It's so amazing to me that geeks can act so knowledgeable about the Constitution and be so ignorant of how it actually works in the real world.
If he got stymied by the Executive he was supposed to Check and Balance said Executive by snitching to Congress. Wyden would have loved this data dump. More importantly Wyden would have been able to decide which bits of it could be released without hurting legitimate intelligence operations, whereas all Greenwald can be counted on to do is make sure he gets paid for releasing the info.
Show me a government that isn't hypocritical about something and I'll show a fantasy land. The world is too damn complicated for anyone to not be a hypocrite.
For example you are acting surprised that the government doesn't take a maximalist view of Fourth Amendment rights. This has been obvious to everyone else for years. It's very hard to not be searched by a cop when a cop wants to search you. He searches you, and if he finds nothing he fills out a form saying that you wouldn't look him in the eye (or that he didn't like the look in your eyes, or that your were standing still too long, or some BS). Hell, the abortion conflict should tell you how important the Fourth is to the Courts. Abortion is a Fourth Amendment privacy right, and it's under constant attack, and the Courts are constantly chipping away at it.
Either you didn't think the 4th was important enough to pay attention, or you simply assumed that everything was ok because you're not a black dude from NYC or a Texan chick who might need an abortion.
If should entered into it there wouldn't be a government. We'd all be living in a utopia, with no terrorism, poverty, theft, disease, etc.
In practical terms the only people who can order a government around are members of that government. That's kinda the definition of a government. Which means that at some level the people who decide whether a government report is secret or not are gonna be part of the government that wrote the report.
And since when is spying on a foreign head of government a crime? Because the only legtal change likely to come out of this is that Obama will sign a treaty agreeing to cut that shit out. Everyone involved will know it's a lie.
Pet peeve alert: Germany's a Republic. That means the Head of State is (by definition) the President. Last time I checked that was a guy names Johannes Rau, but I haven't checked in years because he's powerless. Their President technically outranks Merkel, but has less power because Merkel is Head of Government.
Moreover you are assuming that because Sweden and Brazil exist most of the world's countries act like Sweden and Brazil. The French undoubtedly have more then taps on the phones of their numerous African Allies. If Netanyahu could get a tap on Obama's phone he almost certainly would do that shit. If you're Sweden or Brazil you can swim above the fray, and not get involved; because it won't really matter if you do get involved. The US doesn't have that option, thus we tap Merkel's phone to get extra insight into her actions.
BTW, giving this info to journalists is part of the problem. Their job isn't to understand what the NSA is supposed to do, it's to understand what interests people. It's no accident that we're hearing stories of perfectly legal NSA operations in Germany and Brazil, but nothing about the Russians or the Chinese.
He gave aid and comfort to the United States' enemies — the American people? Because he told us about the crimes being committed against us on our own dime?
Since when has Angela Merkel been an American?
That's Snowden's problem dealing with US-Government-types. many of them would probably be sympathetic to the argument that he had a duty to stop PRISM. But many of them are gonna see that he outed the perfectly legal operation against Merkel and think "he betrayed that operation, therefore he is by definition a traitor."
That's the problem with being a data dump guy. Unless you personally vet every damn document you dump you're gonna dump at least one thing people think you shouldn't have dumped, and therefore you'll be hated.
Is this belief based on enjoyment of being ruled by authoritarian criminals, hatred of the US Constitution, basing your opinion on the "facts" from television, or something else? Are you a powerful criminal, such as a mob boss, who empathizes with the law-breakers drunk on the power they have over the rest of us?
Goddamn that's a ridiculous question. It's so ridiculous I must incorporate it into my rhetoric to prove it's ricidulousness.
Are you a mob boss?
Because by making it hard for the NSA to get data you mae it easier for mob boss's to stay under the RADAR.
[...] and will eventually pay...
He's already paid — he had to abandon his home, friends, and family in order to report serious crimes being committed against us by our government, so that we'd be able to defend ourselves, demand accountability, and try to restore the rule of law, as based on our Constitution.
To be a crime in the United States something has to be against a statute. Which specific statute are you referring to?
Oh you don't have a statute. In fact the actual statutes say that as long as the NSA gets a warrant from the FISA Court it can collect whatever the fuck it wants. And it had the warrant.
You can argue that the FISA Court was wrong and the warrants unconstitutionally broad, or that the statute was wrong and they shoulda used the Circuit Courts. Given that you just intentionally interpreted "traitor" as a strict legal term you can't object ot me using "crime" in it's strict, legal form. Therefore you must supply a statute.
By the way, you're not really a "citizen" anymore, but something more akin to a subject who's being criminally victimized by your own government — or you're in on it, or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Hell if I know what's going on in your head... I'm glad that I was informed about these criminal activities being committed against us using our own tax dollars, and have the self-determination and soundness of mind to put that information to use. You use it to bellyache about the messenger being a "traitor"; well, look in the mirror, buddy. If you support the criminals in power, you're closer to being a traitor than Snowden is. It seems to me you'd shit on the US Constitution because those entrusted to uphold it tell you it's the right thing to do. You should try reading it first.
There's nothing I could do to repay my debt of gratitude to Ed Snowden. Instead, what I do is I try to inform others about these ongoing crimes, tell them how they can protect themselves somewhat, and try to explain why the Democratic and Republican parties are for the most part criminal enterprises with our interests at the bottom of their agendas, so that they might find a more honest parties' candidates they might not have previously considered voting for.
