Snowden said that he felt he needed to speak up even knowing that he would have to make sacrifices in his life for doing so. So he goes to Russia? And asks staged questions to Vladimir Putin on state-owned, state-funded, state-backing television?
Russia's underlying currents of a police state and culture of serfdom are something which it has been unable to shake for centuries.
Despite all of the blood shed in attempts to fight them, they keep popping up. The October revolution turned communist optimism into bloody murder for decades, with an end only coming because of a much more pressing focus on killing Germans. Which went much worse, of course, because of Stalin executing a huge portion of his military's leadership in the 1930s, largely thanks to this police state culture.
The Cold War-era Soviet Union, despite all of its pretty obvious flounderings and negatives, was peaceful and glorious compared to earlier times. It reared its ugly head again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While Putin is often criticized for "glorifying" the USSR in stating that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century, he's not exactly wrong. It was a complete government collapse in which everything of value fell into crime and corruption, led by an alcoholic prime minister. What direction does a society with a grand tradition of chekism turn to when faced with massive lawlessness, crime, and corruption? Chekism, of course.
Russia has been a land which practically worships wealth and power for as long as it has been a distinct place with anyone trying to change it having died in the process.
This isn't meant to "bash" Russia, as each society humanity has developed has faced problems of its own, but problems that Russia face have historically been ones of secret police, surveillance, authoritarianism and corruption. Russians know it better than anyone.
So, please, don't say Snowden has no choice. He had lots of choices to make, he had a choice in this, and there are many more points where he can choose in the future. He chose to act in Putin's theater.
If C-programmers make secure programs 85% of the time, it's pretty safe to make something with.
It's not safe to make everything with.
It's like how desks and other furniture will have rounded edges and corners instead of sharp points. Sure, you trust adults not to bump into inanimate objects around the office and hurt themselves, but would you bet on it never happening?
That doesn't make any sense. I haven't actually said I believe that the corrupt piece of trash known as the NSA keeps other spying agencies in check, and you haven't explained how destroying them means they're beneficial.
The facts present themselves otherwise, so if you believe something different, you're the one who's going to have to explain things.
Trustworthy or not is basically irrelevant in a discussion about whether the NSA provides any benefit. Foreign spy agencies can only be assumed to be less trustworthy than the NSA is, especailly if you think they are already cooperating. Disbanding the NSA while allowing the existence of foreign spy agencies means they're cooperating against you without you.
It's not doublespeak at all. Mutual spying creates trust, because without mutual spying, there will most likely be unilateral spying.
Without actual capital-i Intelligence, there can be only speculation. If you think transparency is a good thing and information asymmetry is a bad thing, then mutual spying is something you desire.
Seriously. There will be no weapons on the planet before there is no eavesdropping.
I don't gladly reap any benefits; I want the NSA destroyed. It must be nice to pretend that I love the NSA and believe it's beneficial in your delusions, but please try to remain in reality and not tell other people what they believe.
The NSA keeps other nations' spy agencies in check, so if you want them destroyed, then the NSA therefore must be beneficial.
You reluctantly reap the benefits, then? You shamefully reap the benefits? You self-flagellatingly reap the benefits?
Adverb it however you wish, but reaping in the NSA's benefits isn't a matter of belief.
If you want the NSA to be destroyed, then, by extension, you must wish for every other national espionage systems to also be destroyed simultaneously.
But how would you ever verify that happened without a means of extracting secretive information from other nations?
The poster you replied to is correct -- you don't care so much about the NSA, you care about the NSA potentially spying on you while gladly reaping the benefits of the NSA spying on other people for you.
All of diplomacy is a theater in which everyone is forced to take part as a means of nation-states being polite to each other.
Funny story about the Zimmerman telegram: the British actually read it before anybody, and then had to come up with an elaborate scheme to leak it to the Americans without letting on the fact that they were spying on the Americans.
The Cold War being so recent colors the history of spying to make it look as if it was primarily a strategy used by the USA and the USSR, but the UK has one of the most notorious (and notoriously successful) spying programs since the dawn of history. They spy on absolutely everybody, absolutely all the time, and do it in a very British way in which they're terribly ashamed of it but still simultaneously make slight nods of acknowledgment to each other behind the curtain.
The French aren't far behind in terms of skill and scope, although maybe not quite as much in recent history.
