The Detachment

He let Americans evaluate omniscient domestic surveillance for themselves

This week, Edward Snowden, multiple human rights and civil rights groups, and a broad array of American citizens asked President Obama to exercise his Constitutional power to pardon Snowden. As a former CIA officer, I wholeheartedly support a full presidential pardon for this brave whistleblower.

All nations require some secrecy. But in a democracy, where the government is accountable to the people, transparency should be the default; secrecy, the exception. And this is especially true regarding the implementation of an unprecedented system of domestic bulk surveillance, a mere precursor of which Senator Frank Church warned 40 years ago could lead to the eradication of privacy and the imposition of “total tyranny.”

That today we are engaged in a meaningful debate about whether such a system is desirable is almost entirely due to the conscience, courage and conviction of one man: Edward Snowden. Without Snowden, the American people could not balance for themselves the risks, costs and benefits of omniscient domestic surveillance. Because of him, we can.

For this service, the government has charged Snowden under the World War I-era Espionage Act. Yet Snowden did not sell information secretly to any enemy of America. Instead, he shared it openly through the press with the American people.

For this service, Snowden has been accused of having “blood on his hands“—the same evidence-free cliché trotted out every time a whistleblower reveals corruption, criminality or anything else the government would prefer to hide. That this charge is being aired by the very people responsible for wars that have led to thousands of dead American servicemen and servicewomen; hundreds of thousands burned, blinded, brain-damaged, crippled, maimed and traumatized; and hundreds of thousands of innocent foreigners killed, is more than ironic. It’s also a form of psychological projection, or propaganda, intended to distract from where true responsibility for bloodshed lies.

And for this service, the usual suspects have claimed Snowden has caused “grave damage to national security.” As always, the charge is backed by nothing but air, and ignores—in fact, is intended to distract from—the real damage caused by metastasizing governmental secrecy. This includes not only disastrous government mistakes and cover-ups (see the Bay of Pigs, the “missile gap,” the Gulf of Tonkin, Iraqi wea

Re:The other side of the coin

[Joe_Dragon]

or run off and become like Julian Assange.

Damage to national security *reputation*

[Namarrgon]

Thus undermining the unquestioning trust we're supposed to feel in them, and limiting their ability to do whatever the hell they want. Don't we realise it's all for our own good??

Re:The other side of the coin

[TsuruchiBrian]

I think there is a very high likelihood that Snowden just leaked everything he stole (i.e. Russia doesn't have access to anything from Snowden that isn't already public). Why would Russia help Snowden? Let's look at some pros and cons for Russia helping Snowden even if they didn't get any additional information.

Pros:
Russia can troll the USA by...
1. claiming to be more transparent and free than the USA
2. by obstructing our justice system.
3. by giving a platform to a famous person critical of the USA.
4. Russia can make our intelligence agencies unsure of what if any additional information (even if it's nothing).
5. Russia can have a bargaining chip with the USA if they ever want something from us.
Just to name a few things I just thought of.

Cons:
1. Russia needs to pay for Snowden's food and lodging.

tremendous damage to what?

[epyT-R]

Their bullshit propaganda/FUD campaigns?

I have no sympathy. It's like they did everything possible to lose public trust and then they whine about being exposed? Too fucking bad.

Re:tremendous damage to what?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I would love to see how you comment when China and Russia take done the internet, and three letter agency are powerless to stop them because of the damage Snowden caused.

Fool. Credulous fool. The three letter agencies have been actively undermining the ability of backbone operators to secure the Internet. If China or Russia take down the Internet, it will be because the NSA made it possible.

Re:Were you living on your own in 2001?

[wierd_w]

More, he is a defeatist ass.

The gen-x and boomer crowd more than once tried to challenge government overreach, but were systemically slapped down for "not having standing", and not having solid evidence of malfeasance.

This guy is a douche, a troll, a liar, a shill, or some combination of all of those.

We suspected, strongly, but could not prove.

Now we can prove, and he makes bullshit claims about why we did not act. We tried to act. We just kept failing due to lack of evidence.

This fucker promotes not even trying.