Here's the thing you have to keep in mind: Reading is not understanding.
For example, according to a strict reading of the Constitution the President and Senate have equal powers in making foreign policy. In practical terms the early Senators decided that would never work, so they let the President
1) People hate political arguments. Many times I have thought someone was a moron, but not said anything because the argument would have been a waste of time.
2) Most people have lives. This means they don't follow the issues closely, which means they don't have a strong opinion. Your well-thought-out support for Snowden sounds well-thought-out and grounded in American principles they go with it.
3) The only groups that actually care are ineffective techno-libertarians (this is probably you), and highly effective current/former members of the national security establishment. For example, most veterans seem to agree with at least one of the NSA operations he outed, which means he is by definition a traitor.
That Snowden didn't won the Nobel Peace Prize (but did the organization that aligned closely with current US message) gives you a hint that at least some parts of europe are just following US orders, so no chance for president of european parliament neither.
And they are now realizing that that submission don't saves them from being victims of the US spying/sabotaging machine too.
You know there are worse fates then having your data in a database in Washington DC. It could be in Moscow. Countries like Poland probably don't like that their data is in anybody's database, but they have some pretty strong experiences with what precisely happens when your superpower ally decides to abuse it's data on your people. And they can confirm that it's much better to be in US database then the Russian.
I'm not saying that the US was actually right to collect all the data it collected, especially the data on private citizens, but a lot of you guys are acting like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your entire lives. This is the worst thing that's happened to any of your relatives. This is the worst thing you can possibly imagine happening to anyone. And it's not good, but it's just not that bad.
He's got plenty to leak. He was the guy who taught NSA spooks China's spying capabilities. this means he could gut China's spying capabilities with a single press release, using only the data that exists in his head.
But he won't do that because the Russians want him to be a quiet, boring propaganda victory for them.
Snowden has a better chance of being elected President of the European Parliament than he does President of the United States.
When did the U.S. swap governments with East Germany? A Republic an not survive when the government keeps data bases on all it's citizens. If the Supreme Court wasn't in the pockets of the fascists now running this country, we could have our Constitution back and become a Republic again. Presently the Executive Branch run the entire country and the other two branches are lapdogs.
You do realize that the US government has historically had more data on it's citizens then almost any other government in the world? It's called the US Census, and you had a patriotic duty to answer those questions. Hell, you can't run a republic at all without a very large database on people, their ages, and their place of residence. It's called a voter roll. Well technically you can run a Republic without voter-rolls, because a dictatorship without a King is technically a Republic, but that's not what you meant by the word.
Posts like this are actually the major reason I dislike Snowden. The US government has a truly hellish history of oppression. In the list of most evillest things the US has ever done, compiling a database on it's citizens features in precisely one of the entries. Japanese internment would not have been possible without the Census. But Jim Crow, the Posse Comitatus Act genocide of black southerners of the late 19th century, slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, various Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, etc. no Federal agent used anything like a database.
In other words: Yes your rights are violated when some Fed reads your email. But pretending that "rights violated" = "sent to gulag" is as ridiculous as it is stupid.
Say what you will about Snowden he released all kinds of data on NSA operations that were perfectly legal. Tapping the Chancellor's phone wasn't nice, but it is not only perfectly legal it's also pretty much the entire reason we created the NSA in the first place.
Suppose that you have friends, one of them is particulary nice with you, you let him pass the weekends in your house, go with him and your family on vacations, and so on. Then this guy tells (and proves) you that your "friend" is stealing you, banging your wife, that was him the one that broke your windows not your son, poisoning your food, and plotting to make your boss fire you. So, your reaction is (a) put in jail the guy that warned you, calling him traitor, killer or whatever, while keeping in close touch with your friend as nothing has happened (b) thank that guy, get rid or apart of your "friend" or try to put him in jail ?
Seem that you will pick (a)
Analogy fail.
The US hasn't used this data to physically harm anyone. There are plenty of allegations that the US used the data for economic advantage, but no examples of specific operations that did so. And if such operations existed Snowden would have exposed them.
So in this analogy the "friend" is collecting all kinds of data on you and your wife, but not doing anything with it. That is a violation of your privacy rights, but if privacy rights violations were fatal there wouldn't be any black people in NYC.
The problem Snowden faces is that while a lot of people want people like Snowden when he's on their side, they go completely berserk when people like Snowden are not. That's why even as many countries rail against the conduct Snowden disclosed, most are very uncomfortable about unambiguously condoning his behavior directly. If a Snowden decided to leak the identities of Anonymous participants for what they perceived as the greater good for example - something which isn't even illegal - I doubt they would get the same deference afforded to Snowden.
France is the obvious example. They clearly want to get some mileage out of protesting some of his allegations, but OTOH when they thought he was on Morales' plane they not only refused to let Morales enter the country they convinced Spain, Portugal and Italy to follow suit.
Snowden will live out his days in Russia, saying exactly what Putin allows him to say. Obama won't make a big deal about getting him out of Russia, because an actual trial would be inconvenient and lead to lots more Americans talking about the NSA. But if he's allowed to go someplace that doesn't have a reputation for being absolutely evil to gays, and semi-Democratic on a good day the US will have to seriously downgrade it's relationship with that country.
