If you read carefully, saying that specific requests have come in for 20000 users doesn't mean that there aren't other mechanisms in place to collect a lot more data without specific requests. For example, the NSA could be collecting data where Facebook's servers connect to the Internet. Past reports and disclosures on NSA activities (as well as the activities of other spy agencies) suggest that this is likely routine practice. Facebook doesn't even deny this, and of course even if they did, it's questionable whether such a denial was meaningful. In addition, it's clear that the NSA and other agencies actively collect data from all open sources that they can. And, of course, you have to assume that the Utah data center is going to be used to store something, and it ain't gonna be data obtained from just 20000 Facebook-related requests, because those would fit on my hard drive.
So I don't know what these disclosures are supposed to accomplish. They really don't change anything. At the root of the problem is really that there isn't enough transparency and that people have lost trust. What we need and should demand is complete legal, fiscal, and legislative transparency on our spy organizations, what they are legally allowed to do, who sets limits on them, and how much we're spending on it. I don't see why understanding in such general terms what these organizations do should hinder their ability to catch terrorists. And if such disclosures really interfere with their capabilities, that suggests by itself that they are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
They are throwing numbers out there to try to put the genie back in the bottle but Americans already know.
Honestly, over 1% of the population having access to classified information seems like too much to me. The whole "three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead" maxim.
The real problem here is the over-classification issue. The goverment these days slaps classified levels on just about everything, out of sheer reflex. It's all about keeping embarrasments out of the public view, not about keeping truly sensitive information secret.
And once the goverment starts classifying everything, everyone who works for the federal goverment has to have security clearances, no matter how mundane their job is. Interestingly, your 4.2 million number is just about the same as the number of federal employees...
I think 1% is too low. No one can keep a secret from foreign governments and it has nothing to do with people leaking and more to do with the high tech spy techniques of foreign governments. I think we need certain things to remain classified but the general or big picture should be shared so to do this we would need to issue more clearances to people like bloggers, journalists, and the like, who can know the big picture without having to know operationial details.
Discredit the messenger to distract from the actual message:
He's a traitor, he's a rapist, people say bad things about him, he's a liar, he supports terrorists, he puts you and your loved ones in danger, you should hate him.
But they offer no evidence of their claims while he offered evidence backing his.
The NSA expects us all to basically support their agenda. The NSA wont tell us any detail on what that agenda is. The NSA monitors our every behavior, but uses deception and basically lies to us telling us they aren't. The NSA lies to congress, refusing to admit it even after the leak.
So the problem here is the NSA believes it requires secrecy to a greater degree than the US public can understand. If this is a case where the US public is simply uninformed, then the NSA should give out security clearances to journalists and to more people within the American public so that it can inform them.
I understand the NSA does not want to tip off the foreign enemy. The problem with what they are doing is when they apply deception, and act as they are acting, the uninformed American citizen feels like the foreign enemy. I understand that leaking to the media isn't necessarily the best way to handle it because the element of surprise is important in warfare. Enemies foreign and domestic did not need to be tipped off along with the American people. But enough American people have a security clearance, these surprises are going to seem directed against the American people as a whole.
So the question is why do so few Americans have security clearances? Are we supposed to believe that all those American people without a security clearance are "enemies"? If they aren't then why can't they be given enough of a security clearance so that at least the basic agenda of the NSA is known. When journalists don't even known, and when congress doesn't even known, well then who does know? If only the cleared individuals know then why not expand it?
In 2011 4.2 million people had access to the governments classified information. 4.2 million people is not a lot of people out of 300-400 million Americans. As a result you have a lot of propaganda and misinformation confusing the uninformed American citizen into believing conspiracy theories while the 4.2 million who have access get to know the truth but can't say anything. Until more people know the truth, the only access American citizens get to the truth is through these leaks. The problem with these leaks is the enemy gains access at the same time.
Is it too late for the NSA to spin this as just a huge misunderstanding?
I mean PRISM was obviously intended to be a redundant backup of the entire Internet.
It is obvious, but it's also something most of us suspected they were doing all along. The real question is why didn't they just admit to it from the start? Why keep it a secret from us if it's to protect us?