Previous to that, in earlier times, Vienna was for a long time the crypto-capital of the world, being in such a central and important location in Europe.
Anyone who thinks the US government should be hamstringed in its spying efforts by conflating it with surveillance of its own citizens just wishes for a weakened America relative to other nations who would gladly accept a spying advantage with even less trustworthy ambitions.
Anyone who is actually involved in diplomacy and expresses outrage over this is either a total fool or is acting for personal gain.
Thanks for posting this. When I first read his comment, I assumed I was reading a post by an authoritative source who had actually witnessed Napoleon's speech.
That actually dis-incentivizes the Russians from doing that, since that would give everyone access to the files.
That is, of course, assuming that granting him asylum didn't include the precondition of having access in the first place. They want the information, they just don't want everyone to have the information.
While I would have loved to receive an advanced education for free, I really don't understand what all the fuss is about. I worked my way through debt-free and received my "4 year" degree in 5.5 years by going to a state university and living a reduced lifestyle.
so.... you went through subsidized ("free") scooling, and you're wondering why everyone can't do this?
you're insane. You think cabbies should be able to sue if you call and then try to cancel? Do you want to pay upfront for taxi service? if it's such a great loss, why don't you pay for livery service?
Taxis have their drawbacks, but their unrealiability in this sense is actually one of their positives -- their desire to stick to the major routes and highly trafficked areas are what contribute to their flexibility, general availability, and cheap service. If car service were restricted to "verbal contracts" which, if broken, would send them to jail or the target of a civil lawsuit, the prices would go through the roof or they would not be in business.
The dispatcher didn't lie to you, by the way. The dispatcher relayed information to you. If you think the taxi driver lied then lodge a complaint and it should be investigated or he should be reprimanded.
Except he wasn't following the kid for dubious reasons, there had been a large number of break-ins in that complex by blacks.
Zimmerman didn't know what color he was. In any event, the reasons were obviously dubious, because Trayvon was living there and had not broken into anything.
Zimmerman didn't get lost, he doubled back trying to find him and couldn't. Martin laid in ambush for him, instead of continuing the 700ft to his fathers place.
Zimmerman claims to have gotten lost, and committed a pretty serious crime (lying to police, obstructing a murder investigation) if you think he didn't. I mean, everyone KNOWS he was following Trayvon, but that's not what he claims. So he either lied to police or he's absolutely incompetent. We're basically forced to accept that he's incompetent.
True, then again Martin could have kept walking, or called the police himself. Instead he took matters into his own hands and paid for it with is life. Zimmerman on the otherhand, did what any reasonable person would have done if they were looking out for suspicious behavior, and a person fit the profile of those who had already committed criminal actions in the area.
of course he could have, as I said in my post. But you go off the rails right after that -- no reasonable person would allow a person they are suspicious of to introduce their presence and approach close enough to try to grab the reasonable person's loaded weapon.
Zimmerman is either incompetent or a liar, did a bunch of stupid things, ended up shooting someone, and was put on trial for it. Martin was a 17 year old who did a stupid thing and was shot and killed for it.
That's one of the most ironic things about this. The biggest threat to Zimmerman's life was the fact that he decided to walk around with a loaded weapon.
This guy's incompetence knows no bounds. I was hoping he could be barred from doing any community service as a punishment in all this since he is apparently such a huge threat to himself and the people who are forced to be near him.
All the talk and joking about vigilantes harming him in the future is funny for this reason too -- they don't even have to do anything. If he's left to his own devices, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about him accidentally killing himself with his gun, or crushing himself working on his car because he forgot to secure it, or drowning in his own bathtub.
Any sane police department will explicitly prohibit their officers from firing warning shots. Police officers are typically taught to "shoot to stop", meaning they can only fire to stop an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury or whatever. This probably means shooting someone in the torso where it is easiest to hit the target and most likely to cause someone to stop whatever it is they're doing.
A warning shot isn't going to do anything, other than let someone know that they should increase their efforts to run and hide or their efforts to kill the police officer.
The Sanford Police disagree with you, seeing as one of them testified saying that Zimmerman was following martin, just that it's lawful to follow someone.
You're kidding yourself if you think he wasn't following him.
he didn't misread -- Zimmerman supposedly weighed 180 the night of the killing (a year ago), and now weighs in excess of 300 pounds.
