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Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

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Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#211

Post by tomschlick »

nyolfen wrote: post #114
mnm1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great to hear. Unfortunately, his actions haven't really done anything in the US. I wish I could say otherwise, but I haven't seen a single thing change. Privacy still isn't an issue that's on most people's radar. The government still does what it did before and likely a lot more. I have a ton of respect for Snowden, but he severely overestimated how much Americans care about privacy, spying, surveillance, or…

encryption by default and privacy as an intrinsic good have been pervasive if subtle shifts in the culture

Yup. Even the dark fiber back haul networks used by data centers that were once thought to be private are now being encrypted (Google, Microsoft, etc have mentioned this).

This is exactly what PRISM was, not taking data from servers, but tapping into the data networks between them and siphoning off whatever the NSA wanted. And it just so happens that to mirror a fiber optic line you use a crystal prism.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#212

Post by not_a_cop75 »

EpicEng wrote: post #204
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by that standard, 95% of all Russian peasant farmers are "Russian Agents" and that's pure ridiculousness from any angle.

>Going by that standard, 95% of all Russian peasant farmers are "Russian Agents" and that's pure ridiculousness from any angle. Oh please, you're the one being ridiculous. I think we all know there's a line between farming for the good of civilization and actively working to push an agenda. C'mon.

I suppose that all the South African farmers that moved to Russia to avoid getting killed over politics by savages are also Russian Agents.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/land-expropriation-russ...

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#213

Post by roenxi »

mindslight wrote: post #147
roenxi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using that information to sell you things. The horror. The threat isn't corporations. The threat is when the government goes rogue as governments tend to do unpredictably from time to time. The threat materialises in the government using private corporation data to target arbitrary minorities (although usually the educated, wealthy, foreign and free-spirited). People seem to think that because it "could never happe…

> The threat isn't corporations In a thread about surveillance, why are you drawing a dichotomy between different surveillers and basically giving one a pass? They're both prongs of the same threat! On the collection side, every bit vacuumed up commercially is available for use by the government. And on the use side, there is little difference between a government proper and corporations that have achieved enough pow…

Corporate surveillance is only a problem because it will sooner or later feed in to government surveillance. If I could wave a wand and stop that happening I'd be fine with corporate surveillance; I'm annoyed but not threatened by the idea that someone will study my every movement trying to sell me things I want. I'm threatened if the extremely arbitrary government decides that I'm an undesirable for some reason.

> corporations that have achieved enough power to exert de facto governmental control

Might be a failure of the imagination, but I really can't see myself ever getting involuntarily dragged out of my apartment by McDonalds employees. The worst I've ever seen a corporation do is set the police on someone. As long as the government is functioning sensibly a rogue corp can only do so much.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#214

Post by roywiggins »

madengr wrote: post #210
slg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you do Snowden a disservice when you lump him in with Assange. Snowden you can easily argue is a whisleblower. You can't argue that with Assange since he doesn't have first hand knowledge of what he is leaking and instead actively recruits people to feed him information to leak. He also seemingly encourages people to commit crimes to get more information for him. Snowden did that all himself. In addition, Ass…

Snowden also leaked everything he had. It certainly was not targeted.

He leaked it all to journalists he trusted to make decisions about how, when, and what to publish. It's not quite the same.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#215

Post by roywiggins »

MiroF wrote: post #162
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

To the contrary, I think the fact that you think both Snowden and Assange are Russian agents demonstrates that the administrations response was actually quite effective.

Calling him an "agent" is silly, but Snowden is living in Moscow at the pleasure of the Russian regime. It's hard to believe he's entirely free, or even substantially free, to do what he wants.

It's pretty clear he never wanted to end up there. The US definitely screwed up by leaving him few other options. He's not an agent of Moscow, but he's not a free man either.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#217

Post by EpicEng »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #212
EpicEng wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Going by that standard, 95% of all Russian peasant farmers are "Russian Agents" and that's pure ridiculousness from any angle. Oh please, you're the one being ridiculous. I think we all know there's a line between farming for the good of civilization and actively working to push an agenda. C'mon.

I suppose that all the South African farmers that moved to Russia to avoid getting killed over politics by savages are also Russian Agents. https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/land-expropriation-russ...

If the subsequently worked at the behest of the Russian goverment to push their agenda, yes. Honestly are you even reading what I'm typing?

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#218

Post by areyousure »

knightofmars wrote: post #196
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the administration badly, badly mishandled [whistleblowers] Yes, but by design. Other than passing lip service towards transparency. The fact is Obama admin actively sought to silence them. I know this isn’t popular because HN won’t want to hear anything bad about Obama, but it’s a fact. In the seven years of Obama's presidency, the administration launched a record number of cases against those who revealed…

To put my views into this perspective. Am I glad that Snowden and others leaked information on government programs? Yes. That said, I think it's amusing when people need to call out "Under president 's administration..." as if it makes a point by itself and implies something directly about the president that was named. Let's not pretend here, that's exactly what you were doing. Using this same logic, I hope you blame…

> They all leaked information that wasn't supposed to be leaked.

What did Thomas Drake leak that wasn't supposed to be leaked?

> If they had stepped forward during any other presidency would the outcome have been the same? Yes.

Kiriakou in fact stepped forward in December 2007. The Justice Department under Bush did not pursue him, and it was explicitly the Justice Department under the Obama administration that did so.

Similarly, Jeffrey Alexander Sterling was in contact with a journalist during the period 2002--2004 (for a book published in January 2006), but his prosecution was also led by the Obama administration.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#219

Post by stale2002 »

slg wrote: post #200
stjohnswarts wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't "just trying to damage the NSA", he was trying to get the truth out about surveillance, the fact that the NSA was damaged was tangential and they shouldn't have been spying on US citizens. The NSA and other gov police entities were basically breaking half the dictates and the entire spirit of the US Constitution.

What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign citizens? I was a big fan of Snowden until he started doing that. That isn't whistleblowing against Constitutional violations and seemed to indicate a shift in his objectives. It now appears that he is just against US spying at large, which is a perfectly acceptable political opinion to have, but it doesn't justify whis…

> What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign citizens?

Because many of the spying actions were against Americans. Did you not read the leaks?

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#220

Post by abugheratwork »

slg wrote: post #200
stjohnswarts wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't "just trying to damage the NSA", he was trying to get the truth out about surveillance, the fact that the NSA was damaged was tangential and they shouldn't have been spying on US citizens. The NSA and other gov police entities were basically breaking half the dictates and the entire spirit of the US Constitution.

What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign citizens? I was a big fan of Snowden until he started doing that. That isn't whistleblowing against Constitutional violations and seemed to indicate a shift in his objectives. It now appears that he is just against US spying at large, which is a perfectly acceptable political opinion to have, but it doesn't justify whis…

> What are the motives for leaking information regarding our actions on foreign soil against foreign [human beings]?

Which side of an imaginary line you were born on should not determine your rights. If he leaked documents about operations against Americans, and then also about operations against foreigners, in my mind he did the same thing twice.

If there was another difference, like spilling the location or identity of a person likely to be at risk, please spell that out. I have yet to see an example.

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