# Edward Snowden's Christmas broadcast **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 25, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147 "2013-12-25T15:07:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/21 "2013-12-26T11:22:44Z")
I haven’t heard about the U.S. granting citizenships to the people of the countries \*it \*occupies. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/22 "2013-12-26T13:02:03Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > What you said was as foolish as comparing Allan Bakke to Rosa Parks. LOL. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/23 "2013-12-26T13:05:19Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Hey! > > Israel doesn’t mess with its citizens’ lives at a fraction of the level that the American government does. In fact, the prevailing opinion here is that you guys are utterly insane. I’m pretty sure the consensus almost everywhere is the same. Defending the actions of the NSA seems to point to a level of indoctrination most of us won’t have experienced, and hopefully never will. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/24 "2013-12-26T13:44:21Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > You can’t be that out of touch and “jaw-dropingly stupid” not to know it’s not my comparison but Angela Merkel’s. Take care to describe _comments_ as stupid (if you must) without ever even accidentally suggesting you think the person posting them is stupid. Moving this thread to Great Debates from Cafe Society, where the other threads exactly like this one go. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/25 "2013-12-26T14:07:12Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > Defending the actions of the NSA seems to point to a level of indoctrination most of us won’t have experienced, and hopefully never will. I appreciate that hyperbole (NSA=STASI) makes for dramatic argument but it is not indoctrination (much less defense) to point out that while the NSA’s methods do not make for the kind of free society Americans imagined themselves to be living in (until recently), it is not anywhere near the oppressive regimes of former communist block countries. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/26 "2013-12-26T15:17:04Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > You can’t be that out of touch and “jaw-dropingly stupid” not to know it’s not my comparison but Angela Merkel’s. And also that she grew up in East Germany: > > [Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama | Angela Merkel | The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/merkel-compares-nsa-stasi-obama) Merkel’s memory of her time in East Germany is [curiously poor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel#Early_life), so I wouldn’t put too much stock into her views on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/27 "2013-12-26T15:49:46Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > I haven’t heard about the U.S. granting citizenships to the people of the countries \*it \*occupies. Except according to every government of Israel since Judea and Samaria(West Bank) aren’t occupied but are part of Israel. Also, I think plenty of Arab Israelis would question the idea that the government doesn’t mess with their lives. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/28 "2013-12-26T16:06:47Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > You really seem to have no idea of the level of intrusion into your life the Gov has. I mean this quite seriously, not to score a point on a message board - in terms of what it monitors, collects and knows about you, the NSA makes the STASI look like schoolboy amatuers. Whenever Snowden is mentioned, I will repeat this until I’m blue in the face… Do y remember the 1998 film Enemy of the State starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, and Jon Voight. If you watched that film and didn’t already assume the government could get their hands into ANYTHING, then you’re an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/29 "2013-12-26T16:14:29Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Whenever Snowden is mentioned, I will repeat this until I’m blue in the face… > > Do y remember the 1998 film Enemy of the State starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, and Jon Voight. If you watched that film and didn’t already assume the government could get their hands into ANYTHING, then you’re an idiot. That’s how I feel about Time Cop. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/30 "2013-12-26T16:16:41Z")
An omnipotent government would have stopped Van Damme from making any more films after about 1986. Well, a benevolent one. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/31 "2013-12-26T16:27:06Z")
So, who watched the broadcast? No, not the Gene Hackman movie. ---
**Author:** ![Caffeine.addict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f475e1/32.png) [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/32 "2013-12-26T16:34:47Z")
I think that he raised some interesting points. On some level, privacy is vanishing. What’s worse is that we are voluntarily giving it up. How many people have gone to a party where a bunch of pictures are immediately put on Facebook and tagged? How many people go somewhere and immediately check in on Foursquare? I think that Snowden had a point in that privacy as we knew it is gone. ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Quatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bc8723/32.png) [@Mr\_Quatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Quatro)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/33 "2013-12-26T16:53:13Z")
> [@Caffeine.addict](#): > > I think that Snowden had a point in that privacy as we knew it is gone. The CBS 60 minutes show about the NSA brought up the fact that Snowden, as reported by his girlfriend, would put up a barrier around his computer and wear a hooded sweat shirt with a sheet around all of that to use his computer. He must have known something about invasion of privacy or he is a wacko with paranoid thoughts based on his employment by the NSA of course, but then again could he have been trained by another intelligence group while still a teenager before he was even employed by the NSA? Perhaps Snowden was a planned mole to embarrass the USA … seed thought that must have already come up in someone’s boardroom don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/34 "2013-12-26T17:01:45Z")
So when does James Clapper go to jail for perjury? ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/35 "2013-12-26T17:08:24Z")