I don't know what you're looking at if you can see GZ now and think he weighs 180 pounds. Or if you can compare the way he looks in his police interview videos to video of him standing in the courtroom. He's a tub of lard now.
The prosecution claimed Zimmerman had a duty to retreat but that same duty applied to Martin too. Martin had a phone, he could have called the police and said someone is following me. He could have tried to lose Zimmerman, but instead, he went to confront the cracker ass cracker or whatever racial slur his friend he was on the phone with said he said before hanging up to put Zimmerman in his place.
This is something it seems like most people are missing out on in their rush to polarize.
Many people are trying to dismiss Zimmerman's duty to retreat by saying it was lawful or he had good intentions or whatever, but the fact is he was following the kid for dubious reasons, got lost, and then was ambushed by the person he was following. He should never have allowed himself to be in that situation, and he should have been prepared for Martin to verbally confront him.
Lots of people dismiss Martin's actions because they feel like Zimmerman's behavior was unwarranted, starting with following him. But that doesn't excuse his confrontation of Zimmerman.
The fact is, both of them made dumb mistakes that night, and both of them have paid for it. It will always seem unfair, because Martin was only 17 and, while he should have known better, it's understandable that he didn't know better. And he paid for it with his life.
Zimmerman's life is changed forever because of this, too, but it will never really seem fair because he's incompetent and an idiot who definitely should have known better and got off light compared to Martin.
The whole thing is just a tragedy that didn't need to happen.
Throughout this guy's entire argument, he makes the assumption that the person on trial is, in fact, guilty. Which is exactly what would happen in every single police investigation of a crime and the criminal prosecutions following every act of crime were it not for the fifth amendment.
It's a key part of the presumption of innocence. It doesn't just protect against torture, it protects against police bullying and prevents dubious circumstantial evidence from carrying weight in court.
A government institution paying special attention to political organizations based on their supposed affiliations is, to quote our vice president, a big fucking deal.
You're missing the point. Landlines confer an expectation of privacy because they're a single physical entity which is often buried underground. Cell phones confer no expectation of privacy because they broadcast radio signals into the air, in all directions, for anyone to hear. If someone is talking on a cell phone on the sidewalk in front of your home, they are literally broadcasting a signal through your private property. Why would they ever expect no one to listen in, accidentally or intentionally? If your phone landlines ran through everyone's kitchen for square miles, and required no specialized equipment to be able to listen to it, would you expect to have privacy while using it?
Who cares about 20-30 years ago? Security didn't even matter much back then and we can't rely on people knowing the technical capabilities of the device they use.
You only care about the constitutionality of it now?
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He does have a choice.
Snowden said that he felt he needed to speak up even knowing that he would have to make sacrifices in his life for doing so. So he goes to Russia? And asks staged questions to Vladimir Putin on state-owned, state-funded, state-backing television?
Russia practically invented the modern police state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Russia's underlying currents of a police state and culture of serfdom are something which it has been unable to shake for centuries.
Despite all of the blood shed in attempts to fight them, they keep popping up. The October revolution turned communist optimism into bloody murder for decades, with an end only coming because of a much more pressing focus on killing Germans. Which went much worse, of course, because of Stalin executing a huge portion of his military's leadership in the 1930s, largely thanks to this police state culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
The Cold War-era Soviet Union, despite all of its pretty obvious flounderings and negatives, was peaceful and glorious compared to earlier times. It reared its ugly head again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. While Putin is often criticized for "glorifying" the USSR in stating that the fall of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century, he's not exactly wrong. It was a complete government collapse in which everything of value fell into crime and corruption, led by an alcoholic prime minister. What direction does a society with a grand tradition of chekism turn to when faced with massive lawlessness, crime, and corruption? Chekism, of course.
Russia has been a land which practically worships wealth and power for as long as it has been a distinct place with anyone trying to change it having died in the process.
This isn't meant to "bash" Russia, as each society humanity has developed has faced problems of its own, but problems that Russia face have historically been ones of secret police, surveillance, authoritarianism and corruption. Russians know it better than anyone.
So, please, don't say Snowden has no choice. He had lots of choices to make, he had a choice in this, and there are many more points where he can choose in the future. He chose to act in Putin's theater.
If C-programmers make secure programs 85% of the time, it's pretty safe to make something with.
