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Pardon Snowden

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Re: Pardon Snowden

#461

Post by icelancer »

wes-k wrote: post #308
lettergram wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The if Hilary claimed she would pardon Snowden I'd vote for her in a heartbeat. I hate her because to me she seems to want to expand the surveillance state. I hate Trump because with a surveillance state anyone who makes fun of his hands would/could be arrested... Hence, at the moment I'm voting Gary Johnson, who I actually think is the most qualified, but also made it clear he wants to downsize the NSA

And get rid of the EPA and the federal department of education right? Libertarians are interesting. Them wanting a small gov always has something anyone would agree with.

>And get rid of the EPA

Yeah, no. Not Gary Johnson.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gary-johnson...

On the other hand in northern New Mexico, there was a Molycorp mine. There was metals contamination in the Red River. It had gone on for decades. And for decades politically it was being protected because of the jobs that were involved. I took office and I said, you’ve got to clean this up. You have to come to the table and you have to clean this up. They refused to come to the table. So my biggest club in the bag was, I am going to declare you a Superfund site. I’m going to hand you over to federal EPA unless you come to the table in 30 days and come up with a plan for fixing your metals contamination.

And they claimed that it was natural! It was ludicrous. It was a slap in the face. And they refused to come to the table. My phone is ringing off the hook, politically. It’s ringing off the hook. There were all these jobs. And my response was: “These people are bad actors and they have to be brought to the table.” Thirty days went by and they became a Superfund site. So there’s an example of the EPA and why the EPA should exist. And why government should exist to protect us against those who would do us harm. And in this case the Libertarian argument would be, as individuals we could have brought suit against polluters. We can bring suit individually. Well, in the case of Molycorp, you know what, they would have been able to withstand any individuals trying to bring that suit against them.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#462

Post by icecold12741 »

JMCQ87 wrote: post #52
2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #38

Whatever your opinion on the actual Snowden case - I think pardoning someone is seen to active condone whistle-blowing within the miltary / intelligence community, which I can't see the Government wanting to do.

They should be condoning it. For that, a lot of things would have to change first though, like, for example, the community has to come to the realization that the (supposed) ends do not justify the means and that it's therefore the right thing to do to whistle-blow about them. They also need to realize that the internal mechanisms to whistle-blow are "not effective", to say the least.

The internal mechanisms actually work, if you use them. Snowden has admitted in subsequent interviews to not even trying to report through any channel. Something most people that are not government don't realize about whistleblowing is that your options are not just your boss. We can report to any supervisor (given the proper clearance), a branch specifically designed for whistleblowing (including a 24 hour 1-800 number), or to any member of Congress. Do you really think all 600+ members of Congress would have turned him away? Being the Senator or Representative that brought that info forward would have guaranteed re-election... But instead, he handed thousands of pages of classified info over to a news organization and trusted them to sort through it (when he had probably never read through it in full). Now, he is begging for a pardon because it has been hinted that his stay in Russia will be up next year (when his status expires) since he decided to speak out against Putin.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#463

Post by mnutt »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #287
falcolas wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws change. The constitution gets amended. There's such a thing as a "positive" defense - guilty, but with a reasonable cause. A jury can even technically nullify a law if they feel it's the right thing to do. Unveiling a trove of illegal projects being undertaken by our government against our wishes would fall into this category in my mind.

I wish it were so. But I'm thinking it may be impossible to forgive. Prosecutors may resort the the Supreme Court too. If someone technically guilty of treason is found anything but guilty by a lower court, I don't see the Supreme Court having any alternative but to overturn it. But what do I know.

In the US, a defendant who is acquitted cannot be retried for the same crime. So prosecutors would be unable to appeal to a higher court.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#464

Post by PavlovsCat »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #425
ygjb wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance. No. The goal of a petition is to show support for a course of action, and in this context, exercising freedom of speech in a democracy. Taking the list of people who signed a petition, assigning a "risk score" to them because of their activism, storing it in a database for the future, and using that as a means to make decisions that affect those indi…

Even taking that list and using it to discredit people isn't mass surveillance, it may just be mean, or stupid or even evil. On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way. You just had to look harder for this information.

> it may just be mean, or stupid or even evil.

Well, you could say that about the Nazis and Charles Manson, too. Couldn't you basically call anything just a "physical process" and get it over with? The rights of people are being violated by those sworn to protect them, and they feel helpless to change that. That is a problem, to put it mildly.

> On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way.