If you work for a corporation and its telling you they never back anything up and anything you delete is deleted forever and then you find out that they lied and everything any employee every did was secretly backed up for all eternity, this would change how you view that corporation. This would also change how the customers view that corporation which lies to it's own employees about it's practices.
This is similar to what the NSA has done. It has got caught lying to the American people. It tells the American people it exits to spy on foreigners, but applie deception tactics to the American people as if the American people themselves are the foreigners.
It's catch 22. They could have a valid reason to have kept this stuff secret but it's up to the NSA to explain their reasoning. The NSA also has to find a way to communicate better with the American people in such a way that the American people cannot disclose those secrets to the enemy. This might mean greater portions of the American people should be given enough of a clearance to know why the NSA does what it does and to make informed decisions in the voting booth.
How can the NSA expect the uninformed voter to make an informed decision if it keeps the voter in the dark? How can the congress make informed decisions if they are kept in the dark as well? The NSA needs to shed light on this. While I don't necessarily think leaking is the best way to shed light and promote discussion, if the NSA wasn't willing to have this discussion without it having to be leaked to the whole world then that is a problem with the NSA because this is a discussion we need to have.
In this case, legality of the program (for now) is whatever the DoJ/DoD say it is. The FISA court, and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees, which ostensibly exist to provide checks on this kind of behavior, have all signed off on this program.
That doesn't mean it's right, or is, in fact, constitutional, just that at the current time, it's certainly going to be treated as if it is legal.
If it's illegal then the NSA had no right and has no case against the whistleblower.
There *are* abuses taking place. I don't think anyone argues that. But here we have two problems. The government broke one law, and the whistleblower broke another law. From the POV of a proponent of nation of laws, plague on both your houses. Rarely you can right a wrong by doing another wrong. When that happens people often call it war; each side rejects the laws of the opponent and allows crimes against the foe.
It's far worse for an agency like the NSA to break the law than for a contractor to break the law even if the contractor will have to deal with far more severe consequences. The contractor has to weigh the consequences he faces against the abuse he prevents by becoming the whistleblower. It's not about the laws but about whether or not the NSA is protecting people and in this case I don't see why the NSA would have to lie to congress or break the law as that is not protecting people.
The court will not consider remote implications. The court will only ask if the political harm of surveillance could be mitigated by other, not so illegal, methods, like contacting a Senator and offering testimony. The court will likely ask if Mr. Showden did that, and what happened, and what he did then, and so on. The court will want to see progression of the need, from entirely legal to breaking a law. The court will also want to study if the law was broken only as little as needed to fulfill the greater duty to the society. So far it seems that Mr. Snowden is only talking about essentials; but who knows what else he is talking about, and to who. An NSA guy in China may not have too much choice if Chinese intelligence services want him. If he hasn't told everything yet, he will.
If Chinese or other intelligence services want that information from him anywhere on earth including in the USA I don't see how it would be any different. You're arguing that Chinese intelligence services couldn't get to people in the USA as well? You're assuming they don't know about the NSA surveillance already? They probably know more about this than we do.
He may end up dead, but he will tell everything before that. "Sorry, USA, your man went for a walk and was never seen since, honest."
He wont end up dead.
The court will not convict if the need is serious enough - such as when human life is in danger. The surveillance program does not put anyone's life in danger.
For all you know there could be a trail of suicides due to this intrusive surveillance. Who are you to say it does not put lives in danger? We don't know how the information they collect is being used. If the information is abused it would easily put lives in danger because the NSA could basically destroy anyone's life with this kind of information and surveillance and many people could be caused to commit suicide, so no I don't think you're in a position to say that.
(Many laws take back seat when you need to save someone.) Actually, the opposite can be argued because a 100% police state, where everyone is always under the watchful eye, is the safest. Not the freeest, mind you; but the safest it is. The court will find no justification for what he did. The advantage of immediate disclosure (that is hard to quantify even) loses over the disadvantage of disclosing intelligence secrets, methods and systems to the #1 foe that China is today. (Whether that status is deserved or not, and who is the greater villain, is a different debate.)