It's not safe to make everything with.
It's like how desks and other furniture will have rounded edges and corners instead of sharp points. Sure, you trust adults not to bump into inanimate objects around the office and hurt themselves, but would you bet on it never happening?
People can be opposed to changes in marriage for reasons which are not religious.
The facts present themselves otherwise, so if you believe something different, you're the one who's going to have to explain things.
Trustworthy or not is basically irrelevant in a discussion about whether the NSA provides any benefit. Foreign spy agencies can only be assumed to be less trustworthy than the NSA is, especailly if you think they are already cooperating. Disbanding the NSA while allowing the existence of foreign spy agencies means they're cooperating against you without you.
It's not doublespeak at all. Mutual spying creates trust, because without mutual spying, there will most likely be unilateral spying.
Without actual capital-i Intelligence, there can be only speculation. If you think transparency is a good thing and information asymmetry is a bad thing, then mutual spying is something you desire.
Seriously. There will be no weapons on the planet before there is no eavesdropping.
The NSA keeps other nations' spy agencies in check, so if you want them destroyed, then the NSA therefore must be beneficial.
You reluctantly reap the benefits, then? You shamefully reap the benefits? You self-flagellatingly reap the benefits?
Adverb it however you wish, but reaping in the NSA's benefits isn't a matter of belief.
Iraq in 2002 and 2003 is a pretty good example where a lack of good intelligence from spying increased the chances of a war.
The invasion eventually happened because weapons inspectors weren't allowed to do their jobs, remember?
If you want the NSA to be destroyed, then, by extension, you must wish for every other national espionage systems to also be destroyed simultaneously.
But how would you ever verify that happened without a means of extracting secretive information from other nations?
The poster you replied to is correct -- you don't care so much about the NSA, you care about the NSA potentially spying on you while gladly reaping the benefits of the NSA spying on other people for you.
All of diplomacy is a theater in which everyone is forced to take part as a means of nation-states being polite to each other.
Funny story about the Zimmerman telegram: the British actually read it before anybody, and then had to come up with an elaborate scheme to leak it to the Americans without letting on the fact that they were spying on the Americans.
The Cold War being so recent colors the history of spying to make it look as if it was primarily a strategy used by the USA and the USSR, but the UK has one of the most notorious (and notoriously successful) spying programs since the dawn of history. They spy on absolutely everybody, absolutely all the time, and do it in a very British way in which they're terribly ashamed of it but still simultaneously make slight nods of acknowledgment to each other behind the curtain.
The French aren't far behind in terms of skill and scope, although maybe not quite as much in recent history.
Previous to that, in earlier times, Vienna was for a long time the crypto-capital of the world, being in such a central and important location in Europe.
Mutual spying creates trust.
Anyone who thinks the US government should be hamstringed in its spying efforts by conflating it with surveillance of its own citizens just wishes for a weakened America relative to other nations who would gladly accept a spying advantage with even less trustworthy ambitions.
Anyone who is actually involved in diplomacy and expresses outrage over this is either a total fool or is acting for personal gain.
Thanks for posting this. When I first read his comment, I assumed I was reading a post by an authoritative source who had actually witnessed Napoleon's speech.
That actually dis-incentivizes the Russians from doing that, since that would give everyone access to the files.
That is, of course, assuming that granting him asylum didn't include the precondition of having access in the first place. They want the information, they just don't want everyone to have the information.
so.... you went through subsidized ("free") scooling, and you're wondering why everyone can't do this?
you're insane. You think cabbies should be able to sue if you call and then try to cancel? Do you want to pay upfront for taxi service? if it's such a great loss, why don't you pay for livery service?
Taxis have their drawbacks, but their unrealiability in this sense is actually one of their positives -- their desire to stick to the major routes and highly trafficked areas are what contribute to their flexibility, general availability, and cheap service. If car service were restricted to "verbal contracts" which, if broken, would send them to jail or the target of a civil lawsuit, the prices would go through the roof or they would not be in business.
The dispatcher didn't lie to you, by the way. The dispatcher relayed information to you. If you think the taxi driver lied then lodge a complaint and it should be investigated or he should be reprimanded.
Zimmerman didn't know what color he was. In any event, the reasons were obviously dubious, because Trayvon was living there and had not broken into anything.