What kills me is:

[gatfirls]

These people are citizens too, do they not realize they are trying to protect an agency that does not have their best interest in mind?

I get it when the people getting the paychecks to do this kind of stuff want to protect their jobs but congresspeople? WTF?

Re:What kills me is:

[guruevi]

Who do you think writes the paychecks? Congress. Why? Because that's how your congress critters stay in power, it's the hand that feeds and it goes both ways. Look at every single election in the last few decades, especially this year you only get to be where you are if you play the game. Clinton through the Clinton Foundation and Trump pretty much admitted publicly to buying off the right people (including Clinton). It seems that through those two buffoons, a third party got some traction - it's been headline news for about a week on CNN that Gary Johnson goofed on Syria while any third party can't get any airtime unless they fulfill some impossible quota (an average of national polls that includes polls which don't even include a third option)

Re:What kills me is:

[gatfirls]

Good point. I forgot that Snowden was a part of a contractor who probably lined a lot of pockets on K street.

The FBI over Clinton already justify his pardon.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you think about it. Clinton had already did some horrible shit with her email server both intentionally and claimed unintentionally.

And out of all of it, the FBI found gross incompetence and breaking of procedure over it but declined to indict based solely on the claim that they could not find anything to point a malicious motive (which is besides the point since some of the charges did not matter what motive was).

Using the FBI's own claim that motive was needed, they can find no motive of malicious intent with Snowden's actions as his justification was actually a pure one.

So regardless of what they try to claim on him, his motives and his actions give no claim of a motive to hurt America and infact his actions have actually helped to reveal crimes and help the American people to protect themselves from it and allow for proper debate and suspected criminals proper looks at evidence when before the police would have lied through their teeth with parallel reconstruction making them, in many occurrences, more evil and screwed up than the ones they were pressing charges on.

So long as they refuse to indict Clinton on her email, they have no justification for not letting Snowden free that doesn't make them out to legitimately being a hypocrite themselves.

Re:Were you living on your own in 2001?

[wierd_w]

More, compelled to vote for it through misinformation.

The whole "lives are at stake! We must act!" Mantra.

Personally, I despised the patriot act then, despise it now, and despise our government for willfully voting for it multiple times, and then voting for its even worse replacement.

Re:The other side of the coin

[quantaman]

Without offering any opinion on whether what Snowden did was good, bad, or potato, my first though here is:

The odds that Snowden was given refuge in Russia without turning over 100% of what he took are about the same as the odds of him getting his pardon: zero.

Which is better than him putting it all up on the internet, I suppose. While I'm sure there's national security intelligence in that data dump of great interest to Russia, they will do their best (which is very good) to coerce him into not revealing any of that to anyone else.

Not necessarily. The point of intelligence is to gain international influence and leverage, but by harbouring Snowden and staying on good terms with him Russia is getting tons of both.

He's a very high profile and effective critic of the US's intelligence gathering activities, he gives Russia cover for their own massive human rights abuses, he makes Russia the good guy among a crowd that should be stringently opposed to them. I wouldn't be surprised if Wikileaks' good relationship with Russia was related to their treatment of Snowden. And the intel might not be that valuable anymore anyways. Since the day Snowden showed up in China I suspect the NSA has been trying to obsolete everything he took.

I mean I'm sure they'd still love the full dump, and maybe they got it, but I don't think one can overlook how valuable he is sitting unmolested in Moscow.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[hcs_$reboot]

While very informative, it should be modded Insightful for the comments inside

Re:The other side of the coin

[ThatsLoseNotLoose]

Naw, that's just ridiculous. Snowden is not stupid and he did not keep the stuff with him.

How do you know that?

I honestly can't decide whether I think he's a hero or a villain because we just don't know if he took it with him or if he limited the scope of what he stole to only data about domestic spying.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[Anonymous Coward]

That was WAY too long. I'm not going to read that.

The article title was MUCH shorter. It said "House Committee: Edward Snowden's Leaks Did 'Tremendous Damage'

That pretty much clears it up. Our government, for whom we voted and who serves us, just gave us the straight dope. I will be able to sleep easy tonight knowing that our governors were the good guys all along.

I guess that our Emmanuel Goldstein is real...