Start with the revelation that we spy on allies. That shouldn't be a revelation to anyone, and most of them probably knew exactly what was going on. So a lot of this European and Latin American angst is probably cynical pols playing for the cameras.
But not all of them knew everything, which means that programs that are legal and strengthen the US will have to end due to his actions.
So most Americans like him. Most Americans liked Bradley Manning.
Snowden's got a huge problem in that he was trusted by the government with data, and he abused that trust. Some of that can be justified by saying he wanted to expose mass data collection. But that's not all he exposed. He also exposed spy operations on quite a few countries. If the US Government lets him get away with that then they risk all kinds of other operations coming to light.
For example it would be pretty much impossible for us to maintain a relationship to Israel if we weren't pretty sure one of them (aka: a Spy) would tip off one of us if they were about to take some aggressive action. They couldn't maintain a relationship with us if they weren't pretty sure somebody in the US Government would tip them off if the Saudis started offering toothsome bribes. Both sides know this, but neither side's public really understands it, so therefore it's a really bad idea to encourage young idealistic state department staff to tell the public "General X is on the CIA payroll."
Actually the entire problem the US has is it's designed to be too collaborative. "Checks and balances" is a fancy way of saying "if all y'all motherfuckers can't agree on shit, shit don't happen." The Senate makes consensus requirements even more onerous because one guy can bring the entire Legislature to a halt for six days per bill voted on. Any Senator can force three days of debate on the question of "Should we debate Bill X," when those three days are up he can force another three days of debate on the actual vote. If the House insists on changes to the bill the Senator can add another three days by filibustering the conference report.
The end result is a legislature that talks a whole bunch of shit about shit (which nobody will care about six months from now), and doesn't actually do anything, which allows the Executive branch to run wild. Since the elected people in the Executive are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with aforementioned BS (which nobody will care about in six months) Obama doesn't have time to over-see the Executive. Which means that the executive branch people running wild have very little to do with the people we actually elect. In a Westminster system nobody would believe a PM who claimed he didn't know he's tapped Merkel's phone. In the US everybody's like "Oh I can see why if they put in the fifth bullet point of a presentation that he had to squeeze in between dealing with Islamists/political opponents with a political death wish/North Korea/etc. Obama might not notice that."
More collaborative government would just make this worse. You could never change anything complicated because individual voters always vote no on complex changes. When things get rough (ie: the ObamaCare rollout) they tend to decide to abandon the changes on the basis that if everything stays the same there's no risk of things getting worse. You'd end up with a lot of small-c-conservative stuff. For example, it would be impossible to change the zoning in any neighborhood because the local busy-bodies would all vote hell no and nobody else would bother voting. On national issues it would be even worse. If you have a vote on gun control people aren't going to let you sit out of the gun control debate.
You're wrong on the gerrymandering math. In IL we did the gerrymandering and we won 12-6. In OH they did the gerrymandering and they won 12-4. PA was 13-5. That 72-75% of the seats when they gerrymander, vs 67% for us, AND we have more votes to play in IL then they did in OH or PA. Gerrymandering is part of our problem, but it's not like Jesus coming down from heaven and redrawing all the districts in a fair manner would magically solve our problems. If he did un-fair, pro-us districts like they have in IL that might do something. But fair districts lose us a couple seats in IL, and don't solve the problem of our huge pile of wasted votes in Cuyahoga, Lucas, etc. in OH.
As for the political situation in Jan. 2012, don't make the mistake of assuming the other side will always make the same dumb mistake. In particular don't assume that a lot of GOPers who want cushy jobs from industry when they retire won't calculate that screwing the tea Parties on immigration reform is a good risk to take in exchange for actually ending ObamaCare. In principle I'd agree that you're probably right, and they probably won't risk a compromise, but a) if healthcare.gov doesn't start working soon they won't need to offer much, and b) this isn't the lottery. If I'm 75% sure we win, that means there's a 25% chance we lose everything and never get it back.
As for the 7-8 million number, keep in mind that the start-date in the American people's mind isn't Jan.1. It's October 1. The number they're thinking of is the 15 million who were supposed to sign up on HealthCare.gov. If we aren't don't have a significant number from that site months after the website was supposed to go live the American people's response is not gonna be "it was a nice idea, it's good that they're trying, let's spend the next six months being tolerant of their mistakes." It's probably gonna be something along the lines of "Obama is goddamned moron and I never should have voted for him.
I have no clue evidence one way or the other Boeing offered a bribe. I suspect not. Airbus is partly French, and the French have much better industrial espionage capability then the US, so a Boeing bribe would probably have been detected and re-re-opened the bidding process.
As for general NSA behavior, you do realize that Snowden claims to have released all the dirty laundry? Dirty laundry that would necessarily include a memo entitled "MEMO TO NEWBIES: We Ignore Violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." The US is not France. Our big bureaucratic organizations do not put one thing on the paperwork while doing another. The NSA is almost certainly turning people over when it catches them giving bribes, and it's ever-present surveillance is probably a major reason we actually enforce the FCPA. Most other countries have an equivalent, but never seem to charge anyone with violating it.
That's the problem with all allegations of NSA economic skulduggery. They should be backed up with detailed allegations from docs Snowden leaked, but they aren't. Which means that a) they probably didn't happen and b) even if they did accusing the NSA of doing them without evidence is counter-productive.
