Edward Snowden has, by his own admission, provided classified information indiscriminately to enemies of the United States.
Lavabit provided aid and comfort to Edward Snowden by allowing him to use their service while being aware of the above-mentioned acts of treason.
Edward Snowden has an unknown quantity of classified information still in his possession which he may or may not continue releasing indiscriminately, or offer to enemy/hostile nations in exchange for asylum/money/political favors.
The Federal government is not going to reform itself no matter who you elect. It’s never going to happen. If we do see reform it will be under Article 5 of the US Constitution.
The states have the ability to amend the constitution and the Federal government. This is the only way it’s going to happen. I don’t care how hopey and changey of a candidate you send to U.S. congress or the white house. This will only get worse until the states can gather enough momentum to put an end to this maddness.
The states have no interest in putting an end to this madness. They benefit from this sort of snooping even more than the Feds do; more, in fact, now that it can be used to catch garden-variety criminals instead of foreign terrorists.
There is no way the overgrow behemoth federal government is going to reform itself. State legislatures are more responsive than the federal government which has overstepped its authority under the constitution. A state convention is the easiest way the federal government can be reigned in.
The alternative is to bend over, spread 'em, and hope the nice police state bureaucrat doesn’t find anything questionable.
That’s not to say it will be easy. But it could happen. It needs to happen. The power of the states to propose amendments was built into the constitution because its authors had the prescience to predict the federal government could become authoritarian and unresponsive. This has now happened. The citizens are being treated like we’re the enemy and it has to fucking stop somehow.
What planet are you living on where state governments are more decent, accountable, and honest than the federal government?
Because I live on a planet where as recently as half a century ago several states attempted to shut down their public education programs entirely so that they wouldn’t have to admit black students. I live on a planet where state governments are, right now, passing unconstitutional laws to ban abortion or harass abortion providers into insolvency. I live on a planet where state legislators illegally conspired to change the timestamp on a bill so they wouldn’t have to wait another two weeks to pass such an unconstitutional abortion ban. I live on a planet where state governments pass laws declaring that global warming is not happening and order ecological officials to ignore their own data when it’s politically inconvenient. I live on a planet where state governments pass laws prohibiting officials from providing healthcare to the public in accordance with federal law. I live on a planet where state governments spend thousands of hours passing laws aimed at conspiracy theory beliefs about gun control, the UN, and “Sharia law”. I live on a planet where 37 states have laws banning consenting adults who love each other from marrying because religious institutions find their love to be icky. I live on a planet where a state Supreme Court justice can unconstitutionally install a religious monument in a courthouse and be reelected for doing it. I live on a planet where a state governor can use her power to have her sister’s ex-wife fired from his state job and suffer no negative repercussions for that act.
If you allow the states to call a constitutional convention, you’ll get a basket of amendments banning abortion, declaring Christianity the state religion, abolishing all federal taxes, and prohibiting anyone swarthier than Russell Brand from becoming a US citizen. What you won’t get is anything protecting the “rights” that you believe you’re being deprived of.
Bullshit, he provided the information to the American People and the Press. This kind of disclosure is the entire reason that whistle blower statutes exist, to give free speech protections in cases of corruption or crimes by the government or employers.
Wait, you are now claiming that Snowden committed Treason? How, specifically, did he aid our enemies? All of them know that phones and internet communications are tapped by the NSA. What Snowden revealed was that the NSA is monitoring every citizen’s phone calls as well as all the information gathered by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Apple, Skype, etc… They were then giving selected bits of this information to the DEA and the IRS where it was used to profile and go after US citizens. If this isn’t a case of corruption of the laws of the US, I don’t know what qualifies.
Regarding Lavabit giving aid and comfort to Snowden, are you implying Lavabit has committed treason? I can only assume so with the verbiage you are using. Surely if this counts as treason, they should also go after United Airlines for flying him to China and Dell for making the computer he used to store and email the information.
And that’s the thing – these providers ** were willing to cooperate when there was a lawful warrant on the matter of an actual crime.** They are not out to protect child pornographers, etc.
You may say, this sort of thing is enabling the likes of Snowden. Same sort of thing enables dissidents of regimes that deserve to fall, the kind that make dissenters disappear rather than put them on trial.
And some of us feel it’s none of anyone’s business to know about us what we do not want them to just because it is none of their business however badly they may want it to be so; and it should not be a requirement for a normal productive life to have to opt in by default, with the alternative if you do not wish to be monitored being to just plow your own land by a cabin in the woods and communicate exclusively by letter post.
As mentioned, the authorities have even gagged these providers from saying what *was *the problem about. That hinders them from appealing to public opinion so that the public will compel their representatives to change their ways. (Though **Smapti **does have a point about what kind of Constitutional Convention could arise out of the current states:eek:…)
Number two is wrong. Snowden did not release information indiscriminately to enemies of the United States, nor did he admit to doing so. He released information meticulously to Glenn Greenwald, who is a critic of the US government, not an enemy of the United States.
The enemies of the United States are the ones who perpetrated, lied, and covered up these abuses of power. You commit the jingoistic error of conflating country with government.
I disagree. The enemies of the United States are the people who wish to kill me for no reason other than that I am an American. And by “meticulously releasing information to a critic of the US government”, Snowden has made sure that each and every one of those people knows, in considerably more detail than they did previously, the ways in which this country is trying to thwart them and how to make sure their plans stay secret until they get the body count they’re hoping for.
Jingoism has nothing to do with it - I feel that my right to not be murdered by terrorists trumps your right to feel vaguely self-assured that info about who you send emails to isn’t being collated into a file that chances are nobody will ever look at.
Except that’s completely untrue. The supposed enemies of the US you’re concerned about already assumed any electronic comms would be monitored, and I’d imagine are taking a number of fairly simple routine steps to work around that.
What Snowden revealed is that actually the eavesdropping being conducted is applied to a far more massive section of the world than likely terrorists or enemies of the US.