[dlenmn]

EOM

Have you ever read the Constitution?

[rsilvergun]

I mean, _really_ read it and considered all the implications of how it sets up our system of government? The entire thing was built from the ground up to protect the interests of wealthy land owners. I'd say they're doing a fabulous job of uphodling the Constitution.

Now, if you mean the parts of the Constitution that have no legal meaning I guess I could agree. But they're meaningless fluff. Want a real government by the people for the people? Then you want a parliamentary system. Not a Representative Democracy with branches structured to prevent populist uprisings. This is why we can't have nice things.

Re:Have you ever read the Constitution?

[umghhh]

Parliamentary system does not give you advantages that you hope it does. It is the same all over - the American Revolution did actually create something that benefited people comparing with what they had before. Yet as with all systems - this one got tired and dementia set in. It is corrupted ans skewed towards the oligarchs and big corporations. Parliamentary system can protect you against that as much as it protect people against the chance it will get an autocrat and/or murderer as a leader. Sometimes it is beneficial actually - a benevolent autocrat comes in and cleans up the shit from the system. The problem with that is not even that most of the autocrats are not benevolent but that they inevitably corrupt the system even more. There is an irony hidden in this circle of corruption and revolution - I cannot laugh however.

Re:Have you ever read the Constitution?

[dywolf]

pretty much everywhere else

Re:Have you ever read the Constitution?

[Place a name here]

It has worked better than in the US in... Norway, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Switzerland is kind of a hybrid, since the president is elected by the legislature (parliamentary) but can't be removed through a vote of no confidence once elected (presidential). It's up to you whether it should count, but if it does, then every country with a greater HDI than the US is parliamentary.

Who to trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

" "The public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions," said the report by staff members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "

But we're politicians and therefore we can be trusted, because we're politicians and therefore as trustworthy as the day is long. Trust us on this. Besides, it's all for your own good - we gain nothing from being able to snoop on you, and give the data to any Federal Agency that requests it, and on-sell your data to anyone, foreign and domestic, who will pay for it. Trust us ... we'll look after your interests, and rights, and privileges ... and we'll only snoop as much as we need to, because, look ... all we're talking about is tiny breaches to your privacy here.

I mean, it's not like we're going after privacy and freedom.

OK, OK, maybe we're going after privacy and freedom just a little bit. But only enough to ensure your absolute security against terrorism. Yeah, yeah ... we know there's no such thing as absolute security, and we know we may be going just a bit overboard with the security thingies ... but not with the snooping. OK? We really need the snooping, and lots more of it, to ensure that we don't make stupid calls like the Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction and Lets Create a Power Vacuum that Al Qaeda Can Fill policies of the past. I mean, Bat Crap crazy policies like that only happen when we don't have the necessary degree of public surveillance of our own people. And we need to know everything that can be known about our own people ... I mean, they could become the enemy. You never know.

I mean ...look at Edward Snowden. He worked for us, we paid him good money, and he became our enemy. So the chances of the Average Joe turning against us have to be high.

And therefore we need the surveillance of our own citizens ... OK?

why does government get off so easy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what Snowden released clearly shows that forces in government are violating the constitution. Where are the prosecutions and why aren't any of them going to jail?

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[Anonymous Coward]

He did give it to the enemy, as you stated:
For this service, the government has charged Snowden under the World War I-era Espionage Act [freedom.press]. Yet Snowden did not sell information secretly to any enemy of America. Instead, he shared it openly through the press with the American people.

If you haven’t already noticed, the American people are the enemy

Be careful of handwaving arguments

[hey!]

one way or the other. Claiming their was "tremendous damage" doesn't mean there was any, or that it was indeed "tremendous". It just means you slapped an adjective onto your claim. By the same token calling someone a "hero" doesn't change anything about his actions; nor does calling him a "traitor". You shouldn't get a different set of rules based on whether your nametag has a smiley face on it or a frowny face.

Be especially wary of statements like this:

The Committee found no evidence that Snowden took any official effort to express concerns about U.S. intelligence activities — legal, moral, or otherwise — to any oversight officials within the U.S. government, despite numerous avenues for him to do so.