Yeah Europeans and the 2% of the US who are techno-libertarian would agree with you, but they already agree with you. The people you need are gonna read your last post and think you're a Chavez fan.
If you'd focused on grabbing innocent people's data, that Merkel has been phone tapped by both the Commies and the US (and Obama may have lied about it to her face more then once), etc. you could convince those people. Making some shit up, and claiming it must be true because the NSA sucks will not do that.
Gerrymandering doesn't help Dems, but it's only part part of the problem. Much of the problem is that Dems live in areas that vote Obama at ridiculous rates, whereas Republicans tend to live in areas that vote GOP at high rates (but not overwhelming rates). In gerrymandering terms Dems tend to pack themselves into highly Democratic districts, which means that they have a lot of wasted votes in their urban core, whereas strongly conservative rural districts waste just enough votes that Dems shouldn;t bother campaigning there.
Here's a made-up example that shows how the math works: There's a state with 2.25 million people. 750k live in the big city, 1.5 million live in rural areas. That's worth three Congressional districts. It's a D+10 state, which means it usually gives 55% of it's vote to the Democrats. That means there's 1.65 districts worth of Democrats in the state.The natural district lines are one for the Big city, and then cut the rurals in half.
But Big Cities are very, very Democratic. This one votes 80% Democratic. This means that there's only.85 districts worth of Democratic voters to spread out among the two rural districts, which means in a strong Democratic state two of the three Congressman are Republicans who always get 57.5%. Basically the only way to get a state Congressional delegation that represents the will of the people of the state (ie: one Dem district, one district leaning Dem, and a GOP district) would be to gerrymander the big city in half. But in most states that would technically be against the rules.
You can fiddle with the numbers some, but as long as the truly big cities vote more strongly Dem then vast amounts of GOP real estate vote GOP the GOP is gonna have an edge in House districts.
As for political environment, I meant exactly that. A big part of the GOP's problem was that nobody was particularly unhappy with Obama, or worked up about ObamaCare. o Democrats, not even the ones who ran on an anti-Obama platform (ie: Manchin) were biting. The GOP were being major pains in the ass, and the mushy middle didn't see a good reason for them to be major pains in the ass.
In mid-January if we don't have 7-8 million people signed up on the exchange ObamaCare could look like a total disaster. The GOP could look like saviors for a) getting that annoying website news off our damn screens and b) having a potential solution to the website problem. Moreover in January if the problems aren't fixed Manchin/Landriue/etc. will be under intense pressure to throw Obama under the bus. The GOP will need six Dems to force Obama to veto a plan that solves the debt/budget problems while gutting ObamaCare, and under those circumstances they could get it. Especially if they do a brilliant thing and include some bribes like immigration reform.
OTOH the Exchange could be fixed. Or some new thing (like that Syria mess from August) could blow it off our TV screens. Maybe by January the media gets bored of blaming Obama, and starts blaming the various Governors who chose to give Obama the job of setting up their state Exchange. California and New York, for example, are doing fine.
1) I really don't think I need to defend a spy program that stopped a contract from going to the company that paid the highest bribe. That was a good thing. If you want to give me more opportunities to imply you're a kleptocrat-friend by attacking this use of SigInt I will be very happy to take them.
2) It's not hard for the anti-NSA side to stop me from talking about this. I have never brought industrial espionage up. But if the anti-NSA side does it is highly relevant that the only case where US Industrial Espionage has even been alleged is a case of preventing corruption.
It's actually stupid for them to bring this up at all, because every second we spend arguing over whether some rich-ass businessman got crewed because he sucked at bribes, or because the NSA violated his rights is a minute we are not arguing about the privacy rights of millions of ordinary European. It was fucking stupid for Greenwald and Snowden to even mention this words anyplace normal people will read them because they will lose the industrial espionage debate every time, and by the time they've gotten their asses whipped on that debate something else will coma along to distract people.
The current GOP is in a very weird place. They win whites, they win older people, and they win rural areas. The geography means that voting base would give them the House without any work. But the same geography dooms them state-wide in most states, and nation-wide. They consistently get 45% of the national vote with that base. Any GOP pol who tries to grow that base by appealing to anyone not white/rural/old gets killed in primaries by the white/rural/oldsters who actually show up for primaries.
Thus when Ted Cruz had his idea, and white/rural/oldsters loved it everyone else had to go along with it. And kept going along with it until the polls got really bad.
I suspect that's gonna happen again in January. Altho if the Federal Exchange still isn't working in January the political environment might be better for a shutdown.
On a personal level I don't blame her for being unhappy. But as a simple matter of public policy she is a perfectly valid target for surveillance. That's not a matter for debate, it's a simple fact. The NSA's entire job is top spy on people like Angela Merkel.
She's a good enough politician, with a dominant position within Europe, and the Stasi-story is heart-rending enough, that she can make a case against NSA wiretaps quite effectively, but that doesn't imply she's not wrong on the facts.
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There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.
He did. The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.
The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him.
It's so amazing to me that geeks can act so knowledgeable about the Constitution and be so ignorant of how it actually works in the real world.
If he got stymied by the Executive he was supposed to Check and Balance said Executive by snitching to Congress. Wyden would have loved this data dump. More importantly Wyden would have been able to decide which bits of it could be released without hurting legitimate intelligence operations, whereas all Greenwald can be counted on to do is make sure he gets paid for releasing the info.