How do you know the NSA isn't using this information to terrorize people and destroy opposition? We don't know what they do with the information they collect and store forever. We don't know how many are abused or how badly. We do know when you know everything about a person you can destroy their life fairly easily.
The Whistleblower Act will be no protection whatsoever. For that to work, the program he disclosed would have to be found illegal. Given that the Supreme Court won't even summon the balls to agree to hear a case about far-more-egregrious warrantless wiretapping, the likelihood of the program he disclosed being found unconstitutional is approx. zero.
Without a ruling that the program was illegal, he puts himself firmly under the jurisdiction of the Espionage Act, and his confession makes a chance of conviction approx. 100%.
Is it legal for the NSA to spy on Americans or not?
He is a far better (and more effective) patriot than Bradley Manning; definitely more like Daniel Ellsberg.
Manning (and Wikileaks) dumped a huge pile of classified information on the internet with little regard to the consequences of their actions. Material that any thinking observer would regard as quite sensibly classified, and discussing no sort of malfeasance or wrongdoing, was revealed. This gave the government ample cover to prosecute Manning with little fear of popular outrage. Real (and innocent) people had their lives hurt (and probably ended) by Manning's leaks. He's essentially getting tried for treason, and the government has ample reason to do so. The fact that he was motivated by moral outrage isn't really relevant, as much of the information he revealed had nothing whatsoever to do with the things he was unhappy about. (And Assange going on an ego trip didn't help.)
This man, on the other hand, copied a very specific and small set of documents revealing something that every thinking citizen does indeed have a right to be angry about. He put nobody in danger (unless you subscribe to the "If the all-seeing-eye doesn't know everything, the terrorists win." school of thought.) The documents he revealed are all directly associated with what he's unhappy with. No actual investigation details (current or past) have been revealed, no names are mentioned, and he's neither hiding nor chasing the spotlight.
He appears to be a principled and thoughtful patriot, and I think despite their best efforts, they'll have a tough time demonizing him for the public, although it won't be for lack of trying. If they do capture him and put on trial, and he will almost certainly lose. Despite him doing the right thing for the right reasons, this is not a strange or ambiguous application of the Espionage Act. His only hope would be for a successful court challenge to the programs he has disclosed, but given the current proclivities of the Supreme Court, that is unlikely, to say the least.
While it will be little comfort, I believe history will vindicate him.
I have to agree with you on Manning. I don't see anything positive being accomplished by the Cablegate leak. I think this leak shows everyone that the NSA can see everything. I don't see what advantage there is to having Americans think the NSA doesn't spy on them but I suppose it's because the NSA and US government views us all as potential enemies and has to lie to us for some tactical reasons.
look, the last thing we need is yet another whistleblower rotting in prison or blackballed from their profession.
People are all "oh, this is so noble". Uhm, yeah. Its noble, and thousands of other people have already done it, and they suffered immensly for it. Go read some books by actual whistleblowers. Imagine making $50,000 a year and then going down to minimum wage because its the only job you can get after you get blackballed. Imagine you lose your health insurance, your house, and you have to go into debt to pay lawyers to keep you out of prison.
Imagine your wife, family, friends, being raided by the FBI with guns. Imagine getting stopped at every airport checkpoint, train station, etc for the rest of your life.
Imagine never working in your field again.
Imagine a large number of your friends just drop you. No contact. No calls. No meetings. Nothing.
Thats what a lot of whistleblowers face.
Oh, how noble. But if this guy was makign your french fries or bagging your groceries, would you say "oh how noble" to him? or would you continue your day to day condescending attitude towards those who have to live outside the system for whatever reason?
This guy should have hid under a fucking rock and let the NSA and FBI go fuck itself for 10 years trying to track down the leak source. Just laugh at them from the shadows.
It reminds me of the story in Mandela's autobiography. There were a lot of anti-apartheid activitists who operated purely out of some messianic belief they were right. Well, the enemy used this, and decimated them. They went to prison. They disappeared. They got murdered. Most of all, they didnt contribute to the continuing battle. They are like Petya Rostov in War And Peace, all heart and no brains. They might have done something admirable, but they didnt actually help win the battle or the war because they were no longer around to fight anymore.