It sounds damning, but it really depends among other things on where those "official" channels lead to. If they lead to the people who are responsible for the situation he was blowing the whistle on, it's a meaningless condemnation.

Re:Be careful of handwaving arguments

[advocate_one]

he didn't take it to 'oversight' officials because he'd seen first hand what they did to any whistle-blower... they buried it and then killed the career prospects and future employment prospects of anyone who had the temerity to blow the whistle...

Natioonal security gravely impacted you say?

[cb88]

WW3 still hasn't happened..

Haven't heard of any terrorism other than the usual random crazies, certainly nothing organized.

The worse thing that might have happened as I gather... is a few ops may have been compromised and scuttled (we never should have been doing these ops) and a few politicians and diplomats have been severely embarrassed which is just great.

I'm sitting here typing this ... it seems to me national security is just fine.

Yeah

[jfern]

Tremendous damage to the idea that the establishment hacks running this country aren't doing a terrible job.

Re:The other side of the coin

[AchilleTalon]

Same here. We just don't know. It seems many are ready to assume Snowden is telling the truth when he says he gave all the information to a journalist and didn't keep any copy of that information which everyone knows is multiple GB. Only a very tiny portion of that information was required to make the point. Why did he stole the rest and what did he actually do with it? No one knows but Snowden itself. He can say anything, nobody can verify if he is telling the truth. Due to a large sympathy movement, people are prone to believe he is right and he is telling the truth. I don't see why. Not telling the truth has its advantages as well in his case.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[davester666]

Unfortunately, the US gov't now considers and treats the American people as "the enemy".

Re:The other side of the coin

[taustin]

Naw, that's just ridiculous. Snowden is not stupid and he did not keep the stuff with him.

Snowden: I'd like sanctuary in Russia. The Americans want to kill me. Think how embarrassing it'd be if you gave me refuge.

Russian Immigration Official: We want copies of everything you stole form them.

S: I don't have it with me.

RIO: Well, get back to us when you do. In the meantime, there's the door.

S: Well, here's what I got. That's all there is.

RIO: I don't believe you, and even if I did, that's not worth the trouble of taking you in, since you'll be a parasite living off the dole for the rest of your life. Go away.

S: Well, maybe there's more.

RIO: Lie to us again, and we'll stuff you onto a plane back to the US at gunpoint, and crow about how gullible you were to give us everything you stole, and thought we'd let you stay here.

Snowden has my vote.

[Humbubba]

Snowden told us about the NSA's worldwide surveillance; that they compromised Cisco routers, Chancellor Merkel's phone, and anything else feeding from the teat of global telecommunications. This is not just about individual privacy. The stakes are much higher - free enterprise and arguably humanity itself. If Obama can pardon the likes of Jonathan Pollard, Snowden certainly deserves more than just a pardon. He deserves the Medal of Freedom. Hell, I'd vote him.

There are always honest people

[Max_W]

...did "tremendous damage"...

to bloated shills.

Edward's whole family way back several generations fought and worked for the United States. He is a honest man. He did not do any damage to great working people of the United States, such as John Steinbeck, Angela Davis, and the like.

This is what they cannot get: there are always honest people who do not like lies, fraud, greed, hypocrisy. They are ready to blame anyone - hackers, foreign countries, etc., but they should look at yourself first. And remember that there are always good people around. It could be a secretary, an IT man in a cellar, etc. who should report a sham to the community.

Re:The other side of the coin

[jopsen]

1. Russia needs to pay for Snowden's food and lodging.

[citation needed], Russia doesn't pay him anything. They merely allow him to live in Russia.

Trumpism

[jopsen]

"tremendous damage"

Well, what did you expect from a trumpism :)
It sounds like something he would write on twitter...

I beg your pardon, but...

[treczoks]

"The public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions," Sounds like a murderer who was found with bloody weapon and hands at the crime scene, who screams "every but me is a liar!" in court.

On the other hand, the narrative popularized by the U.S. House intelligence committee and the TLAs is not even worse, but its actions are also directed against the law and the rights of the citizens, and billions of innocent people worldwide.