Show me a government that isn't hypocritical about something and I'll show a fantasy land. The world is too damn complicated for anyone to not be a hypocrite.
For example you are acting surprised that the government doesn't take a maximalist view of Fourth Amendment rights. This has been obvious to everyone else for years. It's very hard to not be searched by a cop when a cop wants to search you. He searches you, and if he finds nothing he fills out a form saying that you wouldn't look him in the eye (or that he didn't like the look in your eyes, or that your were standing still too long, or some BS). Hell, the abortion conflict should tell you how important the Fourth is to the Courts. Abortion is a Fourth Amendment privacy right, and it's under constant attack, and the Courts are constantly chipping away at it.
Either you didn't think the 4th was important enough to pay attention, or you simply assumed that everything was ok because you're not a black dude from NYC or a Texan chick who might need an abortion.
If should entered into it there wouldn't be a government. We'd all be living in a utopia, with no terrorism, poverty, theft, disease, etc.
In practical terms the only people who can order a government around are members of that government. That's kinda the definition of a government. Which means that at some level the people who decide whether a government report is secret or not are gonna be part of the government that wrote the report.
And since when is spying on a foreign head of government a crime? Because the only legtal change likely to come out of this is that Obama will sign a treaty agreeing to cut that shit out. Everyone involved will know it's a lie.
Please cite the statute.
I suspect the poster accusing Obama of breaking laws doesn't mean actual laws (ie: statutes). He means the Constitution.
Pet peeve alert:
Germany's a Republic. That means the Head of State is (by definition) the President. Last time I checked that was a guy names Johannes Rau, but I haven't checked in years because he's powerless. Their President technically outranks Merkel, but has less power because Merkel is Head of Government.
Moreover you are assuming that because Sweden and Brazil exist most of the world's countries act like Sweden and Brazil. The French undoubtedly have more then taps on the phones of their numerous African Allies. If Netanyahu could get a tap on Obama's phone he almost certainly would do that shit. If you're Sweden or Brazil you can swim above the fray, and not get involved; because it won't really matter if you do get involved. The US doesn't have that option, thus we tap Merkel's phone to get extra insight into her actions.
BTW, giving this info to journalists is part of the problem. Their job isn't to understand what the NSA is supposed to do, it's to understand what interests people. It's no accident that we're hearing stories of perfectly legal NSA operations in Germany and Brazil, but nothing about the Russians or the Chinese.
He gave aid and comfort to the United States' enemies — the American people? Because he told us about the crimes being committed against us on our own dime?
Since when has Angela Merkel been an American?
That's Snowden's problem dealing with US-Government-types. many of them would probably be sympathetic to the argument that he had a duty to stop PRISM. But many of them are gonna see that he outed the perfectly legal operation against Merkel and think "he betrayed that operation, therefore he is by definition a traitor."
That's the problem with being a data dump guy. Unless you personally vet every damn document you dump you're gonna dump at least one thing people think you shouldn't have dumped, and therefore you'll be hated.
Is this belief based on enjoyment of being ruled by authoritarian criminals, hatred of the US Constitution, basing your opinion on the "facts" from television, or something else? Are you a powerful criminal, such as a mob boss, who empathizes with the law-breakers drunk on the power they have over the rest of us?
Goddamn that's a ridiculous question. It's so ridiculous I must incorporate it into my rhetoric to prove it's ricidulousness.
Are you a mob boss?
Because by making it hard for the NSA to get data you mae it easier for mob boss's to stay under the RADAR.
[...] and will eventually pay...
He's already paid — he had to abandon his home, friends, and family in order to report serious crimes being committed against us by our government, so that we'd be able to defend ourselves, demand accountability, and try to restore the rule of law, as based on our Constitution.
To be a crime in the United States something has to be against a statute. Which specific statute are you referring to?
Oh you don't have a statute. In fact the actual statutes say that as long as the NSA gets a warrant from the FISA Court it can collect whatever the fuck it wants. And it had the warrant.
You can argue that the FISA Court was wrong and the warrants unconstitutionally broad, or that the statute was wrong and they shoulda used the Circuit Courts. Given that you just intentionally interpreted "traitor" as a strict legal term you can't object ot me using "crime" in it's strict, legal form. Therefore you must supply a statute.
By the way, you're not really a "citizen" anymore, but something more akin to a subject who's being criminally victimized by your own government — or you're in on it, or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Hell if I know what's going on in your head... I'm glad that I was informed about these criminal activities being committed against us using our own tax dollars, and have the self-determination and soundness of mind to put that information to use. You use it to bellyache about the messenger being a "traitor"; well, look in the mirror, buddy. If you support the criminals in power, you're closer to being a traitor than Snowden is. It seems to me you'd shit on the US Constitution because those entrusted to uphold it tell you it's the right thing to do. You should try reading it first.
There's nothing I could do to repay my debt of gratitude to Ed Snowden. Instead, what I do is I try to inform others about these ongoing crimes, tell them how they can protect themselves somewhat, and try to explain why the Democratic and Republican parties are for the most part criminal enterprises with our interests at the bottom of their agendas, so that they might find a more honest parties' candidates they might not have previously considered voting for.
