20-40 years ago we had red terrorism all over mainland Europe. If they had had our technological advances back then they might have used them. But whatever they had back then was not well received. Particularly the term Rasterfahndung(dragnet) was very unpopular in Germany. But those terrorists killed bankers/politicians which everybody seemed to be not totally opposed of. One Bavarian politician tried to run for a federal position on a fear&panic platform and got kicked right back home.
When the Oktoberfest got blown up by parties then unknown(recent discoveries point towards an especially moronic Gladio offshoot) people responded by having another one the year after. People just shrugged it off.
Which is why the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied(Deutschland über alles) is horribly misunderstood. It was composed to commemorate the CULTURAL unity. Not the NATIONAL one. There was a bit of a civil war in 1848 in bits of Germany to achieve that but it sort of...fizzled. When the king of Prussia was first offered the position of Emperor by the people he flatly refused it as a "pig's crown". The people could in his understanding not choose their king. That was up to god. Who it turned out to live in France. Versailles to be precise.
Which kind of highlights the huge difference between mainland European monarchy and the one in England. England had a regular parliament of sorts since the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 even if it was only used to levy taxes without too much of a revolt. And every monarch who went against it met a bad end afterwards. Except Henry VIII. Who propably was the only absolutistic(ish) monarch since William the Bastard's line drowned.
Honestly, putting a clear date next to a sovereign state is bound to stir an argument. I do not know what that was supposed to be good for. It's like painting a border around Israel and hoping that nobody will object. Ask a Glaswegian how old the UK is and he won't give you the 1066 date. Thistles, leeks, lions...there's bound to be a huge and pointless argument. And that's even before waking up the French. There might even be a war.
...and got conquered again by William in 1689 who ousted the legitimate sovereign. And after the Stuart line finally died out was ruled by Germans.
England/the UK doesn't have a linear history. It's a squiggly line that breaches several dimensions and branches all over Europe. As history tends to do. A jolly mess it is. If you want to properly fuxor your brain do the same for the same time frame for Germany.
Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.
Frankly that guy armed with Wikipedia and Excel either had a lot of balls or was blissfully unaware into what kind of mess he just stepped. Just wait until the French wake up in the morning.
They are on the brink of a civil war if they don't keep their cool. You can't jail the former executive power of a democracy for "insulting the judicative" and claim you strive for democracy short or mid-term.
But there is a lesson to be learned from Egypt. You can't run a country when you nicely carve the population into "us" and "them". You can't follow your religious convictions no matter how sincere when you are also to look after the needs who are not of your flock. The Morsi administration tried to run the country as either a Sharia-run country(like Iran) or a democracy. Those are not compatible. Democracy thrives on a synergy of consent/dissent and is all about compromise. Religions are phenomally bad at that since they tend to be in possession of the absolute truth. The Egyptian public voted the Muslim Brotherhood into power since they were expected to be the most honest compared to the previous kleptocratic elite. They mostly got that. But the terrible misunderstanding was that the voters thought the MBs knew how to build a democracy. They even bungled writing their constitution.
This military coup is a chance. We either get to watch the formation of an independent democracy or another Nasser regime. And there is little we can do about either.
Other than talking about how bad things are in the Internet echo chambers, how has the average way of life not improved over the past 50 years?
I can tell you first hand that our access to information has improved over the last two decades at a rate that is mind-blowing. 25 years ago I still used printed manuals to look up APIs. I've been thinking a lot about how our lives must have changed over the last 100 years. And I came to the conclusion that we have become complacent and risk-averse. I'm purely speaking for the West, of course. Been living in the US, Germany, UK and Switzerland and I can tell you it isn't pretty. Once somebody points out there is a risk attached to something there will be an immediate lobby group for that and politicos will lap it up and use it to gain votes. Somebody plotting somebodies death is the perfect bogey-man. You don't need scientific studies how that will be bad for your health. That's a slam-dunk vote winner. You don't need to explain anything. Platitudes and one-liners and slogans are enough.
Here's a newsflash for anyone who doesn't want to listen. Terrorism is as old as struggles between groups with uneven power distribution. They got it in the goddam bible and it was even old back then! Yet we act as if it were something new. We even act as if terrorism is a crime and we need new laws for it. As if our lawbooks weren't full of how to deal with murder, manslaughter and property damage. With the full "mens rea" song and dance. We all panicked and voted for politicians who ran on a counter-panic plattform and wonder how shit got out of hand.
I can tell you as a fact we are not our grandparents and great-grandparents. They couldn't look up Big Bang Theory episodes on Wikipedia but they sure as hell knew how to deal with the basics risks of being alive. Now if you could please excuse me, I need to buy a new rug from Ikea before my session in my other tab runs out.
I'm not betting on the German services since they managed to claim for 30 years there's no such thing as right-wing terrorism in Germany. And not huge data gathering clued them in but sheer dumb luck did. Our guys genuinely have no clue whatsoever.
