Snowden the HERO, contnues to make the intel community look stupid...

[Londo_Jowo]

He is a traitor because spying on other countries is both necessary and a lawful exercise of power by the government.

I believe a lot of what the NSA is doing inside the US to US citizens is unlawful and so exposing that is important.

Exposing unlawful acts: hero.
Exposing lawful acts: traitor.

Excellent answer, I couldn't have said it better.

 

[momeNt]

He is a traitor because spying on other countries is both necessary and a lawful exercise of power by the government.

I believe a lot of what the NSA is doing inside the US to US citizens is unlawful and so exposing that is important.

Exposing unlawful acts: hero.
Exposing lawful acts: traitor.

How is it necessary?

edit: eh forget it. I'll just read a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum book and figure it out on my own.

 

[Jaskalas]

He is a traitor because spying on other countries is both necessary and a lawful exercise of power by the government.

I believe a lot of what the NSA is doing inside the US to US citizens is unlawful and so exposing that is important.

Exposing unlawful acts: hero.
Exposing lawful acts: traitor.

When one does both acts?

 

[fskimospy]

How is it necessary?

edit: eh forget it. I'll just read a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum book and figure it out on my own.

How is spying on other countries necessary?

I guess I would submit Exhibit A into evidence, which would be the entire history of humanity.

 

[fskimospy]

When one does both acts?

His early acts were heroic, his current acts are traitorous. To me he is a hero who became a traitor.

 

[unokitty]

Who hired Snowden?

Who gave him access to classified information?

Who approved his clearance?

Here is a hint. It was some of the same people that gave Bradley Manning access to classified information.

Snowden is just a symptom. The problem is that if you hire people that lack integrity, then you will have people working for you that lack integrity.

You are welcome to your judgemental attitudes, to your conceit and to your arrogance. But that doesn't change the situation. And it doesn't make the country any more secure.

In reality, Snowden is no more a problem than Elsberg was... And now, most people, other than those in the Federal Government that had their lies exposed, agree that Elsberg is a hero. Only time will tell if Snowden will be viewed the same or not...

In the meantime, the people that hired Snowden, the people that gave him access to classified information, and those that approved his clearance are all, in the name of national security, pigging out on taxpayer money.

And the people and the problems that enabled Manning and Snowden remain...

But if it makes you feel better to judge Snowden, go for it. After all, it made you feel better after you judged Manning as well.

Didn't it?

Uno

 

[fskimospy]

Hell yeah I judged Bradley Manning. While I don't approve of the pretrial detention practices inflicted on him, he most certainly deserved a long bout of jail time. So does Snowden. I hope the US doesn't give up on Snowden and eventually tosses his ass in jail where it belongs.

 

[LegendKiller]

Hey look, we have ourselves a real live chickenhawk.

Hey look, we have a naive rube who thinks everybody will just get along together if we live in an anarchist society.

 

[LegendKiller]

It is amazing and sad that so many readily sacrifice liberty for a false sense of security.

It appears thousands of years of bending the knee to strongmen to protect us has still left its mark, as we struggle to remain free from such policy.

Are you fucking blind or are you just stupid? Where did I say that we should sacrifice our freedoms?

Let me repeat this, real slow, in caps, with periods, just so you can understand. If you still don't maybe I can go into MS Paint and draw you a stick man diagram.

HE. WAS. A. HERO. FOR. EXPOSING. DOMESTIC. SPYING. HE. WAS. A. TRAITOR. FOR. EXPOSING. INTERNATIONAL. SPYING.

Did that help?

 

[momeNt]

Hey look, we have a naive rube who thinks everybody will just get along together if we live in an anarchist society.

Who said I thought that? Human nature won't change because of the society we are in, but the society we live in allows certain behaviors to flourish that I'd rather not see flourish.

Put Hitler in an anarchist society, you have a gang leader killing random jews as he can find them, put in him control of a fascist state, well you have the holocaust.

Eventually over time with a structure of authority you get the wrong people in places that make irreparable decisions. People are blinded to the damage caused because of the power of "teams" that alter our decision-making (defending conservatives as a fellow conservative and liberals conversely). Any sort of system of governance which uses authority to rule (all of them) will fall prey to this. It's painfully obvious in monarchies, because its just one person, but do you think democracy really solves this problem? Who's naive now?

 

[LegendKiller]

I find it amusing watching you turn into a neocon over the last couple of years. If everybody knows we are spying on each other. Then what revelations did Snowden bring to the table that gets you so upset?

I've always been somewhat of a "neocon" when it comes to certain issues. Overall, having worked for foreign companies and lived in NYC, I have a different perspective on things. I knew people who were in the WTC and they would tell stories over beer that would shake your thoughts on how we should look at the world.

