Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal • Hacker News Board

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#81

Post by jacalata » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

Practicality wrote: post #53

saynsedit wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Americans sleep when they hear 90% of drone attack deaths are civilians: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp... But they are wide awake and outraged when Snowden's ostensible act of espionage has caused an enormous amount of public good and technological innovation. It's not really the American's fault. We hear few of their real voices. It's the media that speaks the loudest.

Who are these generic Americans that think that Snowden should be condemned? Everyone American I know is very grateful for what he did. And I know quite a few. I've only ever heard official policy statements condemning him. I am not even really sure those stating such policy agree with what they are saying (at a personal level).

This reminds me of my friend who was convinced John Kerry would win the election because "I don't know anybody who will vote for Bush!" In other words, I suspect you have a strong selection bias informing your view of Americans.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#82

Post by albedoa » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

Sneakos wrote: post #17

omginternets wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>don't make an article about how the opposing stance is only held by the weak minded. What if you really think that's the case? Screw it, I'll say it. I think anyone who condemns Snowden is intellectually lazy or has vested interests in NSA surveillance. I have yet to see a single cogent rebuttal of Snowden's moral case.

You could waste time insulting them, or you could provide a case as to why you are right. What purpose does it serve to call them lazy?

Weak-minded people don't read opposing views to change their minds. They read opposing views exactly to pick them them apart, reject them, and reinforce their own.

If the opposite view is truly held by the weak-minded, then there is way more value in further ostracizing them than providing a case to and trying to reason with them.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#83

Post by whamlastxmas » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

sickbeard wrote: post #77

tFXR89qo wrote: post #52

Or... finally fix your broken judiciary so he can have a fair trial.

What part of the Judiciary is broken, or are you just being intellectually lazy?

The parts where we have public defenders that cannot provide adequate representation, plea bargains that ruin any chance for real justice, bails set at outrageous amounts, prison sentences that are ridiculous by most any other first world country standard, contempt of court used to keep people in jail for over a decade, the list is miles long. The judiciary system is thought by some to be the most political of the branches of government and it shows.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#84

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #39

mozumder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What illegal activities did the NSA perform here? In case you didn't notice, the Snowden leaks revealed filters that removed US citizens' communications, showing that they were complying with US laws that prevent the US military (of which the NSA is part of) from spying on US citizens. Why would the NSA have these compliance filters as part of a classified program if they were allegedly performing illegal activities?

> What illegal activities did the NSA perform here? See the first link in my comment. > In case you didn't notice, the Snowden leaks revealed filters that removed US citizens' communications, showing that they were complying with US laws that prevent the US military (of which the NSA is part of) from spying on US citizens. So what? As one of the 7.1 billion people who are not US citizens, I object to the notion that…

> As one of the 7.1 billion people who are not US citizens, I object to the notion that only the rights of Americans warrant protection.

People who are neither within the US, nor US citizens, have generally less protection from rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, even when the actor involved is the US government. You can object to that all you want, but its unlikely to change. Fundamentally, neither our Constitution nor our government is about you.

> As surprising as this may sound, those of us born in other countries have the same rights too

The big advance of popular government was that people have enforceable personal rights against their government, at least by citizenship and sometimes even by geography without citizenship. But it hasn't reversed the fundamental issue of sovereignty that there is very little in the way of substantially enforceable personal rights against a foreign sovereign, except those which your own sovereign guarantees and is willing to go to war (and capable of winning) to enforce.

And whether this is the way thing should be or not, it is fundamentally incorrectable -- its the essential nature of sovereignty. You could make it irrelevant by establishing a single world sovereignty guaranteeing the rights you believe should exist for all against all governments, but that doesn't seem likely in the near future.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#85

Post by nickpsecurity » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

Sneakos wrote: post #7

One thing this article doesn't take into account is that the movie the author undoubtedly watched before writing this was full of inaccuracies, and had the purpose of establishing Snowden as a martyr or sorts. This is evident because rather than just prove their point, the author makes several attempts to make sure the reader knows that if you hold an opposing view, you are intellectually lazy and unable to cope with…

You have to be either weak-minded or very selective about reading up on these things to not think he did some good that's reported in the article. Here's a few:

1. They kept promising it was just metadata they were collecting. Alexander got specific on all extra services they weren't collecting on. This was lies.

2. Another lies under oath to Congress about same thing.

3. They said it was just selective stuff to find terrorists. Snowden leaks revealed vast majority of this spying was on Europe, South America, and Asia with stuff like Dell PowerEdge servers terrorists probably aren't using. ;)

4. Americans assumed it was us and our allies versus the terrorist again with these tools for that. Instead, we find they were doing stuff like spying on Beligian industry taking down their telecoms in the process. Stuff like that, done in secret by groups with immunity, could really bite Americans in the ass as a whole and should be up for national, policy debate.

5. The NSA has been pushing INFOSEC recommendations to military, defense contractors, federal government, and rest of us for years. I pointed out most of it was EAL4+ or less, meaning it definitely get hacked by enemies. They knew this. Incompetence or evil (SIGINT)? Snowden leaks indicate it was them leaving backdoors in for themselves that our enemies might use against us as well. Did in a few cases I believe.