Now, the enemy, the NSA, or FBI, can just take this guy and swallow him into some prison.
Oh well.
If he did that then innocent people who had nothing to do with the leak could have been targeted including his friends and family.
Snowden made the same legal commitments as Manning. The oath is unrelated to access to state secrets. Many soldiers never get a clearance, and many civilans get it. The penalties for violating each are also separate. (Manning may be hit with both.)
I can imagine that the court may find some leaker innocent if his actions were necessary and the information could not be gotten out in any other way. (For an imaginary example: you send a spy across the border; he radioes that he fell into an abandoned mine shaft and is about to die if not helped. You call your counterpart in that country and tell him where to find the spy. The spy is saved. But you broke the laws on secrecy.)
In absence of clear danger (an asteroid hitting the planet, or a terrorist with a nuke,) I cannot imagine that the US court will find actions of Mr. Snowden necessary. The court will find that there was no immediate danger to anyone, and that the whole matter is purely political, and the disclosure was made for personal reasons. The conviction is then assured.
What if there are abuses taking place? I don't think we are in a position to say if there are or aren't clear dangers.
The government authorities could always deny his claims and try and make him look crazy. They could also accuse him of crimes he didn't commit and try to make him out to be a serious criminal.
For these reasons he probably was wise to go in front of the media.
It would appear that some techies realized that currency control is a tool to unjustly oppress people
All money issuers were using money to oppress people, to some extent. Why was the privilege of minting coins given only to the top aristocracy? Gold coins often were the sole privilege of the king. Lacking some advantage, why would aristocracy bother with a metalworking business?
The engineering (ie math) seem to be solid
The crypto scheme appears to be reasonably well done. However in practice there are several attack vectors, and they are possible to execute if you want to. It will cost you, but governments can do that already. It's just the matter of commitment and resources. BTC also has several usability problems, like the long time to clear a transaction (with 6 recommended confirmations, it's between 15 and 30 minutes.) Are you willing to stand in limbo at the grocery store for that much? There are no trusted BTC terminals; and if they were, they could be subverted because BTC depends on access to the network to calculate hashes - and the merchant does not control the network. Plug this merchant's network cable into your own router, run a hundred pet peers, and you can confirm any transaction you want. (On an open Internet you need to subvert the majority of hosts.)
the economic rationale is logically sound
It is debatable, and that's what is always debated in every article about BTC. In essence, there is no rationale that would work for pretty much anyone except Silk Road users. BTC transactions are not even free; but a Visa c/c pays me for using it. Why would I want to pay in BTC?
"it's a scam"
Scam or not, but early miners mined millions of BTCs when mining was good. Where are those BTCs? If the exchange rate of one BTC goes to $10K, for example, those early miners will become richer than Bill Gates. Will that be fair? I think not. Those guys (still anonymous!) may have done good for the society, but the society cannot value the formula (that doesn't even save lives!) that high. BG's Windows does save lives, as part of many computers.
Bitcoins will save as many lives as the Internet did if it goes mainstream. So what if some people get richer than Bill Gates? You think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are the only people allowed to get rich from good timing?
DSPs have done sound modeling for years. So is the GPU the new DSP? Or is it simply cheaper because your desktop machine already has a GPU, whereas it may not have a DSP?
DSP is better than GPU but GPU can do stuff a DSP cannot. Physical modeling is a perfect example because to get certain instrument sounds right, like strings based instruments, steel drums, gongs, etc, you need hardware acceleration. Software does a crappy job at it and sampling cannot do it very well period.
If it's possible to use some of the GPU power for audio then we should.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read carefully, saying that specific requests have come in for 20000 users doesn't mean that there aren't other mechanisms in place to collect a lot more data without specific requests. For example, the NSA could be collecting data where Facebook's servers connect to the Internet. Past reports and disclosures on NSA activities (as well as the activities of other spy agencies) suggest that this is likely routine practice. Facebook doesn't even deny this, and of course even if they did, it's questionable whether such a denial was meaningful. In addition, it's clear that the NSA and other agencies actively collect data from all open sources that they can. And, of course, you have to assume that the Utah data center is going to be used to store something, and it ain't gonna be data obtained from just 20000 Facebook-related requests, because those would fit on my hard drive.