Here's the thing you have to keep in mind:
Reading is not understanding.
For example, according to a strict reading of the Constitution the President and Senate have equal powers in making foreign policy. In practical terms the early Senators decided that would never work, so they let the President
Keep in mind three things:
1) People hate political arguments. Many times I have thought someone was a moron, but not said anything because the argument would have been a waste of time.
2) Most people have lives. This means they don't follow the issues closely, which means they don't have a strong opinion. Your well-thought-out support for Snowden sounds well-thought-out and grounded in American principles they go with it.
3) The only groups that actually care are ineffective techno-libertarians (this is probably you), and highly effective current/former members of the national security establishment. For example, most veterans seem to agree with at least one of the NSA operations he outed, which means he is by definition a traitor.
If he's ever harmed, the world will rise up! That would be the dumbest move in history!
If he's harmed the world will think "gee, I wonder what he did to piss off Czar Vladimir the Terrifying?"
That Snowden didn't won the Nobel Peace Prize (but did the organization that aligned closely with current US message) gives you a hint that at least some parts of europe are just following US orders, so no chance for president of european parliament neither.
And they are now realizing that that submission don't saves them from being victims of the US spying/sabotaging machine too.
You know there are worse fates then having your data in a database in Washington DC. It could be in Moscow. Countries like Poland probably don't like that their data is in anybody's database, but they have some pretty strong experiences with what precisely happens when your superpower ally decides to abuse it's data on your people. And they can confirm that it's much better to be in US database then the Russian.
I'm not saying that the US was actually right to collect all the data it collected, especially the data on private citizens, but a lot of you guys are acting like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your entire lives. This is the worst thing that's happened to any of your relatives. This is the worst thing you can possibly imagine happening to anyone. And it's not good, but it's just not that bad.
He's got plenty to leak. He was the guy who taught NSA spooks China's spying capabilities. this means he could gut China's spying capabilities with a single press release, using only the data that exists in his head.
But he won't do that because the Russians want him to be a quiet, boring propaganda victory for them.
Snowden has a better chance of being elected President of the European Parliament than he does President of the United States.
When did the U.S. swap governments with East Germany? A Republic an not survive when the government keeps data bases on all it's citizens. If the Supreme Court wasn't in the pockets of the fascists now running this country, we could have our Constitution back and become a Republic again. Presently the Executive Branch run the entire country and the other two branches are lapdogs.
You do realize that the US government has historically had more data on it's citizens then almost any other government in the world? It's called the US Census, and you had a patriotic duty to answer those questions. Hell, you can't run a republic at all without a very large database on people, their ages, and their place of residence. It's called a voter roll. Well technically you can run a Republic without voter-rolls, because a dictatorship without a King is technically a Republic, but that's not what you meant by the word.
Posts like this are actually the major reason I dislike Snowden. The US government has a truly hellish history of oppression. In the list of most evillest things the US has ever done, compiling a database on it's citizens features in precisely one of the entries. Japanese internment would not have been possible without the Census. But Jim Crow, the Posse Comitatus Act genocide of black southerners of the late 19th century, slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, various Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, etc. no Federal agent used anything like a database.
In other words:
Yes your rights are violated when some Fed reads your email. But pretending that "rights violated" = "sent to gulag" is as ridiculous as it is stupid.
Or Joe Shmoe disagrees with you.
Say what you will about Snowden he released all kinds of data on NSA operations that were perfectly legal. Tapping the Chancellor's phone wasn't nice, but it is not only perfectly legal it's also pretty much the entire reason we created the NSA in the first place.
Repeat after me: You're an idiot!
You do realize this is only funny if you get him to say "I'm an idiot."
As is you just insulted yourself, and gaver him permission to repeat the insult.
Suppose that you have friends, one of them is particulary nice with you, you let him pass the weekends in your house, go with him and your family on vacations, and so on. Then this guy tells (and proves) you that your "friend" is stealing you, banging your wife, that was him the one that broke your windows not your son, poisoning your food, and plotting to make your boss fire you. So, your reaction is (a) put in jail the guy that warned you, calling him traitor, killer or whatever, while keeping in close touch with your friend as nothing has happened (b) thank that guy, get rid or apart of your "friend" or try to put him in jail ?
Seem that you will pick (a)
Analogy fail.
The US hasn't used this data to physically harm anyone. There are plenty of allegations that the US used the data for economic advantage, but no examples of specific operations that did so. And if such operations existed Snowden would have exposed them.
So in this analogy the "friend" is collecting all kinds of data on you and your wife, but not doing anything with it. That is a violation of your privacy rights, but if privacy rights violations were fatal there wouldn't be any black people in NYC.
The problem Snowden faces is that while a lot of people want people like Snowden when he's on their side, they go completely berserk when people like Snowden are not. That's why even as many countries rail against the conduct Snowden disclosed, most are very uncomfortable about unambiguously condoning his behavior directly. If a Snowden decided to leak the identities of Anonymous participants for what they perceived as the greater good for example - something which isn't even illegal - I doubt they would get the same deference afforded to Snowden.
France is the obvious example. They clearly want to get some mileage out of protesting some of his allegations, but OTOH when they thought he was on Morales' plane they not only refused to let Morales enter the country they convinced Spain, Portugal and Italy to follow suit.