Yeah, it always was that way with too many people, and left unchecked, it will lead to the destruction of humanity. So I propose a new and much better way: when "researching" people, do not trust anyone who didn't give you positive confirmation of having spine, attention span and responsibility. I'm not saying signing a petition does that, but generally: go the other way. Do not waste your personal and professional time and energy on people who after all may remain on the wrong side of history. If the ground you stand on is not liberated ground at all times, reconsider your life. Don't be that guy obedient to what ultimately amounts to a bunch of deranged folk from a Stephen King novel or something. Realize that it would not be more than that, and that they too shall pass. The only open question is, whether they will take humanity with them, but there is no question in my mind about "their" (our) self-destructiveness. It's just not worth it to give in, in the really long run.

> "Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."

-- from the movie "All the Presidents Men" (1976)

Re: Pardon Snowden

#465

Post by 2bitencryption »

clarkmoody wrote: post #344
captainmuon wrote: post #60

Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but "they" might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being target…

> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US... The United States government has done an excellent bit of propaganda to convince the bulk of the public that they are the most free people on earth. We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents' pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant "USA" at political rallies. But the government of the United State…

hacker news is becoming crazier every day

Re: Pardon Snowden

#466

Post by pkaeding »

captainmuon wrote: post #60

Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but "they" might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being target…

I don't think they would have a problem with people signing this. It lets the people blow off steam with no real effect. Once you sign it, you think "well, I've done my part. I signed the online petition, and changed my Twitter/Facebook icon."

Re: Pardon Snowden

#467

Post by aidenn0 »

jokoon wrote: post #267

I'm still genuinely curious about what the intelligence community thinks of him, if it's bad, what are the arguments against him. I've heard Mike Baker on the Joe Rogan experience say that he did not trust Snowden one bit. In the intelligence world, it's common to be very cautions about leaks since foreign actors like Russia can really benefit politically from such scandal. It can be difficult to really know all the…

From what I've gathered, the intelligence community thinks bad things about him; their view is "fix it from the inside."

Public leaks can be incredibly damaging to our operational advantages against various adversaries, and it's often non-obvious which data will be most helpful to them.

The main reason I stand behind him is the matter of the director of the NSA lying to congress under oath. We don't even have the illusion of a democracy if we can't have effective congressional oversight of intelligence agencies with as broad a reach as the NSA.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#468

Post by iiv »

alkonaut wrote: post #366
BjoernKW wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory those are different. In practice though there hasn't been a single socialist country that hasn't at least devolved into authoritarianism or even has been so right from the start (Scandinavian Socialism and modern day German Social Market Economy could be considered exceptions but I doubt these can really be considered socialist.). People keep saying: "This isn't true socialism." Well, then true socialism se…

Everyone disagrees what socialism is. Is Nordic or German social democracy not socialism? Maybe it isn't. But what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be "socialists" but never ever want to abolish the free market or parliamentary democracy? "Socialism" can either be a common name for ALL the ideologies that branched from the original throughout history, or it can be a specific ideo…

> what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be "socialists"

What about them? I think it is widely spread that socialism is like, if not the same as communism.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#469

Post by GordonS »

tajen wrote: post #79
ekianjo wrote: post #3

Pardonning Snowden while allowing the NSA to continue their business as usual would be strange.

Pardoning is already a good step. It's acknowledging that leaders don't know whether he did something right or wrong, and that it's up for the citizen to decide. It may change the mind of many citizen who currently view him as a traitor. Articles will have to defend their position (such as "E.S, that we view as a traitor") rather than be credited with government force (currently written as "E.S., a traitor that is th…

> Isn't Obama at risk if he pardons him?

Isn't Obama on his way out of office soon anyway? Pardoning Snowden might at least be something (even if after the fact) to justify his Nobel prize

Re: Pardon Snowden

#470

Post by strictnein »

icecold12741 wrote: post #450
strictnein wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden carte blanche stole and gave up "TONS of data about TONS of things", trusting only Greenwald, et al to filter out sensitive data.

Basically, yes. Also, the evidence shows that he didn't one day "see something wrong and decided to report it" as the narrative claims. He quit a job on one contract to take another job (which he lied about his experience to get) and then stole information from there before releasing it all roughly 6 months after he was hired. Some reports I have seen estimate that roughly 90% of the information he released was from…

Yeah, the narrative that he tried to follow the rules to get the "egregious" programs stopped is almost entirely false. He may have made one off-the-record attempt with a superior. He also once emailed someone that a test he took had a wrong answer in regards to Executive Orders being able to override laws, and that email got forwarded around until it hit an NSA lawyer and they stated that he was correct. EOs and laws carry the same weight, but EOs cannot override laws. And that was what he's referring to in a fair amount of his interviews.
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