So I don't know what these disclosures are supposed to accomplish. They really don't change anything. At the root of the problem is really that there isn't enough transparency and that people have lost trust. What we need and should demand is complete legal, fiscal, and legislative transparency on our spy organizations, what they are legally allowed to do, who sets limits on them, and how much we're spending on it. I don't see why understanding in such general terms what these organizations do should hinder their ability to catch terrorists. And if such disclosures really interfere with their capabilities, that suggests by itself that they are doing something they shouldn't be doing.
They are throwing numbers out there to try to put the genie back in the bottle but Americans already know.
Honestly, over 1% of the population having access to classified information seems like too much to me. The whole "three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead" maxim.
The real problem here is the over-classification issue. The goverment these days slaps classified levels on just about everything, out of sheer reflex. It's all about keeping embarrasments out of the public view, not about keeping truly sensitive information secret.
And once the goverment starts classifying everything, everyone who works for the federal goverment has to have security clearances, no matter how mundane their job is. Interestingly, your 4.2 million number is just about the same as the number of federal employees...
I think 1% is too low. No one can keep a secret from foreign governments and it has nothing to do with people leaking and more to do with the high tech spy techniques of foreign governments. I think we need certain things to remain classified but the general or big picture should be shared so to do this we would need to issue more clearances to people like bloggers, journalists, and the like, who can know the big picture without having to know operationial details.
Discredit the messenger to distract from the actual message:
He's a traitor, he's a rapist, people say bad things about him, he's a liar, he supports terrorists, he puts you and your loved ones in danger, you should hate him.
But they offer no evidence of their claims while he offered evidence backing his.
Here is my perspective as I view it:
The NSA expects us all to basically support their agenda.
The NSA wont tell us any detail on what that agenda is.
The NSA monitors our every behavior, but uses deception and basically lies to us telling us they aren't.
The NSA lies to congress, refusing to admit it even after the leak.
So the problem here is the NSA believes it requires secrecy to a greater degree than the US public can understand. If this is a case where the US public is simply uninformed, then the NSA should give out security clearances to journalists and to more people within the American public so that it can inform them.
I understand the NSA does not want to tip off the foreign enemy. The problem with what they are doing is when they apply deception, and act as they are acting, the uninformed American citizen feels like the foreign enemy. I understand that leaking to the media isn't necessarily the best way to handle it because the element of surprise is important in warfare. Enemies foreign and domestic did not need to be tipped off along with the American people. But enough American people have a security clearance, these surprises are going to seem directed against the American people as a whole.
So the question is why do so few Americans have security clearances? Are we supposed to believe that all those American people without a security clearance are "enemies"? If they aren't then why can't they be given enough of a security clearance so that at least the basic agenda of the NSA is known. When journalists don't even known, and when congress doesn't even known, well then who does know? If only the cleared individuals know then why not expand it?
In 2011 4.2 million people had access to the governments classified information. 4.2 million people is not a lot of people out of 300-400 million Americans. As a result you have a lot of propaganda and misinformation confusing the uninformed American citizen into believing conspiracy theories while the 4.2 million who have access get to know the truth but can't say anything. Until more people know the truth, the only access American citizens get to the truth is through these leaks. The problem with these leaks is the enemy gains access at the same time.
Is it too late for the NSA to spin this as just a huge misunderstanding?
I mean PRISM was obviously intended to be a redundant backup of the entire Internet.
It is obvious, but it's also something most of us suspected they were doing all along. The real question is why didn't they just admit to it from the start? Why keep it a secret from us if it's to protect us?
If you work for a corporation and its telling you they never back anything up and anything you delete is deleted forever and then you find out that they lied and everything any employee every did was secretly backed up for all eternity, this would change how you view that corporation. This would also change how the customers view that corporation which lies to it's own employees about it's practices.