Snowden will live out his days in Russia, saying exactly what Putin allows him to say. Obama won't make a big deal about getting him out of Russia, because an actual trial would be inconvenient and lead to lots more Americans talking about the NSA. But if he's allowed to go someplace that doesn't have a reputation for being absolutely evil to gays, and semi-Democratic on a good day the US will have to seriously downgrade it's relationship with that country.
Start with the revelation that we spy on allies. That shouldn't be a revelation to anyone, and most of them probably knew exactly what was going on. So a lot of this European and Latin American angst is probably cynical pols playing for the cameras.
But not all of them knew everything, which means that programs that are legal and strengthen the US will have to end due to his actions.
So most Americans like him. Most Americans liked Bradley Manning.
Snowden's got a huge problem in that he was trusted by the government with data, and he abused that trust. Some of that can be justified by saying he wanted to expose mass data collection. But that's not all he exposed. He also exposed spy operations on quite a few countries. If the US Government lets him get away with that then they risk all kinds of other operations coming to light.
For example it would be pretty much impossible for us to maintain a relationship to Israel if we weren't pretty sure one of them (aka: a Spy) would tip off one of us if they were about to take some aggressive action. They couldn't maintain a relationship with us if they weren't pretty sure somebody in the US Government would tip them off if the Saudis started offering toothsome bribes. Both sides know this, but neither side's public really understands it, so therefore it's a really bad idea to encourage young idealistic state department staff to tell the public "General X is on the CIA payroll."
Actually the entire problem the US has is it's designed to be too collaborative. "Checks and balances" is a fancy way of saying "if all y'all motherfuckers can't agree on shit, shit don't happen." The Senate makes consensus requirements even more onerous because one guy can bring the entire Legislature to a halt for six days per bill voted on. Any Senator can force three days of debate on the question of "Should we debate Bill X," when those three days are up he can force another three days of debate on the actual vote. If the House insists on changes to the bill the Senator can add another three days by filibustering the conference report.
The end result is a legislature that talks a whole bunch of shit about shit (which nobody will care about six months from now), and doesn't actually do anything, which allows the Executive branch to run wild. Since the elected people in the Executive are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with aforementioned BS (which nobody will care about in six months) Obama doesn't have time to over-see the Executive. Which means that the executive branch people running wild have very little to do with the people we actually elect. In a Westminster system nobody would believe a PM who claimed he didn't know he's tapped Merkel's phone. In the US everybody's like "Oh I can see why if they put in the fifth bullet point of a presentation that he had to squeeze in between dealing with Islamists/political opponents with a political death wish/North Korea/etc. Obama might not notice that."
More collaborative government would just make this worse. You could never change anything complicated because individual voters always vote no on complex changes. When things get rough (ie: the ObamaCare rollout) they tend to decide to abandon the changes on the basis that if everything stays the same there's no risk of things getting worse. You'd end up with a lot of small-c-conservative stuff. For example, it would be impossible to change the zoning in any neighborhood because the local busy-bodies would all vote hell no and nobody else would bother voting. On national issues it would be even worse. If you have a vote on gun control people aren't going to let you sit out of the gun control debate.
You're wrong on the gerrymandering math. In IL we did the gerrymandering and we won 12-6. In OH they did the gerrymandering and they won 12-4. PA was 13-5. That 72-75% of the seats when they gerrymander, vs 67% for us, AND we have more votes to play in IL then they did in OH or PA. Gerrymandering is part of our problem, but it's not like Jesus coming down from heaven and redrawing all the districts in a fair manner would magically solve our problems. If he did un-fair, pro-us districts like they have in IL that might do something. But fair districts lose us a couple seats in IL, and don't solve the problem of our huge pile of wasted votes in Cuyahoga, Lucas, etc. in OH.
As for the political situation in Jan. 2012, don't make the mistake of assuming the other side will always make the same dumb mistake. In particular don't assume that a lot of GOPers who want cushy jobs from industry when they retire won't calculate that screwing the tea Parties on immigration reform is a good risk to take in exchange for actually ending ObamaCare. In principle I'd agree that you're probably right, and they probably won't risk a compromise, but a) if healthcare.gov doesn't start working soon they won't need to offer much, and b) this isn't the lottery. If I'm 75% sure we win, that means there's a 25% chance we lose everything and never get it back.
As for the 7-8 million number, keep in mind that the start-date in the American people's mind isn't Jan.1. It's October 1. The number they're thinking of is the 15 million who were supposed to sign up on HealthCare.gov. If we aren't don't have a significant number from that site months after the website was supposed to go live the American people's response is not gonna be "it was a nice idea, it's good that they're trying, let's spend the next six months being tolerant of their mistakes." It's probably gonna be something along the lines of "Obama is goddamned moron and I never should have voted for him.
I have no clue evidence one way or the other Boeing offered a bribe. I suspect not. Airbus is partly French, and the French have much better industrial espionage capability then the US, so a Boeing bribe would probably have been detected and re-re-opened the bidding process.
As for general NSA behavior, you do realize that Snowden claims to have released all the dirty laundry? Dirty laundry that would necessarily include a memo entitled "MEMO TO NEWBIES: We Ignore Violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act." The US is not France. Our big bureaucratic organizations do not put one thing on the paperwork while doing another. The NSA is almost certainly turning people over when it catches them giving bribes, and it's ever-present surveillance is probably a major reason we actually enforce the FCPA. Most other countries have an equivalent, but never seem to charge anyone with violating it.