Yet still this is the time to ask in what way this mass trawling for information actually helped preventing any bullshit going down. Sure as hell helped in law enforcement but good old-fashioned targeted information gathering by lawenforcement gets the job done, too. I guess it's awefully convenient that the US postal services kept extensive records on who sent what to whom and when. Helped catching those bozos who sent poisonous letters to the POTUS. But the letters still didn't get intercepted at the source and could still have left a trail of dead like those Anthrax things did in 2001. We also know who those cavemen with those machetes talked to or who those two disgruntled boys in Boston were. But that didn't help prevent anything. And after the fact we got wiser a couple of days earlier than we would have been without that mass data gathering. So sitting on huge data bases let's some talking head bring you the film at 11 while the TV station goes on a multi-hour adult diaper commercial.
Seems like everybody snoops on the general populace and sits on huge amounts of data. Turns out it is so much data they can not act on it without getting some other pointers to goings on going on. I do not see the benefict in that versus targeted investigations. Also how is them telling everybody how they snoop impede their snooping? I mean telling dog+world they are gathering mass data doesn't prevent them from data gathering. And those who are proper targets are using one-way mobiles and TOR anyway.
Plus of course what our secret services do goes against everything we were supposed to stand for and what they claim they are protecting.
The GCHQ is quite, quite British. The French services have just been outed to act in a similar fashion.
The NSA/GCHQ got caught. In a provable way. Before that there were only suspicions. Rest assured, everybody does it.
Which does NOT make this OK in any way shape or form. Since 9/11(or since the USS Cole incident even) we have been in a permanent state of alarm. 10 years on and all temporary security measures are still in place. All temporary legislation is extended. And it is our own goddam fault.
20 years ago we would have called two public schoolboys who out of a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the American Dream(and because they had no friends)decided to bomb Boston "mad bombers" and locked them away and got on with our lives. Now we watch breathlessly while some talking head reports they may have yelled "allahu akhbar!", call them 'orrible terr'ists and cower behind our officials.
20 years ago we would have called two madmen who in broad daylight committed a stone-age crime for stone-age reasons with stone-age means fucking cavemen and put them behind bars and got on with our lives. But because they called "allahu akhbar" while they hacked away with machetes we call them 'orrible terr'ists and start an enquirey why oh why MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other letters too haven't done anything to stop those two bozos.
Then this Snowden guy turns up and tells world "this is what your security circus costs you in personal freedoms and money" and we call bloody murder.
Frankly I am much more terrified that kids are run over buy a truck than blown to smithereens by 'orrible terr'ists. And rightfully so given the state traffic in front of my house is in.
We have been neutered in the past 20 years and now we wonder why we have not got any balls no more. Happy Fourth to you guys in the US. The rest of the western world also has its "where have our balls gone to" day today. The first truly international Fourth of July is now.
Switzerland is quite unique in Europe(the continent, not the organization). They are not quite neutral. They are ruled by 5 parties in concensus. They all agree on not liking the French, German, Italian and Raetian bits of Switzerland. Yet they all agree on being Swiss. All the bridges, tunnels and mountains are mined. And everybody of able body(and in some cases mind) is trained to use a weapon and possibly keeps a hick's wet dream at home(with the ammunition kept separate). And the trains are announced to be late on the station's PA if they are a minute overdue. The food is great, the wine is great, the vista is great, the opportunities are great. Yet wether you are allowed to become Swiss is down to the local community which might turn you down even if you are a multi-millionaire. On moral grounds. Unless you apply in Zurich. Then they will take you as long as you have a pulse. And you are rich. In other words: it is a great little country and the people there are eye-wateringly sensible. Even when it comes to direct-democracy popular votes on actual issues and not party policies.
If somebody of the Swiss/. community could please add anything to this assessment I would be most grateful. Greetings from you least favourite northern neighbours.
Well, the Spanish ambassador propably being appointed by the neo-falangistas currently in office propably preferred searching a Bolivian plane to digging up a Franco-era grave with his bare hands. Which might actually some brownie points in his effort to rejoin the human race. There is NO reason to respect a Partido Popular official in any way, shape or form. But I still find it unlikely that a French closure of air space due to a US request would have been authorised by anybody coming from the top echelons.
And yes, I was part of an effort to dig up a mass grave in Spain and yes, I have encountered PP officials. Saying a PP official misbehaves is like saying a pedophile likes ploughing small boys.
Yeah, well, the thing that confuses me is the inclusion of France on that list. I just visualized the default French reaction to a call from the US. Traditionally it would be lifted right out of a Monty Python movie.
It might be that maybe...just maybe...somebody...maybe...just maybe...might not have had his forms filled out properly and in triplicate and entrance into their airspace was denied by some administrative drones of the lower echelons. Because, frankly, no European country wants him(even if we all call for granting him sanctuary) and the US doesn't really want them either. The US don't need further embarrassment on top of Manning. Nobody in the US administration really thinks he could do any further damage. Russia already has had their fun with him. As did China. Snowden in Bolivia drinking Pina Colada and dying of old age seems to be a very good political solution for all parties involved.