Overall, I am a centrist, I voted for Obama both times, regretting both at this point. I think Patriot Act is an abomination but I also take a different perspective of the world and realize that we have our interests and we should protect them. We enjoy a position in life that few do, it's natural to doubt that position sometimes, but we shouldn't take it for granted and think that the world outside of the US and a few countries is any better, or even 80% of what we have here.

As far as Russia being a shithole, try using FB to criticize Putin, or use these forums to do the same thing, while you live in Russia, Iran, or China. Do so in public and see how well you are treated. See what happens when you Snowden Russia, you get a polonium milkshake. If you piss Putin off or threaten his power in any way, no matter how powerful you are, you are arrested on whatever charges. Those charges may even be true, but he allowed you to do those things under his power because he gained power from you, you bit the handler and need to be taken out.

While the same is somewhat true here, the severity isn't nearly as bad.

To think that Germany doesn't spy on us, or that GB doesn't do it, is insane. Seriously insane. How do you think France got the atomic bomb? Truman wouldn't give it to them, they took it. How do you think the Israelis got it? Everybody spies on each other, allies, enemies, best friends, cousins, brothers. It is the way the world works and to think it doesn't, or shouldn't, is being a naive fool. It doesn't take a liberal or a democrat, a neocon or a socialist to realize that, it just takes an acknowledgement that the real world is more harsh than most people in this country realize and everybody is trying to get a leg up.

 

[LegendKiller]

Who said I thought that? Human nature won't change because of the society we are in, but the society we live in allows certain behaviors to flourish that I'd rather not see flourish.

Put Hitler in an anarchist society, you have a gang leader killing random jews as he can find them, put in him control of a fascist state, well you have the holocaust.

Eventually over time with a structure of authority you get the wrong people in places that make irreparable decisions. People are blinded to the damage caused because of the power of "teams" that alter our decision-making (defending conservatives as a fellow conservative and liberals conversely). Any sort of system of governance which uses authority to rule (all of them) will fall prey to this. It's painfully obvious in monarchies, because its just one person, but do you think democracy really solves this problem? Who's naive now?

But you aren't realizing the fact that hitler was a Strongman that came to power through fear/intimidation and was appeased and left to his own devices. That is the nature of the world. Those who have ambition will take what they cannot buy. They will kill for what they cannot take peacefully and they will subjugate what they don't kill. If it takes a massive NSA to protect the US against China or Russia or whomever, so be it.

However, that should not be used against US citizens unless it has strong judicial and congressional oversight and does not violate the Constitution.

 

[LegendKiller]

I was born there. Thanks for the compliment.



What's your point? Other countries would take advantage and spy on us? If so, elaborate on that.



And how do you define that, if traitor is not the right word choice? Working for your own federal government, releasing anything that harms the nation's intelligence is considered betrayal.

So where do you live now?

See above for the rest.

 

[Nebor]

His early acts were heroic, his current acts are traitorous. To me he is a hero who became a traitor.

None of it was heroic. He's a self-righteous egomaniac that betrayed his employer and his country. If he was willing to stake anything of importance on his beliefs, he would have gone through the established whistleblower pathways.

FWIW I have no problem with the NSA's domestic or international programs.

 

[Dari]

All the people calling Snowden a traitor don't have a clue. He may not be perfect but will take him the way he is rather than not knowing what I now know. If I was sitting on a jury for his trial, my mind would be made up from day one as to his guilt. Fuck the law if it's stupid.

 

[BoomerD]

Hero my ass; i can't wait till he's dead

And I hope it's done in a very public place...in a very painful manner.

 

[LegendKiller]

All the people calling Snowden a traitor don't have a clue. He may not be perfect but will take him the way he is rather than not knowing what I now know. If I was sitting on a jury for his trial, my mind would be made up from day one as to his guilt. Fuck the law if it's stupid.

If he had stuck to domestic spying he could have easily swayed public opinion and rallied lawyers to his cause. He'd probably be a free man eventually.

However, he was a naive uber-douche and decided to go rogue because he has some ridiculous notion of how the world works. His ridiculous notion is shared by naive rubes on this board.

For that his sentence is now to be exiled from his country, beholden to whatever shithole will accept him and not deport him, trusted by nobody and treated with a mixture of contempt and distrust.

A fitting life for a traitor.

 

[Dari]

If he had stuck to domestic spying he could have easily swayed public opinion and rallied lawyers to his cause. He'd probably be a free man eventually.

However, he was a naive uber-douche and decided to go rogue because he has some ridiculous notion of how the world works. His ridiculous notion is shared by naive rubes on this board.