That's the problem with all allegations of NSA economic skulduggery. They should be backed up with detailed allegations from docs Snowden leaked, but they aren't. Which means that a) they probably didn't happen and b) even if they did accusing the NSA of doing them without evidence is counter-productive.
Yeah Europeans and the 2% of the US who are techno-libertarian would agree with you, but they already agree with you. The people you need are gonna read your last post and think you're a Chavez fan.
If you'd focused on grabbing innocent people's data, that Merkel has been phone tapped by both the Commies and the US (and Obama may have lied about it to her face more then once), etc. you could convince those people. Making some shit up, and claiming it must be true because the NSA sucks will not do that.
Gerrymandering doesn't help Dems, but it's only part part of the problem. Much of the problem is that Dems live in areas that vote Obama at ridiculous rates, whereas Republicans tend to live in areas that vote GOP at high rates (but not overwhelming rates). In gerrymandering terms Dems tend to pack themselves into highly Democratic districts, which means that they have a lot of wasted votes in their urban core, whereas strongly conservative rural districts waste just enough votes that Dems shouldn;t bother campaigning there.
Here's a made-up example that shows how the math works:
There's a state with 2.25 million people. 750k live in the big city, 1.5 million live in rural areas. That's worth three Congressional districts. It's a D+10 state, which means it usually gives 55% of it's vote to the Democrats. That means there's 1.65 districts worth of Democrats in the state.The natural district lines are one for the Big city, and then cut the rurals in half.
But Big Cities are very, very Democratic. This one votes 80% Democratic. This means that there's only .85 districts worth of Democratic voters to spread out among the two rural districts, which means in a strong Democratic state two of the three Congressman are Republicans who always get 57.5%. Basically the only way to get a state Congressional delegation that represents the will of the people of the state (ie: one Dem district, one district leaning Dem, and a GOP district) would be to gerrymander the big city in half. But in most states that would technically be against the rules.
You can fiddle with the numbers some, but as long as the truly big cities vote more strongly Dem then vast amounts of GOP real estate vote GOP the GOP is gonna have an edge in House districts.
As for political environment, I meant exactly that. A big part of the GOP's problem was that nobody was particularly unhappy with Obama, or worked up about ObamaCare. o Democrats, not even the ones who ran on an anti-Obama platform (ie: Manchin) were biting. The GOP were being major pains in the ass, and the mushy middle didn't see a good reason for them to be major pains in the ass.
In mid-January if we don't have 7-8 million people signed up on the exchange ObamaCare could look like a total disaster. The GOP could look like saviors for a) getting that annoying website news off our damn screens and b) having a potential solution to the website problem. Moreover in January if the problems aren't fixed Manchin/Landriue/etc. will be under intense pressure to throw Obama under the bus. The GOP will need six Dems to force Obama to veto a plan that solves the debt/budget problems while gutting ObamaCare, and under those circumstances they could get it. Especially if they do a brilliant thing and include some bribes like immigration reform.
OTOH the Exchange could be fixed. Or some new thing (like that Syria mess from August) could blow it off our TV screens. Maybe by January the media gets bored of blaming Obama, and starts blaming the various Governors who chose to give Obama the job of setting up their state Exchange. California and New York, for example, are doing fine.
Two points:
1) I really don't think I need to defend a spy program that stopped a contract from going to the company that paid the highest bribe. That was a good thing. If you want to give me more opportunities to imply you're a kleptocrat-friend by attacking this use of SigInt I will be very happy to take them.
2) It's not hard for the anti-NSA side to stop me from talking about this. I have never brought industrial espionage up. But if the anti-NSA side does it is highly relevant that the only case where US Industrial Espionage has even been alleged is a case of preventing corruption.
It's actually stupid for them to bring this up at all, because every second we spend arguing over whether some rich-ass businessman got crewed because he sucked at bribes, or because the NSA violated his rights is a minute we are not arguing about the privacy rights of millions of ordinary European. It was fucking stupid for Greenwald and Snowden to even mention this words anyplace normal people will read them because they will lose the industrial espionage debate every time, and by the time they've gotten their asses whipped on that debate something else will coma along to distract people.
The current GOP is in a very weird place. They win whites, they win older people, and they win rural areas. The geography means that voting base would give them the House without any work. But the same geography dooms them state-wide in most states, and nation-wide. They consistently get 45% of the national vote with that base. Any GOP pol who tries to grow that base by appealing to anyone not white/rural/old gets killed in primaries by the white/rural/oldsters who actually show up for primaries.
Thus when Ted Cruz had his idea, and white/rural/oldsters loved it everyone else had to go along with it. And kept going along with it until the polls got really bad.
I suspect that's gonna happen again in January. Altho if the Federal Exchange still isn't working in January the political environment might be better for a shutdown.
On a personal level I don't blame her for being unhappy. But as a simple matter of public policy she is a perfectly valid target for surveillance. That's not a matter for debate, it's a simple fact. The NSA's entire job is top spy on people like Angela Merkel.
She's a good enough politician, with a dominant position within Europe, and the Stasi-story is heart-rending enough, that she can make a case against NSA wiretaps quite effectively, but that doesn't imply she's not wrong on the facts.