Snowden vs. Trump

[Invalidator]

Even though I am not American, I would rather see Snowden running for US president than the idiot Trump. I cannot see how Snowden could do more damage to the US and the world at large than Trump.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Not sure of your context, but I recently read Inside WikiLeaks , which is largely about Assange, and I don't see much similarity between him and Snowden. Can you clarify what you mean? The main similarity I can see is their involvement in disclosing data that powerful people do not want disclosed, but all the details are pretty much different.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Actually, I think we do know most of the story. He did not have time to read and study everything he was collecting, and he has entrusted it to journalists for analysis to determine what parts can and should be disclosed. This is actually going into an extremely difficult area for actual investigative journalists, because their work may well involve crimes and criminals and they may discover information that the police or other authorities want to know. Yet if they disclose all of their sources whenever asked, then the First Amendment would be greatly weakened, if not destroyed.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Your fantasy is quite strained. Actually it's pretty ridiculous. It is certain that there was no low-level immigration officer who was discussing the matter with Snowden, and if you remember the actual history of the incident, Snowden was actually trapped in transit in the airport when his passport was revoked. There was actually a protracted period of negotiations and Snowden had plenty of opportunities to divest himself of any data he might have insanely been traveling with.

Yes, they did

[gweihir]

To a lot of really bad people that not only richly deserved it for their crimes against decency and human rights, but that were plotting to commit even more deeply dangerous and highly unethical things. The only thing not right here is that those exposed are not in prison and that Snowden is treated as a criminal instead.

Re:Snowden is a KGB traitor

[gweihir]

Obvious troll is obvious.

Re:The other side of the coin

[gweihir]

You seem to be dumb. If Snowden did not have access to the documents anymore when he stranded in Russia, then the odds of not giving access to the Russians are 100%. You seem to also have completely missed that he was well aware of the risk of being forced to hand over documents and had taken measures.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect piano wire will be a valuable commodity in some places, soon...

Well, they're right in that it did great damage: To their reputations, which in fact does hurt national security, but not in the way they want you to think.

It means their careers are harmed, and people are less likely to trust us, such as when negotiating treaties. Not everyone was around, but the finding of the wireless microphone in the state seal hurt Russia's reputation immensely. It also taught the USA how to be better at counter-intelligence. Now we're in their shoes. XD

"So how the fuck did you arrive on that conclusion is beyond me. " Easy, they're gullible or think we are. Actually, correction. It's quite possible to think in terms of black and white when dealing with law and order. Either full-blown feudalism, or being abandoned in the Antarctic. Of course that tends to fall under "believes anything". Only reason a lot of people support libertarians and anarchists, is because the state has gone so full-blown regressive spyocracy (LOL, swear I didn't know Alex Jones uses that term before searching for the spelling). Black mail for all!

Re:The other side of the coin

[gweihir]

Classic fallacy. That is what he said. Since this level of preparedness and insight is consistent with his experience and skill level and makes sense in his situation, the burden of proof is on you. Otherwise, the only thing you have is an empty statement that "he obviously gave everything to the Russians", which only has propaganda value.

Re:The other side of the coin

[gweihir]

At this time, the Snowden-enemies are just lying directly and lying by omission. It is pretty clear what happened and who the bad guys are. These people are just trying to muddy the waters, as that is the only thing they have left.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the US gov't now considers and treats the American people as "the enemy".

Nonsense. The American people are the ones enabling the life style of the U.S. government in the first place. They aren't considered and treated as enemies but as cattle. Only those consistently resisting to be reined in will be sent to the slaughterhouse early. The others are looking forward to being milked for what they are worth.

Re:The other side of the coin

[F.Ultra]

Exactly, his final destination was not to Russia so the only reason that he ended up trapped in Russia was due to the American government since they revoked his password when he was in transit at the airport. And then they have the nerve to claim that he did it because of the Russians...

Re:Were you living on your own in 2001?

[moeinvt]

WTF are you talking about?