"'ello? Yes, M. Obama. Champs-Élysées ici. Yes. What? Non! Who? Is it racist to tell you your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries? We are socialist and you are of coloured background and you are currently scouting for resources in your ancestral homelands having just noticed the Chinese got there 20 years before. Snow what? In July? We have some around Mont Blanc. A plane? Bolivia? Didn't they kill Robert Redford and Paul Newman? What? Why? Non. Go boil your bottom, you son of a silly person."
The Spanish again got the neo-falangistas that spawned the Aznar administration wo still are wiping W's cream pie from their mustaches. The current PP goon must have provided a much more pleasant experience with a happy end to that particular phone call. No surprise there. But the French. Cooperating with the US? That doesn't strike you as odd? M. Hollande's socialists cooperating with the US? Cooperating? US?
My bet is there was a clerical error on the Bolivian side of things. But the Bolivian story is much more satisfying so I will declare that to be the truth since it is much more interesting.
Has anybody found out if the POTUS smells of elderberries? The public deserves to know!
Western ideals are no more bankrupt than they were a year ago or a century ago; they are ideals, not actual laws. "The Western world" is a balance between lots of competing interests, ideals, and laws, and it has always been. Grandiose generalizations like yours do nothing to help.
First things first: Clapper lied to Congress, blatantly, deliberately, and clearly. He should lose his job and serve jail time, preferably more than a year. That's what the rule of law means. We should not accept lawlessness and lies like this. (Of course, Obama lied even more blatantly, but unfortunately, people weren't smart enough to kick him out on his ass in the 2012 elections.)
Then we can think about what we need to do about the NSA and rein in its powers. That requires some discussion, because people don't even agree on what the problem is. For example, I don't have a problem with the NSA spying on Europeans or foreign diplomats, I think that's their function, but others may disagree. I do have a problem with the NSA spying on US citizens in the US, and I hope we can agree on the fact that that is a problem. We need better oversight, better reporting, and more freedom of information rules for the NSA.
I agree with you, but jailing him is not the highest priority. Also I'm confident we are quite able to discuss the role and the goals of the NSA's actions while the courts deal with this poor SOB. There are an aweful lot of people involved. Hopefully some of them are able to multitask.
But I'm afraid the role and the goals of the NSA(and a great many other letters, too!) will be discussed behind closed doors. They are quite useful and have foiled a lot of enemy plots. Only we can't quite tell you how many since secrecy is required. Rest assured, there are checks and balances in place and they work and that guy wasn't important to them.
I think it is quite likely that there was a Sir Humphrey Appleby moment in Clapper's life earlier this week. something like this:
James Hacker: I mean, why should we bug Hugh Halifax's telephone? I mean, one of my own administration. Don't know where they got such a daft idea. Sheer paranoia.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, the only thing is...
James Hacker: I mean, why should we listen in to MPs? Boring, stupid ignorant windbags, I do my best *not* to listen to them. He's only a PPS. *I* have enough trouble finding out what's going on at the Ministry of Defence, what could *he* know?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: So I gather you denied that Mr Halifax's phone had been bugged.
James Hacker: Well, obviously. It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.
James Hacker: Epistemological? What are you talking about?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: You told a lie.
James Hacker: But it wasn't my fault. I didn't know he was being bugged.
Bernard Woolley: Prime Minister, you are deemed to have known. You are ultimately responsible.
James Hacker: Why wasn't I told?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The Home Secretary might not have felt the need to infrom you.
James Hacker: Why?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Perhaps he didn't know either. Or perhaps he'd been advised that you did not need to know.
James Hacker: Well I did need to know.
Bernard Woolley: Apparently the fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know was known, and therefore those that needed to advise and inform
In all honesty, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has always been a toothless, powerless position. While the job was created post-9/11 to be an integrator for all the different US intelligence services, it was structured in a way that it had no leverage (read budget control) over any of the organizations. The CIA resents DNI because it's position in theory is what the Director of the CIA is traditionally supposed to be doing. The DoD intel services get their money from the Pentagon and the FBI from the Justice Department. If anything, the DNI has been a bit of a joke in Washington DC, a cursed appointment that never amounts to anything. It gets no credit for the few public successes and is a cheap scapegoat when things go wrong. I honestly think that the DNI really didn't fully know what was going on when he went to make his presentation.
That sounds about right.
In practice he was set up to be the fall guy if the fecal matter hit the turbine at supersonic speed.
So where would that put him on paper in the grand scheme of checks and balances? In theory?
This is a mess. No European country can shelter Snowden due to extradition treaties with the US. They can't not extradite him due to him clearly having broken US law. If they'd not hand him over due to potential death sentence then the US will simply say they won't kill him. If they say they don't expect him to get a fair trial in the US then this will lead to further embarrassment. To compound things further there is substantial doubt that the European secret services weren't complicit in this whole thing.