For that his sentence is now to be exiled from his country, beholden to whatever shithole will accept him and not deport him, trusted by nobody and treated with a mixture of contempt and distrust.

A fitting life for a traitor.

Well, you take what you can get, warts and all. I won't fault him for his liberal, utopian world view because of all that he exposed. In the end he did us a favor by showing that an organ of our own government was spying on us on a level very few imagined.

 

[LegendKiller]

Well, you take what you can get, warts and all. I won't fault him for his liberal, utopian world view because of all that he exposed. In the end he did us a favor by showing that an organ of our own government was spying on us on a level very few imagined.

His is far from a liberal utopian view. If anything it is a libertopian view (libertarian, not liberal).

 

[Nebor]

Well, you take what you can get, warts and all. I won't fault him for his liberal, utopian world view because of all that he exposed. In the end he did us a favor by showing that an organ of our own government was spying on us on a level very few imagined.

Frankly you were a fool if you didn't suspect that the government was monitoring all the electronic communications it could since the inception of Carnivore back in 1997.

BTW, what are you doing with this newfound, oh so valuable information? Because the American public doesn't appear to give a damn.

 

[Acanthus]

Frankly you were a fool if you didn't suspect that the government was monitoring all the electronic communications it could since the inception of Carnivore back in 1997.

BTW, what are you doing with this newfound, oh so valuable information? Because the American public doesn't appear to give a damn.

"You were a fool (if you didn't think in hindsight that i was right about that thing i made no prediction of.)"

Monitoring communications is very different from drag-netting everything, to the tune of yottabytes, and storing it indefinitely.

No one, even now, knows the true extent of the surveillance state, who it empowers, or how it is used against domestic and foreign powers.

 

[Nebor]

"You were a fool (if you didn't think in hindsight that i was right about that thing i made no prediction of.)"

Monitoring communications is very different from drag-netting everything, to the tune of yottabytes, and storing it indefinitely.

No one, even now, knows the true extent of the surveillance state, who it empowers, or how it is used against domestic and foreign powers.

It's very easy to see, just from the relatively well known technologies we use in Afghanistan against terror networks, the kind of capabilities that are out there.

And FWIW I've always maintained that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic communication, which is the legal standard of whether something is protected or not.

It's dramatic to say that no one knows the true extent. Think of the most extensive network you can imagine, and you won't be far off. Every post you make here, every text message you send is recorded and indexed with your name, which is linked to everyone you know. Think of those "Allow facebook to connect to this website" buttons. It's like that, but it's every website, email, text message and phone call that you touch. It all connects, and it's all logged.

 

[fskimospy]

It's very easy to see, just from the relatively well known technologies we use in Afghanistan against terror networks, the kind of capabilities that are out there.

And FWIW I've always maintained that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic communication, which is the legal standard of whether something is protected or not.

It's dramatic to say that no one knows the true extent. Think of the most extensive network you can imagine, and you won't be far off. Every post you make here, every text message you send is recorded and indexed with your name, which is linked to everyone you know. Think of those "Allow facebook to connect to this website" buttons. It's like that, but it's every website, email, text message and phone call that you touch. It all connects, and it's all logged.

Meh, circuit courts have split on whether or not people have an expectation of privacy for email and if I had to bet I would say that eventually email will be protected to the same extent as other communication is, that is that warrants will be required. It's just common sense.

Legislation won't be the way this stuff is reigned in, it will be through the courts. With that in mind it means little what the American people think.

 

[shady28]

And FWIW I've always maintained that there's no reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic communication, which is the legal standard of whether something is protected or not.

You are wrong. If that is what is framing your thought process perhaps you should brush up on SCOTUS rulings. Maybe you should brush up on the Constitution and the meaning of freedom in general.


"in two key decisions (including the Katz case), the Supreme Court made clear that eavesdropping — bugging private conversations or wiretapping phone lines — counted as a search that required a warrant. "

https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections


“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.”
― William O. Douglas
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1939-1975

.

 

[fskimospy]

None of it was heroic. He's a self-righteous egomaniac that betrayed his employer and his country. If he was willing to stake anything of importance on his beliefs, he would have gone through the established whistleblower pathways.

FWIW I have no problem with the NSA's domestic or international programs.

No he wouldn't, he's not a moron. This was not only a far more effective way for him to put this information out it also has the benefit to him of not getting him thrown in prison. Making dumb and self sacrificial choices isn't the route to heroism. Gotta think things through.

If nothing else this will help clear up some of the massive incompetence that was clearly going on at NSA. One of the most scandalous things that comes out of this for me is just how piss poor their security was.