Yes, courts threw out the lawsuits by arguing that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue because they could not prove that they were individually targeted for warrantless spying. I'm sure Snowden is aware of that given that the ACLU brought the lawsuits and the ACLU is representing him.
          Where would we get the evidence to prove legal standing? Oh, "that's classified" says the government, which puts We, The People in a no-win situation.
          Snowden provided the evidence. It's not his fault that the government refuses to allow the evidence to be introduced. Easy to be a defeatist when the government courts steadfastly refuse to make a ruling on the Constitutionality of the programs.
          The worst poison pill in The Constitution is that government gets to make rulings on the scope and extent of government power.

So 'Homeland Security' is useless officially now?

[bfpierce]

If something does 'tremendous damage' and nothing happens as a result, and you can't point to single instance of actual impact, seems to be that particular branch isn't really useful.

Only "tremendous damage" if you're a tyrant.

[zerofoo]

Snowden did assist the enemies of the US Government - this is true.

The US Government believes its enemies are its very own citizens.

Yes, read the constitution

[bigpat]

Why does shit like this get upvoted? The US only differs from a parliamentary system in that the President is elected by electors via a popular vote. Congress and Parliament are otherwise functionally equivalent.

The US constitution doesn't give the elite any particular power. Yes, read it. The elite get their power, influence and wealth from their power, influence and wealth. No document has ever been able to redistribute wealth, power or influence on a societal level and maintain any real equality. Certainly not communism which if anything further concentrates power and effective wealth into a smaller class of elites that control everything.. Redistribution of wealth is something that is done as a result of force and usually ends up with just a different set of people with wealth power and influence above others without really leveling the playing field.

If anything having power derived from the people in the broadest modern sense ensures that we can at least limit the power of the elite.

Black and white, day and night

[Geoffrey.landis]

... Actually, correction. It's quite possible to think in terms of black and white when dealing with law and order.

I think you've nailed it there. It's very easy for the security people to see things in black and white; that anything that gives them more power to stop the bad guys-- and there actually are bad guys here, you know-- has to be good, and anybody who tries to limit that power has to be bad.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[easyTree]

But in a democracy, where the government is accountable to the people, ...

Ahaha; the what is what?

Ahhahhahha rofl.

Where would one find such a place?

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[easyTree]

Serves us with carrots, green beans and an high-fat sauce.

who's doing more damage?

[Lead Butthead]

One does damage to all the underhanded acts the government is engaging.
The other damages the institution in which the country is founded upon.
Who's more damaging?

Snowden Is A Hero

[BrendaEM]

We now know what we thought before because of him.

A government is an organic entity that seem not have to capacity to admit that it was wrong and unlawful.
Those who broke the supreme law of the land, Our U.S. Constitution should instead be arrested and tried.

Re:Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pard

[easyTree]

Fumble-fail or javascript bug?
Please ignore.

Re: Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Par

[Anonymous Coward]

We aren't the enemy. We are the slaves. Anyone who tries to organize or inspire the slaves to revolt is the enemy.

Motivation for report

[CountStGermain]

Could it just be possible that this an effort to head off a possible presidential pardon, or least make such a pardon appear to be ill-considered?

A blistered butt should be administered to congres

[sgt_doom]

A "blistering report" by the insider trading, lyingist douchetards who never, ever went after the banksters for all their perfidy, but instead still enable them as they receive their filthy payoffs. Too bad that fourth flight didn't fly into congress on 9/11!

Re:Yeah, ripe with the NSA harvest

[GuB-42]

I thought about this too. Snowden being a NSA puppet would really be the move of a grandmaster. It would be awesome in all senses of the word. I almost want to believe this.

However, using Hanlon's razor, it think that the NSA is simply a bloated administration and that Snowden's leaks are the results of sheer incompetence.

Re:The other side of the coin

[TsuruchiBrian]

I didn't say they pay him. I said they pay for his food and lodging (i.e. they give him food and a place to live). This is standard for any prisoner, because if you don't they stop being a prisoner and become a corpse.

Re:The other side of the coin

[david_thornley]

Snowden's actions are much more like Manning's than Assange's.

Re:The FBI over Clinton already justify his pardon

[david_thornley]

Okay, find me a case of someone who negligently got classified material where it shouldn't be and faced felony prosecution. The cases I know of where there was criminal prosecution involve deliberate moves of classified material to unauthorized places.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

I might give you a mod point if I ever got one. Then again, it's rather obvious, isn't it?