So his best bet are indeed countries independent of the US. Which makes for an awefully short and potentially ugly list. If he runs towards the nasty countries he will harm his credibility. And since he is hell-bent on getting his story out it is safe to assume that he doesn't want that either. Otherwise he could have simply taken Russia's offer up. They propably don't need his intel since if a contractor knows this stuff then the FSB propably also has it already.
His assessment that his life is basically over seems to be correct. With any luck he can find shelter in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Iceland or Switzerland. That is if he overcomes the Catch-22 that he needs to be on their territory to apply for sanctuary. Also isn't revoking travel papers against some human rights convention of not turning somebody effectively stateless?
You are absolutely correct, but one question remains - what can we do?...
So the question remains - what can we, the people, do? What real power do we have today? My own answer for today is "just wait until this broken system destroys itself from inside", but it still may well outlive me. Not a shiny perspective, I must say.
Truth being told...I haven't got a clue. But in contrast to you I live in a country where at least the minister of justice is know to feel similarily to me. If history does indeed repeat itsself then waiting for this to implode so we can start over might be the course of action. But hopefully not in my lifetime since this usually is a bloody mess and a couple of decades later on nobody even remembers what it was all about.
Yeah, well, I don't give a flying fuck about about Ayn Rand's particular brand of Objectivism since I think there are a couple of observations she didn't take into account. My thoughts about that I will only offer over a couple of beers and not on Slashdot.
Moving on, this is not about "Truth, Justice and the American Way" but even higher up the totem pole of our ideals. This goes even beyond why we had "habeas corpus" in the Magna Charta. This is us being targeted without being accused of something, without facing our accusers and even without a specific suspicion. We are targeted to CREATE suspicion. Now Magna Charta/The Provisions of Oxford are the often cited basis of our values. We just seem to have stopped to remember why those were significant and why we remember then nearly a thousand years onwards.
Just to add some trivia: Magna Charta was written by the nobility to increase the rights of the nobility opposed to John Lackland. They put the significant bits near the end. Due to his weakness against his nobility King John had already offered the Pope sovereignty over England a couple of years before that. And thus the Pope declared Magna Charta null and void. Lackland's son Henrry III reinstituted it as a symbol for a fresh start and during another nob rebellion had to sign the Provisions of Oxford. The Provisions of Oxford were interesting because they were the first written somewhat democratic quasi-constitution in England. For about a year in the 13th century England was what passed as a democracy in the middle ages. Which is why the ringleader Simon de Montfort adorns the wall of the Chamber of the US Houses of Representatives.
Which is why it is vitally important to know history so we don't forget why we do what we do.
So if he actually lied then isn't the true story that the system of checks and balances that held the secret community at bay has failed? He was part of that. You know reporting to Congress and all?
I'd say that is the bigger picture instead of hanging just one guy.
And WTF does 'wittingly' means ? That you are trying to drown a fish ?
It means he didn't know. Which warrants a public hearing since he was there to know and is part of the often cited "checks&balances".
Did he knowingly lie? The answer to that question is not even remotely interesting considering that either answer will lead to the question of who watches the watchmen. And that answer will be found in a secret court.
I will lose a lot of respect for the US public(and press) if that happens.
Nobody ever lived up to his ideals ever. Not if those ideals were worth it to begin with.
We stopped trying to achieve our ideals and that's sad.
Now I know that it always was only a select few who tried to achieve anything but in the past they always dragged us sorry lot along with them. That doesn't seem to happen anymore.
I haven't followed the news on that but I'd bet there is an ongoing investigation what service could have stopped two public schoolboys who out of a vague sense of being let down by the American Dream took it upon themselves to blow up the Boston marathon. If you want to be safe from random acts like that you will also have to name the freedoms you are willing to give up. And that is the reality nobody wants to face and that's why we let our three-letter-acronyms run amuck. That's not the fault of our elected leaders. That's our fault. As in "us the people". Wherever we live.
Oh come on. As if anybody remotely connected to any secret service had any credibility to begin with.
This is what this whole mess is about. We can't even pretend everything is a-ok anymore. Snowden has forced us to face the music and that's why he is hunted and whistleblowers who sell bank records of tax dodgers get millions and a medal.
Slashdot Mirror
20-40 years ago we had red terrorism all over mainland Europe. If they had had our technological advances back then they might have used them. But whatever they had back then was not well received. Particularly the term Rasterfahndung(dragnet) was very unpopular in Germany. But those terrorists killed bankers/politicians which everybody seemed to be not totally opposed of. One Bavarian politician tried to run for a federal position on a fear&panic platform and got kicked right back home.
When the Oktoberfest got blown up by parties then unknown(recent discoveries point towards an especially moronic Gladio offshoot) people responded by having another one the year after. People just shrugged it off.
