Talking about Snowden, or about surveillance in the U.S.?
In terms of surveillance, it is getting a lot of conversation on line, in the media, etc. and it should. Scary stuff, even if it has always been around in some form.
In terms of Snowden, I have a question: isn’t there a difference between sharing info on surveillance of U.S. citizens vs. Snowden also sharing evidence of the U.S. spying on other countries? In legal terms, isn’t the latter a clear case of treason? One may not like what the U.S. is doing, in terms of spying on China or other countries, but spilling the beans on that type of spying crosses a well-understood line, doesn’t it?
I don’t see Snowden as the “heroic whistleblower” some have claimed him to be: while I’m wearily resigned to government intrusion it remains regrettably legal so he hasn’t revealed anything underhanded going on.
Plus as already noted he doesn’t seem to have done this for love, money or truth but rather out of a feckless half-arsed desire for attention. His running to China and potentially Moscow or Cuba or Ecuador just seems to reinforce this. He’s a small fish; the bigger issue of NSA intrusion is more worthy of discussion and frankly they seem to gather less info in a month than most people put onto Facebook on an average Tuesday.
Treason in the US is “providing aid and comfort to our enemies”. China isn’t an enemy of the US, and “aid and comfort” has generally been interepreted as actively working with enemy nations or groups, not just in doing something that incidentally helps them.
So no. If he ends up in a US courtroom someday, he’ll be tried under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified info, not for treason.
I’m a right-winger here and I think Snowden, aside from leaking classified documents, did the right thing. And even the classified leak isn’t treason.
This isn’t a liberal vs conservative issue, congress is mostly united in their support of this data collection. IMO our leaders are working more for themselves and the military-industrial complex than us.
Have they? I think Hong Kong is the only place we made an extradition request to, and while they delayed fulfilling it on a technicality, they didn’t say the wouldn’t fulfill it if Snowdon stayed in the country (which is presumably why he appears to have left).
I’m envisioning a giant of a beastly hairy man sitting on a toilet a few sizes too small for his enormous ass, with his pants down around his ankles and enormous strain on his reddened face … just as the door swings wide open and pans to a huge audience of shocked onlookers.
U.S. has to ask Hong Kong for diplomatic assistance … Hong Kong insists that U.S. did not cross every “T” and dot every “I” when making the request … both are achingly aware that one of Snowden’s charges is that the U.S. has been hacking secure databases in Hong Kong. What a great big smelly turd of a situation to be caught in.
The US government oversteps the mark and the outraged underdog spills the beans. The outraged USA then throws its weight around demanding that others hand him over.
These others shrug their shoulders and mention that the form isn’t signed in a black ball-point pen so isn’t valid, then pat their pockets and say “do you know, he was around here somewhere but buggered if I can find him now…can’t help you”
And just to be clear, I’d find this equally hilarious were it happening to Russia, China, UK or any major state.
Well, I haven’t opined on this situation as I was waiting for the other shoe to drop… after all, what could a contractor disclose with his security clearance? The answer, it seems, is not a whole lot. So far he’s told us that the gov’t collects metadata from the internet - does anyone think there is such a thing as “privacy” on the internet? And that our gov’t spies on economic and geopolitical competitors? I think we already knew that, too.
As for the measure of Snowden’s courage: well, if he was truly courageous, I think this would have been much less about him and his globetrotting. True courage would have been believing in his expose such that he would be willing to stand trial in the U.S. and present his case. That would have been hella courageous. When I think about whistleblowers like Sharon Watkins (Enron) or Roger Boisjoly (NASA) they stayed around to face the music. Snowden, not so much.
I also agree that his leaks are embarrassing, but nothing the NSA or CIA are too concerned about. Their reaction speaks volumes to their concern. Pretty sure if he was sitting on something hot, he wouldn’t have made it out of HK.
I reminded of the animals rights protesters who threw mock blood on women who wore fur coats. Some people asked why they didn’t do the same thing to bikers who wore leather coats. The answer obviously was that the bikers would fight back.
You don’t get a lot of credit for demonstrating when you make sure to only pick safe targets.
The outrage that you should be feeling isn’t that the government is tracking cell phone and internet usage (among other types of metadata) or even that they are collecting and correlating actual user data, but that it is attempting to conceal the fact that it is doing this at all and persecuting someone (who clearly should never have received a security clearance or been granted access to any secure data just on the basis of lying about his educational and career history) who is exposing the fact that all of this is going on with minimal or no oversight. In other words, the US government is taking as carte blanché the provisions of the Patriot Act to construct a massive surveillance system of questionable legality, and then keeping the citizens and their representatives ignorant of the extent of the system so that they cannot possibly make an informed decision about said act and system. By doing so, the NSA is completely subverting the democratic process, and for no particular security-related reason whatsoever except to avoid undesired scrutiny, both in what data is collected and how effectively (or not) it, and the budget monies used to manage the system, are being used.