This is similar to what the NSA has done. It has got caught lying to the American people. It tells the American people it exits to spy on foreigners, but applie deception tactics to the American people as if the American people themselves are the foreigners.
It's catch 22. They could have a valid reason to have kept this stuff secret but it's up to the NSA to explain their reasoning. The NSA also has to find a way to communicate better with the American people in such a way that the American people cannot disclose those secrets to the enemy. This might mean greater portions of the American people should be given enough of a clearance to know why the NSA does what it does and to make informed decisions in the voting booth.
How can the NSA expect the uninformed voter to make an informed decision if it keeps the voter in the dark? How can the congress make informed decisions if they are kept in the dark as well? The NSA needs to shed light on this. While I don't necessarily think leaking is the best way to shed light and promote discussion, if the NSA wasn't willing to have this discussion without it having to be leaked to the whole world then that is a problem with the NSA because this is a discussion we need to have.
I don't think "we" consented to this. The NSA did it on it's own and then lied to congress about it. Is it even legal?
In this case, legality of the program (for now) is whatever the DoJ/DoD say it is. The FISA court, and the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees, which ostensibly exist to provide checks on this kind of behavior, have all signed off on this program.
That doesn't mean it's right, or is, in fact, constitutional, just that at the current time, it's certainly going to be treated as if it is legal.
If it's illegal then the NSA had no right and has no case against the whistleblower.
There *are* abuses taking place. I don't think anyone argues that. But here we have two problems. The government broke one law, and the whistleblower broke another law. From the POV of a proponent of nation of laws, plague on both your houses. Rarely you can right a wrong by doing another wrong. When that happens people often call it war; each side rejects the laws of the opponent and allows crimes against the foe.
It's far worse for an agency like the NSA to break the law than for a contractor to break the law even if the contractor will have to deal with far more severe consequences. The contractor has to weigh the consequences he faces against the abuse he prevents by becoming the whistleblower. It's not about the laws but about whether or not the NSA is protecting people and in this case I don't see why the NSA would have to lie to congress or break the law as that is not protecting people.
The court will not consider remote implications. The court will only ask if the political harm of surveillance could be mitigated by other, not so illegal, methods, like contacting a Senator and offering testimony. The court will likely ask if Mr. Showden did that, and what happened, and what he did then, and so on. The court will want to see progression of the need, from entirely legal to breaking a law. The court will also want to study if the law was broken only as little as needed to fulfill the greater duty to the society. So far it seems that Mr. Snowden is only talking about essentials; but who knows what else he is talking about, and to who. An NSA guy in China may not have too much choice if Chinese intelligence services want him. If he hasn't told everything yet, he will.
If Chinese or other intelligence services want that information from him anywhere on earth including in the USA I don't see how it would be any different. You're arguing that Chinese intelligence services couldn't get to people in the USA as well? You're assuming they don't know about the NSA surveillance already? They probably know more about this than we do.
He may end up dead, but he will tell everything before that. "Sorry, USA, your man went for a walk and was never seen since, honest."
He wont end up dead.
The court will not convict if the need is serious enough - such as when human life is in danger. The surveillance program does not put anyone's life in danger.
For all you know there could be a trail of suicides due to this intrusive surveillance. Who are you to say it does not put lives in danger? We don't know how the information they collect is being used. If the information is abused it would easily put lives in danger because the NSA could basically destroy anyone's life with this kind of information and surveillance and many people could be caused to commit suicide, so no I don't think you're in a position to say that.
(Many laws take back seat when you need to save someone.) Actually, the opposite can be argued because a 100% police state, where everyone is always under the watchful eye, is the safest. Not the freeest, mind you; but the safest it is. The court will find no justification for what he did. The advantage of immediate disclosure (that is hard to quantify even) loses over the disadvantage of disclosing intelligence secrets, methods and systems to the #1 foe that China is today. (Whether that status is deserved or not, and who is the greater villain, is a different debate.)
How do you know the NSA isn't using this information to terrorize people and destroy opposition? We don't know what they do with the information they collect and store forever. We don't know how many are abused or how badly. We do know when you know everything about a person you can destroy their life fairly easily.