Which is why the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied(Deutschland über alles) is horribly misunderstood. It was composed to commemorate the CULTURAL unity. Not the NATIONAL one. There was a bit of a civil war in 1848 in bits of Germany to achieve that but it sort of...fizzled. When the king of Prussia was first offered the position of Emperor by the people he flatly refused it as a "pig's crown". The people could in his understanding not choose their king. That was up to god. Who it turned out to live in France. Versailles to be precise.
Which kind of highlights the huge difference between mainland European monarchy and the one in England. England had a regular parliament of sorts since the Provisions of Oxford in 1258 even if it was only used to levy taxes without too much of a revolt. And every monarch who went against it met a bad end afterwards. Except Henry VIII. Who propably was the only absolutistic(ish) monarch since William the Bastard's line drowned.
Honestly, putting a clear date next to a sovereign state is bound to stir an argument. I do not know what that was supposed to be good for. It's like painting a border around Israel and hoping that nobody will object. Ask a Glaswegian how old the UK is and he won't give you the 1066 date. Thistles, leeks, lions...there's bound to be a huge and pointless argument. And that's even before waking up the French. There might even be a war.
That's a rather simplistic view on the Commonwealth. You'd just as well might say that WW1 was had to keep the imperialistic German huns at bay.
...and got conquered again by William in 1689 who ousted the legitimate sovereign. And after the Stuart line finally died out was ruled by Germans.
England/the UK doesn't have a linear history. It's a squiggly line that breaches several dimensions and branches all over Europe. As history tends to do. A jolly mess it is. If you want to properly fuxor your brain do the same for the same time frame for Germany.
Yep. England is older than the UK. But it's the UK that's on the map. The Acts of Union created a new entity. This is not an Edward Longshanks style of conquest. And it happened just a couple of decades after England had been conquered by the Netherlands.
Frankly that guy armed with Wikipedia and Excel either had a lot of balls or was blissfully unaware into what kind of mess he just stepped. Just wait until the French wake up in the morning.
They are on the brink of a civil war if they don't keep their cool. You can't jail the former executive power of a democracy for "insulting the judicative" and claim you strive for democracy short or mid-term.
But there is a lesson to be learned from Egypt. You can't run a country when you nicely carve the population into "us" and "them". You can't follow your religious convictions no matter how sincere when you are also to look after the needs who are not of your flock. The Morsi administration tried to run the country as either a Sharia-run country(like Iran) or a democracy. Those are not compatible. Democracy thrives on a synergy of consent/dissent and is all about compromise. Religions are phenomally bad at that since they tend to be in possession of the absolute truth. The Egyptian public voted the Muslim Brotherhood into power since they were expected to be the most honest compared to the previous kleptocratic elite. They mostly got that. But the terrible misunderstanding was that the voters thought the MBs knew how to build a democracy. They even bungled writing their constitution.
This military coup is a chance. We either get to watch the formation of an independent democracy or another Nasser regime. And there is little we can do about either.
Other than talking about how bad things are in the Internet echo chambers, how has the average way of life not improved over the past 50 years?
I can tell you first hand that our access to information has improved over the last two decades at a rate that is mind-blowing. 25 years ago I still used printed manuals to look up APIs. I've been thinking a lot about how our lives must have changed over the last 100 years. And I came to the conclusion that we have become complacent and risk-averse. I'm purely speaking for the West, of course. Been living in the US, Germany, UK and Switzerland and I can tell you it isn't pretty. Once somebody points out there is a risk attached to something there will be an immediate lobby group for that and politicos will lap it up and use it to gain votes. Somebody plotting somebodies death is the perfect bogey-man. You don't need scientific studies how that will be bad for your health. That's a slam-dunk vote winner. You don't need to explain anything. Platitudes and one-liners and slogans are enough.
Here's a newsflash for anyone who doesn't want to listen. Terrorism is as old as struggles between groups with uneven power distribution. They got it in the goddam bible and it was even old back then! Yet we act as if it were something new. We even act as if terrorism is a crime and we need new laws for it. As if our lawbooks weren't full of how to deal with murder, manslaughter and property damage. With the full "mens rea" song and dance. We all panicked and voted for politicians who ran on a counter-panic plattform and wonder how shit got out of hand.
I can tell you as a fact we are not our grandparents and great-grandparents. They couldn't look up Big Bang Theory episodes on Wikipedia but they sure as hell knew how to deal with the basics risks of being alive. Now if you could please excuse me, I need to buy a new rug from Ikea before my session in my other tab runs out.
I'm not betting on the German services since they managed to claim for 30 years there's no such thing as right-wing terrorism in Germany. And not huge data gathering clued them in but sheer dumb luck did. Our guys genuinely have no clue whatsoever.