6. Similar to 5, they were believed to be helping us improve our security standards and cyberspace readiness. Instead, BULLRUN program aimed to subvert that as much as possible in ways that would damage us. The combo of 5 and 6 makes the NSA the 2nd greatest threat to American INFOSEC of them all right after American capitalism insistence on treating INFOSEC like a liability.

7. Prior to leaks, Alexander and others always explained they only collected on Americans when they had a court order. Nobody explained that FISA warrants are for "targeting criteria" run against all the data of all Americans they're already intercepting. On top of a court that virtually never rejects anything and doesn't imprison offenders.

So, these are 7 quick revelations from the leaks that should result in resistance from Americans, some job openings in government, and prosecution of specific individuals for actual crimes. Internal channels always squashed information like this since the problems were driven from top down by people who lie to Americans and Congress. US government also kept saying judicial system couldn't participate at all. Leaking to public is all that's left in such a situation. He certainly could've filtered the leaks themselves a bit but the domestic stuff would have to come out pretty much in full to back his assertions.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#86

Post by freehunter » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:58 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #69

freehunter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Constitution says something, it applies to everyone everywhere. The Constitution of the United States does not apply to people it applies to the government. It says nothing about "US citizens" or "foreign nationals". It restricts what the government can do. So if the fourth amendment right to protection against unreasonable searches applies here (which there seems to be some debate about), it would apply to ev…

http://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/vol126_t... My understanding has it that in practice "the people" means roughly "all citizens and residents of the US", not all people anywhere. You can disagree with the courts over what the words mean, but do so deliberately.

That is an excellent article! I actually learned quite a bit from that, thank you.

The main take-away that I had is that the courts generally uphold "the people" to mean "citizens", but there are some strong divisions on that and the case is far from settled. At the very least I agree with Harvard's opinion that this judgement cannot hold true to all instances of the the phrase "the people" without massively undoing hundreds of years of case law.

Based on that I will change my statement here to say "the Constitution restricts the government, but it's unclear in the courts whether it restricts the government's actions against non-citizens, although it probably should according to constitutional law scholars". So if you're a tourist in the US, watch what you say and do, because you may not have any right to freedom of speech or protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#87

Post by ChemicalWarfare » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 4:59 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #13

zeveb wrote: post #2

An opposing view: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/... And the unanimous, bipartisan report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: http://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docum...

I think the first article falls for the easiest of traps: it's a movie, not a documentary. Every single movie "based on real events" is pretty much made up. Pointing to the differences between the movie and real life is (IMHO) a pointless exercise. More so when it's used then to justify a political position. Put another way: as good as JFK is, I wouldn't put anyone in jail because of it.

"Fact checking" a movie to derive its "artistic worth" is indeed pointless. That said though if a movie paints a certain picture while bending or omitting some facts which contradict the said picture then I don't see anything wrong with pointing out the discrepancies.

Claiming moral high ground comes with scrutiny. If for example he had indeed stolen the test questions to pass the test that paints a slightly different picture of the character he and his supporters are trying to sell.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#88

Post by michael_fine » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #83

sickbeard wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of the Judiciary is broken, or are you just being intellectually lazy?

The parts where we have public defenders that cannot provide adequate representation, plea bargains that ruin any chance for real justice, bails set at outrageous amounts, prison sentences that are ridiculous by most any other first world country standard, contempt of court used to keep people in jail for over a decade, the list is miles long. The judiciary system is thought by some to be the most political of the br…

It seems few of those apply to Snowden -- he wouldn't need a public defender, he probably wants a trial rather than a plea bargain, I'm not sure if there's a systemic problem with outrageous bail but Snowden is a textbook case for flight risk, ridiculous prison sentences -- perhaps, but just because a law is harsh doesn't mean that that law is applied unfairly.

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#89

Post by tzs » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #30

watwatwatwat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I condemn Snowden. Prove that I'm intellectually lazy.

>Prove that I'm intellectually lazy. Snowden has a well-argued moral case for what he did. He demonstrably tried to minimize harm and maximize the positive impact of his disclosures. You give literally no reason for your condemnation (though in all fairness, your comment is likely to be rhetorical). More to the point, you will likely argue that he broke laws and cite some unspecified damage to the intelligence commun…

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/52k179/edward_sno...

Re: Don’t just pardon Edward Snowden; give the man a medal

#90

Post by nickpsecurity » Mon, Sep 19, 2016, 5:05 PM UTC

bsparker wrote: post #19

A medal? I understand the importance of Snowden's revelations and I know he believes he did everything the only way it played out. But that doesn't mean he is above the law. Civil disobedience still implies civility and he should come to his day in court. We don't know what he's given Russia or China in order to remain on the run, even Glenn Greenwald admits that here, when discussing Snowden's "self preservation": h…

"But that doesn't mean he is above the law. Civil disobedience still implies civility and he should come to his day in court."

The Constitution says we get due process in trials. People in Espionage Act trials don't. Further, there's no intent by the U.S. government or courts to prosecute anyone the leaks revealed were deceiving Americans in a number of ways. Accountability works both ways. Either they all get tried for their crimes with due process or I find it highly corrupt to only want one charged while others remain above the law. I'm against him being tried unless the others are and with a defense allowed with full access to relevant, classified info. At least what's already leaked.