Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pardon Snowden

pardonsnowden.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

801–810 of 814 posts

Re: Pardon Snowden

#801

Post by bertil »

dredmorbius wrote: post #763
bertil wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not attacking anyone, simply clarifying the implicit assumptions of people who believe that Snowden needs a pardon. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has introduced jurisdictions that goes outside of the usual process of law, notably publicity; people who oppose that trend in government tend to assume that Snowden has been convicted using such an extraordinary measure. Whether that is possible within the…

FISA is all flavours of horrible. But what it doesn't do is provide a venue for convictions. Only (and I grit my teeth and clench my gut when I write that) approval of surveillance requests. In a no-contest, no-appeal, rubber-stamp, kangaroo court, yes. But only surveillance orders. And, my error, it was whamlastxmas who went full tinfoilhattery on us, not you. The inability to see up/down thread when responding to a…

> some other people might think Snowden's already been convicted

The supporters of the original link: https://www.pardonsnowden.org/supporters obviously think he has: why else ask for a pardon?

Re: Pardon Snowden

#803

Post by aws_ls »

friede wrote: post #300

Might be we should also campaign to give Snowden the peace nobel price.

I think there have been one such campaign at least in the past few years. But I totally agree, there should be continuous campaigns till he gets one, and by then if he is not pardoned, it will be a big embarrassment to the US government.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#804

Post by ionised »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #272
hollander wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use Mailvelope! Or GPG/PGP. Use it to sign your mail. And do so using PGP/MIME, not text. PGP/Mime uses an attachment for the signature, and doesn't mess up the text with ugly code. Then put a small signature at the end of your mail explaining what PGP is, linking to Wikipedia, and link to your public key. As you use HTML, do this in a small font, 50% grey, and it won't get in the way. I do this since two yea…

I tried implementing PGP on Thunderbird about 5 years ago, it was difficult. I've set up a mail server, web servers, etc.. Setting up PGP was complicated. I'm surprised that message signing isn't built in yet, why isn't it? It didn't seem so hard to implement as a default.

Difficult how?

I just installed Enigmail and imported my keys and it was done.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#805

Post by xj9 »

hota_mazi wrote: post #771
xj9 wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great to me. We need more whistle blowers and more civil disobedience. We need to change, the US is a joke; a parody of itself. We have all of this freedom branding, but are afraid of that freedom. We cower behind a police state and express our fear as hatred for those who are different from us. We have exported the American Dream to the world and destroyed everything about ourselves that made this place…

> We cower behind a police state I don't think you have any idea what a police state is.

Maybe you could enlighten me?

Re: Pardon Snowden

#806

Post by foxhedgehog »

jessaustin wrote: post #789
foxhedgehog wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that people who have domain expertise about classified information are different from people claiming "secret knowledge." He overstates his case in some circumstances, and I think that there were positive effects of the publicization of some of of the Snowden data, but it's also tough to dispute, I think, that his releases also harmed the United States. I'm happy to expand on this if you need.

Those inside the national security apparatus often seem to have difficulty differentiating harm to national security apparatchiks from harm to the nation itself. Many of us outside, don't have that difficulty. As Greenwald tweeted, "My sources are the documents and - I know this is shocking - people who don't work for the US Govt" Also, the big idea that the releases revealed nothing previously unknown directly contr…

It sounds like you don't believe that there should be classified information. I'm happy to explain why I believe otherwise.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#808

Post by jrochkind1 »

andallas wrote: post #549
drjesusphd wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I also agree Manning deserves a pardon, to be fair, he was significantly more careless than Snowden. Basically all the arguments (lies) they use to damn Snowden can be fairly applied to Manning.

I disagree that Manning deserves a pardon, because she was significantly more (read completely) careless. Not only about the content of what was released, but the manner in which it was released. Comparing Manning's actions to Snowden's is naive at best.

I don't think carelessness is the difference between 35 years in prison and a pardon.

Yes, she was less careful and less precise and made more mistakes. She was younger than Snowden, more scared than Snowden, not thinking as straight as Snowden, perhaps even not as smart as Snowden (who appears to really be a genius of some kind). Snowden also had the benefit of learning from and being inspired by her mistakes. But her motivation was the same and 'crime' was more or less the same. And she's stuck in prison being denied medical care she needs, while Snowden is living a more or less free (compared to military prison!) life in exile.

Manning needs a pardon or commutation, she did what she did for us, same as Snowden.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#809

Post by mmiu »

vidarh wrote: post #172
mmiu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They meant "communist", I assume, and communist countries are always totalitarian, I can't think of an exception.

Of course not a single one of the countries you are referring to consider their countries to be communist, but socialist.

What? Communist countries are ruled by a single communist party and do call themselves communist. As well as socialist. The terms have their differences, but "communist" is used.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#810

Post by anigbrowl »

dllthomas wrote: post #615
anigbrowl wrote: post #590

You can't pardon someone who hasn't been convicted of anything, or even tried. Why are so many hackers unwilling to learn the basics of civics? The governmental system we have sucks, but if you're going to petition for people to act within that framework then the least you could do is develop a basic working knowledge of it first. It is neither legally possible nor politically feasible for President Obama to pardon S…

> Why are so many hackers unwilling to learn the basics of civics? ahem The two probably-most-famous pardons in American history - Ford's pardon of Nixon and Carter's pardon of draft dodgers - affected unindicted individuals (Carter's included people who had been convicted, but also included plenty of individuals where no action had been taken). And those are not the only two examples. It is legally possible for Pres…

Both of those examples strike me as political rather than legal actions - that is, I question the legality but political considerations moot the issue - but your point is well made.
Post reply on HN