Yet still this is the time to ask in what way this mass trawling for information actually helped preventing any bullshit going down. Sure as hell helped in law enforcement but good old-fashioned targeted information gathering by lawenforcement gets the job done, too. I guess it's awefully convenient that the US postal services kept extensive records on who sent what to whom and when. Helped catching those bozos who sent poisonous letters to the POTUS. But the letters still didn't get intercepted at the source and could still have left a trail of dead like those Anthrax things did in 2001. We also know who those cavemen with those machetes talked to or who those two disgruntled boys in Boston were. But that didn't help prevent anything. And after the fact we got wiser a couple of days earlier than we would have been without that mass data gathering. So sitting on huge data bases let's some talking head bring you the film at 11 while the TV station goes on a multi-hour adult diaper commercial.
Seems like everybody snoops on the general populace and sits on huge amounts of data. Turns out it is so much data they can not act on it without getting some other pointers to goings on going on. I do not see the benefict in that versus targeted investigations. Also how is them telling everybody how they snoop impede their snooping? I mean telling dog+world they are gathering mass data doesn't prevent them from data gathering. And those who are proper targets are using one-way mobiles and TOR anyway.
Plus of course what our secret services do goes against everything we were supposed to stand for and what they claim they are protecting.
The GCHQ is quite, quite British. The French services have just been outed to act in a similar fashion.
The NSA/GCHQ got caught. In a provable way. Before that there were only suspicions. Rest assured, everybody does it.
Which does NOT make this OK in any way shape or form. Since 9/11(or since the USS Cole incident even) we have been in a permanent state of alarm. 10 years on and all temporary security measures are still in place. All temporary legislation is extended. And it is our own goddam fault.
20 years ago we would have called two public schoolboys who out of a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the American Dream(and because they had no friends)decided to bomb Boston "mad bombers" and locked them away and got on with our lives. Now we watch breathlessly while some talking head reports they may have yelled "allahu akhbar!", call them 'orrible terr'ists and cower behind our officials.
20 years ago we would have called two madmen who in broad daylight committed a stone-age crime for stone-age reasons with stone-age means fucking cavemen and put them behind bars and got on with our lives. But because they called "allahu akhbar" while they hacked away with machetes we call them 'orrible terr'ists and start an enquirey why oh why MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other letters too haven't done anything to stop those two bozos.
Then this Snowden guy turns up and tells world "this is what your security circus costs you in personal freedoms and money" and we call bloody murder.
Frankly I am much more terrified that kids are run over buy a truck than blown to smithereens by 'orrible terr'ists. And rightfully so given the state traffic in front of my house is in.
We have been neutered in the past 20 years and now we wonder why we have not got any balls no more. Happy Fourth to you guys in the US. The rest of the western world also has its "where have our balls gone to" day today. The first truly international Fourth of July is now.
It can take a long time, for any country, to come to terms with a brown or fascist past. You have my sympathies.
Wot? I'm German. No troubles there...
Hang on.
Seriously. If you think the PP is a legitimate democratic party, just visualize Berlusconi's hairline. THAT is much more reasonable.
Switzerland is quite unique in Europe(the continent, not the organization). They are not quite neutral. They are ruled by 5 parties in concensus. They all agree on not liking the French, German, Italian and Raetian bits of Switzerland. Yet they all agree on being Swiss. All the bridges, tunnels and mountains are mined. And everybody of able body(and in some cases mind) is trained to use a weapon and possibly keeps a hick's wet dream at home(with the ammunition kept separate). And the trains are announced to be late on the station's PA if they are a minute overdue. The food is great, the wine is great, the vista is great, the opportunities are great. Yet wether you are allowed to become Swiss is down to the local community which might turn you down even if you are a multi-millionaire. On moral grounds. Unless you apply in Zurich. Then they will take you as long as you have a pulse. And you are rich. In other words: it is a great little country and the people there are eye-wateringly sensible. Even when it comes to direct-democracy popular votes on actual issues and not party policies.
/. community could please add anything to this assessment I would be most grateful. Greetings from you least favourite northern neighbours.
If somebody of the Swiss
(It might be useful to have a US remake.)
Somebody hand me a pitchfork and torch! I will burn your grandmother's favourite cardigan and defile your toilet!
Well, the Spanish ambassador propably being appointed by the neo-falangistas currently in office propably preferred searching a Bolivian plane to digging up a Franco-era grave with his bare hands. Which might actually some brownie points in his effort to rejoin the human race. There is NO reason to respect a Partido Popular official in any way, shape or form. But I still find it unlikely that a French closure of air space due to a US request would have been authorised by anybody coming from the top echelons.
And yes, I was part of an effort to dig up a mass grave in Spain and yes, I have encountered PP officials. Saying a PP official misbehaves is like saying a pedophile likes ploughing small boys.
Yeah, well, the thing that confuses me is the inclusion of France on that list. I just visualized the default French reaction to a call from the US. Traditionally it would be lifted right out of a Monty Python movie.
