Who carries data around in four laptops, instead of just putting it on flashdrives or at least taking out the hard-drives? Seems like a pretty inefficient way to travel.
But anyways, there doesn’t really seem to be any new news, which is why I suspect there haven’t been any new threads. Even the OP doesn’t really seem to have much to talk about, other then starting a weird meta-thread on why he wasn’t starting a thread.
I didn’t say anything was a big deal, I just asked where you got the information.
BOR-ing. That’s why.
I keep thinking about the character in “Catch-22”, the tail gunner who (literally) spilled his guts all over Yossarian. That was Snowden, right? Other than that, I got nothing.
Yours was the second inquiry, so the ‘big deal’ part was generic, not directed at you specifically.
The CIA was unable to nab and rendition this guy in HK, where they sure must have a significant presence, what are we paying those guys for in the first place? Will this failure lead to an escalation/expansion of the US espionage apparatus?
“Help him, help him”
“Help the bombardier”
“No, I’m the bombardier, help him, help him”
“He’s so young”
“He’s dead, you don’t get much older than that”
You assume that they were unable to nab him. The more likely situation is that the NSA, CIA, et. al don’t consider him worthy of the resources it would take to get him outside of normal diplomatic channels. IMO the media is making much more of a big deal out of all this than the U.S. Gov. Their general reaction seems to have been :rolleyes:
Pelosi is right wing?
Edward Snowden is an interesting character, deserving of one of those wonderfully long New Yorker profiles, but at the end of the day he’s just a source for a news story. So we should probably be talking about him just as much as we’d talk about any source: very little to not at all.
The story isn’t Snowden; it’s his revelations about our government (and the irony and awfulness of the government criminally charging him for spying…because he revealed that the government is spying).
As a side note: I’m deeply unimpressed by people who cynically claim to have known about his revelations all along, or don’t see how it affects them, and thus find no reason to be moved politically (WhyNot’s post, for example). Blase authoritarianism isn’t an attractive quality in a person. IMHO of course. Perhaps the OP is feeling similarly frustrated.
Can someone give a brief summary of what new information he supposedly leaked?
I’m not blase, I’m exhausted and frustrated. I wrote my Senators. I called my Representatives. I voted for people I thought would stop it. I Occupied at protests. I honestly don’t know what else to do. I’m not sure a message board post will be any more effective at changing things than actual participation in our political system, but if you think it will, I’ll do it.
Considering that only a single senator, Russ Feingold (D-WI), voted against the Patriot Act in 2001 because of his concern about the wide net they were casting, I think most of our representatives’ concern about this has been shoulder-shrugging, so I’m kind of at a loss as to how to proceed other than writing more letters to my Congresscritters (who inevitably find polite ways to tell me they care about my opinion but mean to go pound sand) and trying to find people to elect who give enough of a shit about privacy and the other stuff I care about.
I mean, Feingold was even voted out of office in the last election cycle. Maybe no one likes Cassandras.
WhyNot, I think it’s like the Facebook slacktivism where if we don’t keep the topic alive, the terrorists have won.
But, seriously, what can people do?
Almost every politician (Congress & Senate) and almost every media “talking head” is saying to them this is nothing, you signed up for it when you were born American, Snowden is a criminal, it’s not a news at all and American Gladiator is on TV.
In some strange and perverse way Government is probably happy to be done and over with this and move on business as usual. Business as usual as in coming up with other ridiculous ways to misuse its purpose.
Heh. Yeah.
At some point, one has to shrug and realize that when one lives in a democracy, one’s ideas aren’t always going to win. Several years ago, I’d definitely given up on this topic and accepted that I just wasn’t on the winning side. Has the tide shifted? Should I be active on this issue again? I’m not sure yet. It still feels like recreational, not productive, outrage is mostly what I’m seeing. The kind that’s going to dissipate when the next celebrity dies or haz babby.
Oh, I think the CIA could nab him on a boat, with a goat, in a box, with a fox, here or there, and anywhere 
But that may strain the delicacy of using diplomatic channels. I’m just thinking of how very frustrating it must be to have to pander to the very channel that is currently displaying a symbolically universal “UP YOURS” gesture to the U.S. government.
Snowden: “The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.” This young man gave up a very comfortable lifestyle, his own freedom, peace of mind, and must live with the knowledge that what he did may harm his family (some of whom also have government jobs). He’s an idealist with courage I can’t even begin to imagine. At most, I’d walk away from the job, and even then, I’d be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
Yip. I may disagree that what he said was all that important, as it was well-known, but what the US wants to do to him is so fucking immoral that I’m okay with all of it. It was stuff like this that finally caused me to completely give up any type of admiration for the U.S. military.
As for why I didn’t bring that up? Yeah, I of all people am going to start a thread about something I think is immoral. That’s really going to go well. Plus I don’t generally start threads.
Ah. I think I misread the intent of your first post – apologies. You’re right that one message board comment isn’t the most effective action to take on a political issue. But when someone reads internet content in aggregate, with post after article after comment saying “who cares – it’s not important,” then I think it can have an effect on momentum and public opinion.
As for how to effectively produce change in US government? The merits of slacktivism? Hell if I know. Maybe more message board threads will help. 
I voted “other”. I’m finding it hard to work up any outrage. Impossible, actually. So the government tracks which phones call which other phones and captures the time of day, minutes talked, etc. Big deal- the phone companies do it. Do I care if the government knows I called my wife from work three times last week? No. Do I care if they know I called my son and how often? No. I just don’t see how this is chilling speech in any measurable way.