This is also not just “cutting out the middleman” to get a subpoena. In obtaining a subpoena, the pursuing party has to go before a judge, demonstrate cause, and declare the scope and extent of surveillance or documents requested. This is an executive bureaucracy that makes its own decisions about who to watch and how much data to collect with no judicial or legislative oversight. And yet, they take the management and security of the data so ineptly that a junior level technician can walk away with four laptop computers of data.
The outrage shouldn’t be a lack of privacy–which is rapidly disappearing regardless of any government sponsored protections or intrusions–but that the government, and specifically an intelligence service which is supposed to be serving the interests of the citizens, is attempting to conceal the extent of their data collection and what appears to be the fundamental incompetence in managing it. See William Binney for a high level criticism by someone who is a legitimate whistleblower.
However, one thing Snowdon is doing is distracting from the fundamental liberties and access to government activites information by making a spectacle of himself. If I thought the government were more competent I might suspect that this is a ‘wag the dog’ type diversion to draw attention away from the actual issues.
DemocraticUnderground.com is awash in Eric Snowden. I don’t think any of what he has leaked is actually news, as others have leaked it in the past and simply been branded liars. Much of the capability was discussed in the news during the past 12 years as capabilities the government wanted. See TIPS and Echelon. I think Snowden is small potatoes. The real issue the is the government is recording every damn phone call we make and denying it. And they hate that Snowden is talking about it. Why? This is nothing new.
What is somewhat surprising is the extent which various government and media personalities are going after the messengers, Snowden and Greenwald, rather than the issue that every one of their electronic communications is secretly recorded by the government, which has then issued piles of lies about exactly that. We now have four ex-NSA whistle blowers who confirm this, and a number of official spokespeople who have at other times let slip that this is going on.
I get that the SDMB isn’t obsessed with the distraction of vilifying Snowden. It’s an official distraction exactly has Orwell predicted. But this isn’t Emmanuel Goldberg, it’s some kid barely out of teenage years that we are told is the new enemy.
The NSA (National Stasi Agency) is the enemy. They didn’t even foil the Boston Marathon bombing, which is exactly what they claim is supposed to be foiled by this. Heck, if this program is so effective, why didn’t they use the meta data to learn Snowden’s intentions? Or Greenwald’s?
My guess is that the information gathered is used the same way J. Edgar Hoover used his information. Political blackmail by the establishment corporate interests.
He gave info to The Guardian and The Washington Post and asked them to take care as journalists in what they disclosed for the sake of national security. So in this case, those newspapers would be as close to a primary source as you can get; they are disclosing some of what he disclosed, and would be your best resources.
Because we aren’t white, middle-class males who circlejerk over how horrible and oppressive the government is and how ‘ERMAGERD they know what porn sites I visit and that I use the LOIC thinking it makes a real difference!’?
Because if you talk about Edward Snowden instead of the fact that the NSA hoovers up the metadata on every phone call and email, then the terrorists have already won.
Snowden is not the story. He’s a confused kid who doesn’t seem to be the type of guy who makes considered decisions. And so what? Why is this particular human being and his travels and the contents of his underwear drawer interesting?
Either we should talk about the data collection policy and what it should be, or if we don’t want to do that we should talk about something else. A soap opera about this guy’s travails are equivalent to talking about Elian Gonzales instead of our Cuba policy.
The Powers That Be would much rather have you talking about Snowden then about what TPTB are up to.
I don’t think that’s really being exposed though. The level of oversight is that spelled out in the Amendments to the FISA law pass in '08. Both the law and (most) of the debate leading up to it was publicly debated at the time. Snowdon revealed some details about how the collection worked, but I haven’t seen anything there that wasn’t authorized by the '08 law. That the gov’t is using powers it asked for just four years ago isn’t a relevation.
Again, this sort of system may or may not be desirable. But I don’t think you can complain that it “subverts the democratic process”. It was legalized by the legislature after a lengthy debate, and with support from both parties.
I don’t think there’s any evidence that Snowdon left with any of the actual data.
Is he making a spectacle of himself? The press seems to be following him with a lot of interest, but other then give a few interviews, I don’t think he’s done anything beyond the original leak to encourage it.