It might be that maybe...just maybe...somebody...maybe...just maybe...might not have had his forms filled out properly and in triplicate and entrance into their airspace was denied by some administrative drones of the lower echelons. Because, frankly, no European country wants him(even if we all call for granting him sanctuary) and the US doesn't really want them either. The US don't need further embarrassment on top of Manning. Nobody in the US administration really thinks he could do any further damage. Russia already has had their fun with him. As did China. Snowden in Bolivia drinking Pina Colada and dying of old age seems to be a very good political solution for all parties involved.
"'ello? Yes, M. Obama. Champs-Élysées ici. Yes. What? Non! Who? Is it racist to tell you your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries? We are socialist and you are of coloured background and you are currently scouting for resources in your ancestral homelands having just noticed the Chinese got there 20 years before. Snow what? In July? We have some around Mont Blanc. A plane? Bolivia? Didn't they kill Robert Redford and Paul Newman? What? Why? Non. Go boil your bottom, you son of a silly person."
The Spanish again got the neo-falangistas that spawned the Aznar administration wo still are wiping W's cream pie from their mustaches. The current PP goon must have provided a much more pleasant experience with a happy end to that particular phone call. No surprise there. But the French. Cooperating with the US? That doesn't strike you as odd? M. Hollande's socialists cooperating with the US? Cooperating? US?
My bet is there was a clerical error on the Bolivian side of things. But the Bolivian story is much more satisfying so I will declare that to be the truth since it is much more interesting.
Has anybody found out if the POTUS smells of elderberries? The public deserves to know!
Western ideals are no more bankrupt than they were a year ago or a century ago; they are ideals, not actual laws. "The Western world" is a balance between lots of competing interests, ideals, and laws, and it has always been. Grandiose generalizations like yours do nothing to help.
First things first: Clapper lied to Congress, blatantly, deliberately, and clearly. He should lose his job and serve jail time, preferably more than a year. That's what the rule of law means. We should not accept lawlessness and lies like this. (Of course, Obama lied even more blatantly, but unfortunately, people weren't smart enough to kick him out on his ass in the 2012 elections.)
Then we can think about what we need to do about the NSA and rein in its powers. That requires some discussion, because people don't even agree on what the problem is. For example, I don't have a problem with the NSA spying on Europeans or foreign diplomats, I think that's their function, but others may disagree. I do have a problem with the NSA spying on US citizens in the US, and I hope we can agree on the fact that that is a problem. We need better oversight, better reporting, and more freedom of information rules for the NSA.
I agree with you, but jailing him is not the highest priority. Also I'm confident we are quite able to discuss the role and the goals of the NSA's actions while the courts deal with this poor SOB. There are an aweful lot of people involved. Hopefully some of them are able to multitask.
But I'm afraid the role and the goals of the NSA(and a great many other letters, too!) will be discussed behind closed doors. They are quite useful and have foiled a lot of enemy plots. Only we can't quite tell you how many since secrecy is required. Rest assured, there are checks and balances in place and they work and that guy wasn't important to them.
I think it is quite likely that there was a Sir Humphrey Appleby moment in Clapper's life earlier this week. something like this:
James Hacker: I mean, why should we bug Hugh Halifax's telephone? I mean, one of my own administration. Don't know where they got such a daft idea. Sheer paranoia.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, the only thing is...
James Hacker: I mean, why should we listen in to MPs? Boring, stupid ignorant windbags, I do my best *not* to listen to them. He's only a PPS. *I* have enough trouble finding out what's going on at the Ministry of Defence, what could *he* know?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: So I gather you denied that Mr Halifax's phone had been bugged.
James Hacker: Well, obviously. It was the one question today to which I could give a clear, simple, straightforward, honest answer.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.
James Hacker: Epistemological? What are you talking about?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: You told a lie.
James Hacker: But it wasn't my fault. I didn't know he was being bugged.
Bernard Woolley: Prime Minister, you are deemed to have known. You are ultimately responsible.
James Hacker: Why wasn't I told?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The Home Secretary might not have felt the need to infrom you.
James Hacker: Why?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Perhaps he didn't know either. Or perhaps he'd been advised that you did not need to know.
James Hacker: Well I did need to know.
Bernard Woolley: Apparently the fact that you needed to know was not known at the time that the now known need to know was known, and therefore those that needed to advise and inform
In all honesty, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has always been a toothless, powerless position. While the job was created post-9/11 to be an integrator for all the different US intelligence services, it was structured in a way that it had no leverage (read budget control) over any of the organizations. The CIA resents DNI because it's position in theory is what the Director of the CIA is traditionally supposed to be doing. The DoD intel services get their money from the Pentagon and the FBI from the Justice Department. If anything, the DNI has been a bit of a joke in Washington DC, a cursed appointment that never amounts to anything. It gets no credit for the few public successes and is a cheap scapegoat when things go wrong. I honestly think that the DNI really didn't fully know what was going on when he went to make his presentation.
That sounds about right.
In practice he was set up to be the fall guy if the fecal matter hit the turbine at supersonic speed.