> [@Caffeine.addict](#): > > I think that he raised some interesting points. On some level, privacy is vanishing. What’s worse is that we are voluntarily giving it up. How many people have gone to a party where a bunch of pictures are immediately put on Facebook and tagged? How many people go somewhere and immediately check in on Foursquare? I think that Snowden had a point in that privacy as we knew it is gone. How dare you come into threads about Snowden and post a reasoned response. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/36 "2013-12-26T17:12:45Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > So when does James Clapper go to jail for perjury? It’s interesting in the sense Clapper has, de facto, been ‘pardoned’ or been given an ‘amnesty’ for his Contempt of Congress. Similarly, the Justice Dept lawyers who lied to FISA judges were in Contempt of Court. In neither case did the Contempt serve the interests of the people. Contrast with Snowden ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/37 "2013-12-26T17:40:11Z")
> [@Mr\_Quatro](#): > > The CBS 60 minutes show about the NSA brought up the fact that Snowden, as reported by his girlfriend, would put up a barrier around his computer and wear a hooded sweat shirt with a sheet around all of that to use his computer. > > He must have known something about invasion of privacy or he is a wacko with paranoid thoughts based on his employment by the NSA of course This is probably not the right place to get into this, but that didn’t come from his girlfriend. [It came because they were able to secretly turn on his webcam and watch him at home.](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/nsa-60-minutes-report?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_35507628) So the NSA is simultaneously accusing Snowden of being careless with classified information and calling him a crazy paranoid who did weird things to keep his work secret while it spied on him. > [@](#): > > Perhaps Snowden was a planned mole to embarrass the USA There’s no evidence for that, or for many of the other things people are saying about the guy. This is the kind of thing speculation that needs to be backed up by evidence. > [@Caffeine.addict](#): > > I think that he raised some interesting points. On some level, privacy is vanishing. What’s worse is that we are voluntarily giving it up. How many people have gone to a party where a bunch of pictures are immediately put on Facebook and tagged? How many people go somewhere and immediately check in on Foursquare? I think that Snowden had a point in that privacy as we knew it is gone. This is true except for the ‘even worse’ part. I think it’s more complicated than that. I’m not sure the world a lot of us have chosen to live in is possible with privacy in the old sense - the sense that information belongs to you and you alone - and there are some cool components to that world (otherwise nobody would participate in social networks). But it’s complicated and I am not sure we’ve fully reckoned with what it means. And in the NSA story we can see that sharing information with companies and with the government are not the same thing. The old view, at least as it pertains to phone data, is that once your information belongs to a company, it’s OK for the government to see it because it’s no longer yours and no longer private. [Justice Sotomayor wrote an opinion about that a few years ago, and I think maybe we need that view to be more widely adopted.](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-sotomayor-undermined-obamas-nsa) ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/38 "2013-12-26T17:59:37Z")
> [@BrokenBriton](#): > > You really seem to have no idea of the level of intrusion into your life the Gov has. Says the guy who thinks Obama shut down the Occupy movement. ---
**Author:** ![Caffeine.addict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f475e1/32.png) [@Caffeine.addict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caffeine.addict)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/39 "2013-12-26T18:32:59Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > This is probably not the right place to get into this, but that didn’t come from his girlfriend. [It came because they were able to secretly turn on his webcam and watch him at home.](http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/nsa-60-minutes-report?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_35507628) So the NSA is simultaneously accusing Snowden of being careless with classified information and calling him a crazy paranoid who did weird things to keep his work secret while it spied on him. > > There’s no evidence for that, or for many of the other things people are saying about the guy. This is the kind of thing speculation that needs to be backed up by evidence. > > This is true except for the ‘even worse’ part. I think it’s more complicated than that. I’m not sure the world a lot of us have chosen to live in is possible with privacy in the old sense - the sense that information belongs to you and you alone - and there are some cool components to that world (otherwise nobody would participate in social networks). But it’s complicated and I am not sure we’ve fully reckoned with what it means. And in the NSA story we can see that sharing information with companies and with the government are not the same thing. The old view, at least as it pertains to phone data, is that once your information belongs to a company, it’s OK for the government to see it because it’s no longer yours and no longer private. [Justice Sotomayor wrote an opinion about that a few years ago, and I think maybe we need that view to be more widely adopted.](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-sotomayor-undermined-obamas-nsa) I agree that social networking does have positive benefits and I use it to, but in a sense I worry that my kids won’t have the same opportunities in life to start over socially that I did. When I went to college, it was starting from a clean slate. Is that really possible now when your social media history is out there, not just on your page but also on your friend’s page. There was [Justine Sacco’](http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/22/world/sacco-offensive-tweet/)s stupid tweet which has probably cost her career. It seems like a fleeting moment of stupidity and insensitivity can live forever and that troubles me somewhat. Getting back to the governmental aspect of it, I hope that Justice Sotomayor’s opinion that this all needs to be revisited takes hold, because the amount of information out there is staggering. I don’t think that anyone has the resources to harness it all yet, but I don’t think that the day when it becomes possible is all that far off. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2013, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147/40 "2013-12-26T18:43:42Z")
> [@gravitycrash](#): > > You’re really okay with what the NSA is doing Smapti? You are way more trusting than I am. No one government agency should have this much power Power? They have incredile information-gathering, but what can they _do_ with this information? What actions have they taken with this information (beyond fucking with RSA, which RSA _agreed_ to), what could they do? They have the power to gather a lot of information. What can they do with this information? Someone help me out, I just don’t get it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/edward-snowdens-christmas-broadcast/677147.md?page=3)