The Whistleblower Act will be no protection whatsoever. For that to work, the program he disclosed would have to be found illegal. Given that the Supreme Court won't even summon the balls to agree to hear a case about far-more-egregrious warrantless wiretapping, the likelihood of the program he disclosed being found unconstitutional is approx. zero.
Without a ruling that the program was illegal, he puts himself firmly under the jurisdiction of the Espionage Act, and his confession makes a chance of conviction approx. 100%.
Is it legal for the NSA to spy on Americans or not?
He is a far better (and more effective) patriot than Bradley Manning; definitely more like Daniel Ellsberg.
Manning (and Wikileaks) dumped a huge pile of classified information on the internet with little regard to the consequences of their actions. Material that any thinking observer would regard as quite sensibly classified, and discussing no sort of malfeasance or wrongdoing, was revealed. This gave the government ample cover to prosecute Manning with little fear of popular outrage. Real (and innocent) people had their lives hurt (and probably ended) by Manning's leaks. He's essentially getting tried for treason, and the government has ample reason to do so. The fact that he was motivated by moral outrage isn't really relevant, as much of the information he revealed had nothing whatsoever to do with the things he was unhappy about. (And Assange going on an ego trip didn't help.)
This man, on the other hand, copied a very specific and small set of documents revealing something that every thinking citizen does indeed have a right to be angry about. He put nobody in danger (unless you subscribe to the "If the all-seeing-eye doesn't know everything, the terrorists win." school of thought.) The documents he revealed are all directly associated with what he's unhappy with. No actual investigation details (current or past) have been revealed, no names are mentioned, and he's neither hiding nor chasing the spotlight.
He appears to be a principled and thoughtful patriot, and I think despite their best efforts, they'll have a tough time demonizing him for the public, although it won't be for lack of trying. If they do capture him and put on trial, and he will almost certainly lose. Despite him doing the right thing for the right reasons, this is not a strange or ambiguous application of the Espionage Act. His only hope would be for a successful court challenge to the programs he has disclosed, but given the current proclivities of the Supreme Court, that is unlikely, to say the least.
While it will be little comfort, I believe history will vindicate him.
I have to agree with you on Manning. I don't see anything positive being accomplished by the Cablegate leak. I think this leak shows everyone that the NSA can see everything. I don't see what advantage there is to having Americans think the NSA doesn't spy on them but I suppose it's because the NSA and US government views us all as potential enemies and has to lie to us for some tactical reasons.
look, the last thing we need is yet another whistleblower rotting in prison or blackballed from their profession.
People are all "oh, this is so noble". Uhm, yeah. Its noble, and thousands of other people have already done it, and they suffered immensly for it. Go read some books by actual whistleblowers. Imagine making $50,000 a year and then going down to minimum wage because its the only job you can get after you get blackballed. Imagine you lose your health insurance, your house, and you have to go into debt to pay lawyers to keep you out of prison.
Imagine your wife, family, friends, being raided by the FBI with guns. Imagine getting stopped at every airport checkpoint, train station, etc for the rest of your life.
Imagine never working in your field again.
Imagine a large number of your friends just drop you. No contact. No calls. No meetings. Nothing.
Thats what a lot of whistleblowers face.
Oh, how noble. But if this guy was makign your french fries or bagging your groceries, would you say "oh how noble" to him? or would you continue your day to day condescending attitude towards those who have to live outside the system for whatever reason?
This guy should have hid under a fucking rock and let the NSA and FBI go fuck itself for 10 years trying to track down the leak source. Just laugh at them from the shadows.
It reminds me of the story in Mandela's autobiography. There were a lot of anti-apartheid activitists who operated purely out of some messianic belief they were right. Well, the enemy used this, and decimated them. They went to prison. They disappeared. They got murdered. Most of all, they didnt contribute to the continuing battle. They are like Petya Rostov in War And Peace, all heart and no brains. They might have done something admirable, but they didnt actually help win the battle or the war because they were no longer around to fight anymore.
Now, the enemy, the NSA, or FBI, can just take this guy and swallow him into some prison.
Oh well.
If he did that then innocent people who had nothing to do with the leak could have been targeted including his friends and family.