So where would that put him on paper in the grand scheme of checks and balances? In theory?
...which is a better deal than Manning will get.
This is a mess. No European country can shelter Snowden due to extradition treaties with the US. They can't not extradite him due to him clearly having broken US law. If they'd not hand him over due to potential death sentence then the US will simply say they won't kill him. If they say they don't expect him to get a fair trial in the US then this will lead to further embarrassment. To compound things further there is substantial doubt that the European secret services weren't complicit in this whole thing.
So his best bet are indeed countries independent of the US. Which makes for an awefully short and potentially ugly list. If he runs towards the nasty countries he will harm his credibility. And since he is hell-bent on getting his story out it is safe to assume that he doesn't want that either. Otherwise he could have simply taken Russia's offer up. They propably don't need his intel since if a contractor knows this stuff then the FSB propably also has it already.
His assessment that his life is basically over seems to be correct. With any luck he can find shelter in Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Iceland or Switzerland. That is if he overcomes the Catch-22 that he needs to be on their territory to apply for sanctuary. Also isn't revoking travel papers against some human rights convention of not turning somebody effectively stateless?
You are right and I was at least consistently wrong in my spelling.
In the European press you mostly get embarrassed reactions since nobody is able to shelter him.
Whistleblower/traitor.
Freedom fighter/terrorist.
You are absolutely correct, but one question remains - what can we do? ...
So the question remains - what can we, the people, do? What real power do we have today? My own answer for today is "just wait until this broken system destroys itself from inside", but it still may well outlive me. Not a shiny perspective, I must say.
Truth being told...I haven't got a clue. But in contrast to you I live in a country where at least the minister of justice is know to feel similarily to me. If history does indeed repeat itsself then waiting for this to implode so we can start over might be the course of action. But hopefully not in my lifetime since this usually is a bloody mess and a couple of decades later on nobody even remembers what it was all about.
Yeah, well, I don't give a flying fuck about about Ayn Rand's particular brand of Objectivism since I think there are a couple of observations she didn't take into account. My thoughts about that I will only offer over a couple of beers and not on Slashdot.
Moving on, this is not about "Truth, Justice and the American Way" but even higher up the totem pole of our ideals. This goes even beyond why we had "habeas corpus" in the Magna Charta. This is us being targeted without being accused of something, without facing our accusers and even without a specific suspicion. We are targeted to CREATE suspicion. Now Magna Charta/The Provisions of Oxford are the often cited basis of our values. We just seem to have stopped to remember why those were significant and why we remember then nearly a thousand years onwards.
Just to add some trivia: Magna Charta was written by the nobility to increase the rights of the nobility opposed to John Lackland. They put the significant bits near the end. Due to his weakness against his nobility King John had already offered the Pope sovereignty over England a couple of years before that. And thus the Pope declared Magna Charta null and void. Lackland's son Henrry III reinstituted it as a symbol for a fresh start and during another nob rebellion had to sign the Provisions of Oxford. The Provisions of Oxford were interesting because they were the first written somewhat democratic quasi-constitution in England. For about a year in the 13th century England was what passed as a democracy in the middle ages. Which is why the ringleader Simon de Montfort adorns the wall of the Chamber of the US Houses of Representatives.
Which is why it is vitally important to know history so we don't forget why we do what we do.
So if he actually lied then isn't the true story that the system of checks and balances that held the secret community at bay has failed? He was part of that. You know reporting to Congress and all?
I'd say that is the bigger picture instead of hanging just one guy.
And WTF does 'wittingly' means ? That you are trying to drown a fish ?
It means he didn't know. Which warrants a public hearing since he was there to know and is part of the often cited "checks&balances".
Did he knowingly lie? The answer to that question is not even remotely interesting considering that either answer will lead to the question of who watches the watchmen. And that answer will be found in a secret court.
I will lose a lot of respect for the US public(and press) if that happens.
Nobody ever lived up to his ideals ever. Not if those ideals were worth it to begin with.
We stopped trying to achieve our ideals and that's sad.
Now I know that it always was only a select few who tried to achieve anything but in the past they always dragged us sorry lot along with them. That doesn't seem to happen anymore.
I haven't followed the news on that but I'd bet there is an ongoing investigation what service could have stopped two public schoolboys who out of a vague sense of being let down by the American Dream took it upon themselves to blow up the Boston marathon. If you want to be safe from random acts like that you will also have to name the freedoms you are willing to give up. And that is the reality nobody wants to face and that's why we let our three-letter-acronyms run amuck. That's not the fault of our elected leaders. That's our fault. As in "us the people".
Wherever we live.
Oh come on. As if anybody remotely connected to any secret service had any credibility to begin with.
This is what this whole mess is about. We can't even pretend everything is a-ok anymore. Snowden has forced us to face the music and that's why he is hunted and whistleblowers who sell bank records of tax dodgers get millions and a medal.