Zimmerman claims to have gotten lost, and committed a pretty serious crime (lying to police, obstructing a murder investigation) if you think he didn't. I mean, everyone KNOWS he was following Trayvon, but that's not what he claims. So he either lied to police or he's absolutely incompetent. We're basically forced to accept that he's incompetent.
of course he could have, as I said in my post. But you go off the rails right after that -- no reasonable person would allow a person they are suspicious of to introduce their presence and approach close enough to try to grab the reasonable person's loaded weapon.
Zimmerman is either incompetent or a liar, did a bunch of stupid things, ended up shooting someone, and was put on trial for it. Martin was a 17 year old who did a stupid thing and was shot and killed for it.
Neither of their actions excuse the others.
I knew that had something to do with it!
That's one of the most ironic things about this. The biggest threat to Zimmerman's life was the fact that he decided to walk around with a loaded weapon.
This guy's incompetence knows no bounds. I was hoping he could be barred from doing any community service as a punishment in all this since he is apparently such a huge threat to himself and the people who are forced to be near him.
All the talk and joking about vigilantes harming him in the future is funny for this reason too -- they don't even have to do anything. If he's left to his own devices, I wouldn't be surprised to hear about him accidentally killing himself with his gun, or crushing himself working on his car because he forgot to secure it, or drowning in his own bathtub.
Any sane police department will explicitly prohibit their officers from firing warning shots. Police officers are typically taught to "shoot to stop", meaning they can only fire to stop an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury or whatever. This probably means shooting someone in the torso where it is easiest to hit the target and most likely to cause someone to stop whatever it is they're doing.
A warning shot isn't going to do anything, other than let someone know that they should increase their efforts to run and hide or their efforts to kill the police officer.
The Sanford Police disagree with you, seeing as one of them testified saying that Zimmerman was following martin, just that it's lawful to follow someone.
You're kidding yourself if you think he wasn't following him.
he didn't misread -- Zimmerman supposedly weighed 180 the night of the killing (a year ago), and now weighs in excess of 300 pounds.
I don't know what you're looking at if you can see GZ now and think he weighs 180 pounds. Or if you can compare the way he looks in his police interview videos to video of him standing in the courtroom. He's a tub of lard now.
This is something it seems like most people are missing out on in their rush to polarize.
Many people are trying to dismiss Zimmerman's duty to retreat by saying it was lawful or he had good intentions or whatever, but the fact is he was following the kid for dubious reasons, got lost, and then was ambushed by the person he was following. He should never have allowed himself to be in that situation, and he should have been prepared for Martin to verbally confront him.
Lots of people dismiss Martin's actions because they feel like Zimmerman's behavior was unwarranted, starting with following him. But that doesn't excuse his confrontation of Zimmerman.
The fact is, both of them made dumb mistakes that night, and both of them have paid for it. It will always seem unfair, because Martin was only 17 and, while he should have known better, it's understandable that he didn't know better. And he paid for it with his life.
Zimmerman's life is changed forever because of this, too, but it will never really seem fair because he's incompetent and an idiot who definitely should have known better and got off light compared to Martin.
The whole thing is just a tragedy that didn't need to happen.
if you're carrying a loaded weapon, and you enter into a fistfight, then your life is in danger.
I wish I could mod this up.
Throughout this guy's entire argument, he makes the assumption that the person on trial is, in fact, guilty. Which is exactly what would happen in every single police investigation of a crime and the criminal prosecutions following every act of crime were it not for the fifth amendment.
It's a key part of the presumption of innocence. It doesn't just protect against torture, it protects against police bullying and prevents dubious circumstantial evidence from carrying weight in court.
are you kidding?
A government institution paying special attention to political organizations based on their supposed affiliations is, to quote our vice president, a big fucking deal.
You're missing the point. Landlines confer an expectation of privacy because they're a single physical entity which is often buried underground. Cell phones confer no expectation of privacy because they broadcast radio signals into the air, in all directions, for anyone to hear. If someone is talking on a cell phone on the sidewalk in front of your home, they are literally broadcasting a signal through your private property. Why would they ever expect no one to listen in, accidentally or intentionally? If your phone landlines ran through everyone's kitchen for square miles, and required no specialized equipment to be able to listen to it, would you expect to have privacy while using it?
You only care about the constitutionality of it now?