The muddying-the-waters strategy is especially popular with the Chinese communists. You know about the 50-cent Party, right? I'm convinced that some of the trolls around here are working for Trump's 50-cents-promised-but-never-paid Party. Hard to believe anyone could be really be so ignorant or insane, but there appear to be plenty of people who will fake it for some reason or other. (Maybe I'm projecting my excessive reductionism to monetary motivations?)

Re:Yeah, ripe with the NSA harvest

[shanen]

I'm blanking on the title of the book, but it was about the internal problems of the CIA. Many of the problems involved moles, paranoia about moles, and meta-paranoia about the paranoia about the moles, double agents, triple agents, ad infinitum. My fuzzy memory is that one of the top spies in charge of finding leaks was actually revealed to be a leaker or mole...

If the NSA has any trace of similar paranoia, they certainly must be looking for potential Snowdens. It seems that your position is that no one within the NSA has that much competence to play the grandmaster, whereas my position is that the NSA is desperately seeking such people and probably has one or more of them. That is not to deny that even the grandmaster might fall from the tree (as the Japanese proverb says).

Re: Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pa

[hackwrench]

We may be the slaves, but Thomas Hobbes reassures everyone that we really are our own worst enemy and need protection from ourselves by the government threatening us in order to keep us in line. Plato? Aristotle? Completely wrong according to Thomas Hobbes.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Just agreeing and don't you wish slashdot would let you fix typos like "password" for "passport"?

Re: Sharia law and craziness

[hackwrench]

I made the comment that the US government was already too close to Sharia law for my tastes and I got compared to a Muslim. Now that's crazy!

Re: Constitutional integrity

[hackwrench]

Well maybe if the Constitution was created by people who actually meant the provisions to restrain government power to hold water, it might. I don't know about the other players, but the Hamiltonians who wanted strong government and advocated the hardest for the Federal government were believers in Thomas Hobbes' philosophy which promoted the notion of government with absolute authority. They accepted the restrictive clauses knowing that the rest of the document rendered them ineffective, such as not having grand juries determine whether government officials committed crimes while in office.

Re: SSNs

[hackwrench]

We should be able to change our Social Security Numbers at will and they should increase the digits when they run out.

Re:The other side of the coin

[F.Ultra]

OMG, didn't see that one before :-D

two types of people

[peawormsworth]

There are two types of people in this world:

1. Those who want to be watched all the time, because they think it is safer.

2. Those who want to left alone, because they think it is safer.

IMO, history shows that those in group #2 are correct and those in group #1 are incorrect most of the time. These politicians are in group #1.

Re:The other side of the coin

[gweihir]

It _is_ rather obvious. But then, recognizing "obvious" requires actual common sense, and that is something unfortunately not common.

You may be right on the greedy (but really stupid) Trump-fans. Many people cannot recognize reality if it punches them in the face. Sure, Hillary is evil, but she does want a future for the US. Trump cares only about Trump, and that makes him much, much more dangerous.

Re:The other side of the coin

[shanen]

Higher probability of the mod point, but the artificial scarcity of mod points is one of the problems of slashdot. Apparently rather than fix the underlying design and conceptual problems of moderation, they've mostly nuked it by restricting the mod points to some secret elite?

Re:The other side of the coin

[gweihir]

No idea. I do get mod-points pretty frequently though. Currently have some. My impression is that there is some relation to posting behavior, but what exactly I have no idea. It does seem to help if you mod up more than down though when you have points.

Moderation is always off topic?

[shanen]

Well, many years ago I would get them from time to time, but never often. At some point I stopped getting any.

More subjective, but my impression is that there are fewer mod points being given out these years, too. In particular, "funny" posts seem much scarcer. Or maybe the real world has gotten sadder?

Re:The FBI over Clinton already justify his pardon

[RespekMyAthorati]

The cases I know of where there was criminal prosecution involve deliberate moves of classified material to unauthorized places

Unauthorized places, like someone's unsecured computer in an unsecured home?