Snowden made the same legal commitments as Manning. The oath is unrelated to access to state secrets. Many soldiers never get a clearance, and many civilans get it. The penalties for violating each are also separate. (Manning may be hit with both.)
I can imagine that the court may find some leaker innocent if his actions were necessary and the information could not be gotten out in any other way. (For an imaginary example: you send a spy across the border; he radioes that he fell into an abandoned mine shaft and is about to die if not helped. You call your counterpart in that country and tell him where to find the spy. The spy is saved. But you broke the laws on secrecy.)
In absence of clear danger (an asteroid hitting the planet, or a terrorist with a nuke,) I cannot imagine that the US court will find actions of Mr. Snowden necessary. The court will find that there was no immediate danger to anyone, and that the whole matter is purely political, and the disclosure was made for personal reasons. The conviction is then assured.
What if there are abuses taking place? I don't think we are in a position to say if there are or aren't clear dangers.
The government authorities could always deny his claims and try and make him look crazy. They could also accuse him of crimes he didn't commit and try to make him out to be a serious criminal.
For these reasons he probably was wise to go in front of the media.
If there are secret charges are there secret crimes too?
It might be worth whatever consequence from breaking this law if it saves lives.
All these Slashdot articles about Bitcoin but no subscribe with Bitcoin button?
It would appear that some techies realized that currency control is a tool to unjustly oppress people
All money issuers were using money to oppress people, to some extent. Why was the privilege of minting coins given only to the top aristocracy? Gold coins often were the sole privilege of the king. Lacking some advantage, why would aristocracy bother with a metalworking business?
The engineering (ie math) seem to be solid
The crypto scheme appears to be reasonably well done. However in practice there are several attack vectors, and they are possible to execute if you want to. It will cost you, but governments can do that already. It's just the matter of commitment and resources. BTC also has several usability problems, like the long time to clear a transaction (with 6 recommended confirmations, it's between 15 and 30 minutes.) Are you willing to stand in limbo at the grocery store for that much? There are no trusted BTC terminals; and if they were, they could be subverted because BTC depends on access to the network to calculate hashes - and the merchant does not control the network. Plug this merchant's network cable into your own router, run a hundred pet peers, and you can confirm any transaction you want. (On an open Internet you need to subvert the majority of hosts.)
the economic rationale is logically sound
It is debatable, and that's what is always debated in every article about BTC. In essence, there is no rationale that would work for pretty much anyone except Silk Road users. BTC transactions are not even free; but a Visa c/c pays me for using it. Why would I want to pay in BTC?
"it's a scam"
Scam or not, but early miners mined millions of BTCs when mining was good. Where are those BTCs? If the exchange rate of one BTC goes to $10K, for example, those early miners will become richer than Bill Gates. Will that be fair? I think not. Those guys (still anonymous!) may have done good for the society, but the society cannot value the formula (that doesn't even save lives!) that high. BG's Windows does save lives, as part of many computers.
Bitcoins will save as many lives as the Internet did if it goes mainstream. So what if some people get richer than Bill Gates? You think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are the only people allowed to get rich from good timing?
Why wont Slashdot let me subscribe to the site in Bitcoin? Coinbase makes it easy.
I mean just because you don't like the idea it doesn't mean they can't do it in a classified fashion and then make it legal years later.
The FBI now has to tap everyone because of Bitcoin.
What if he would have been secretly paid Bitcoins?
He is the officer. The people he wanted to recruit should have been paid in Bitcoins.
DSPs have done sound modeling for years. So is the GPU the new DSP? Or is it simply cheaper because your desktop machine already has a GPU, whereas it may not have a DSP?
Cheaper and possibly more accurate.
Digital isn't really what everyone is into but it has it's purposes.
DSP is better than GPU but GPU can do stuff a DSP cannot. Physical modeling is a perfect example because to get certain instrument sounds right, like strings based instruments, steel drums, gongs, etc, you need hardware acceleration. Software does a crappy job at it and sampling cannot do it very well period.
If it's possible to use some of the GPU power for audio then we should.
Because if it's not, why should we care?