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United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

justice.gov

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Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#481

Post by tssva »

logfromblammo wrote: post #113
rrix2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only people I'm aware of that can publish classified information without punishment are journalists. The only people I am aware of which published this were journalists, since day 0. E: I see this is particularly in the context of his publishing his memoirs now after reading the filing. My apologies

Publishing timely facts makes you a journalist. Publishing older facts makes you a historian. There are no legal qualifications for asserting freedom of the press; everyone can do it. Anyone that has not entered into a contractual agreement with the US to protect classified materials can publish classified materials. It's just that the professional journalists, already established with the large news organizations, a…

Existing laws allow charging journalists for publishing classified information. There exists no freedom of the press protection regarding such publication. People seem to think that the Pentagon Papers case somehow created such a protection when it did not. In that case the Supreme Court ruled that the government couldn't prevent publishing of such information. It didn't rule that those that did couldn't be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. In fact several of the majority said in their briefs that the government could do exactly that.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#482

Post by tssva »

cwkoss wrote: post #424
lern_too_spel wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Snowden repeatedly attempted to follow internal processes and was stonewalled. There is no evidence of this.

The only parties who could provide this evidence are govt agencies who are clearly not pleased with Snowden. Seems kind of silly to expect them to provide evidence to substantiate his claim. In the absence of contrary evidence, we should take Snowden at his word because none of his releases have been discredited as fabrications and thats the only account we have of the situation.

Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act process involves bringing the matter and any evidence to the Department of Justice. The DoJ then has a fixed time to either investigate or decide not to investigate. If they decide not to investigate the whistleblower can bring their complaint and evidence to the staff of the Senate Intelligence committee for the committee to decide if further investigation by the committee is warranted. If the DoJ does investigate they have to notify the Senate Intelligence committee of the investigation.

If Snowden had attempted to follow the lawful procedure there would be evidence of it at the DoJ, the Senate Intelligence committee and Snowden himself would have evidence due to his correspondence with the DoJ and Senate Intelligence committee.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#483

Post by lern_too_spel »

cwkoss wrote: post #463
lern_too_spel wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should take Snowden at his word because none of his releases have been discredited as fabrications That's a low bar. He didn't forge any of the documents he released. He did, however, repeatedly lie about what the documents contained and to corroborate hid interpretation, he wildly exaggerated what he was able to do while at the NSA.

Could you give an example of his wildest exaggeration? I've seen zero evidence backed claims that he misled the public.

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal e-mail.”

None of his leaked documents showed that capability. People complain about Clapper for getting a question wrong about whether phone metadata collection collected data about Americans after a line of questioning about whether the NSA creates dossiers on Americans, and he rightfully should be held to a high standard in Congressional testimony, but Snowden just straight-up lied repeatedly.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#484

Post by vinceguidry »

cwkoss wrote: post #480
vinceguidry wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state of journalism in any particular country is a very good cue to start with when trying to figure out the exact level of civilization present. Journalists not only have to be authorized by states to operate, but they must also be protected by those same states. This is the case in most countries except for exceedingly advanced ones, such as the US and most of Europe, where they can be allowed a great deal of a…

If quality of journalism is a reasonable proxy for the the civility of a society, doesn't it logically follow that government secrecy and persecution of journalists are forces that destroy civility?

Yes, it represents a downslide back towards more primitive forms of government.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#485

Post by mirimir »

mhh__ wrote: post #415
mirimir wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it less biased to dump it all? With the only reason for not releasing being risk to arguably ~innocent individuals. Also, it's relevant to note that Holocaust investigators have not redacted names of ~responsible individuals from their releases. Indeed, they've targeted them.

Wikileaks regularly publish credit card details of completely unrelated bystanders e.g. political donors (and I mean $15 rather than $15 million). They also clearly time their leaks for impact rather than purely apolitical time slots. Speaking of the holocaust, wikileaks also hired a holocaust denier (in the words of hopenothate) - Israel Shamim - for years

Ummm, I didn't mention Wikileaks, so bringing up them -- and freelancer Israel Shamim -- is whataboutism. My point about Holocaust investigators is undeniable. I mentioned it as evidence that culpability is an accepted justification for releasing information about individuals.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#486

Post by geggam »

tssva wrote: post #448
geggam wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executive orders count ? https://epic.org/privacy/surveillance/12333/

Where in the executive order is carte blanche for the NSA to observe communications given? I can't find it.

It doesn't have to, the fact it observes communication without due process violates the constitution. Full stop.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#487

Post by geggam »

tssva wrote: post #447
geggam wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is another https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

"By law, NSLs can request only non-content information, for example, transactional records and phone numbers dialed, but never the content of telephone calls or e-mails." Also NSL's can be contested in court. No carte blanche to observe my communications.

Non content information is content. Meta data can be used as a serious invasion of privacy. This semantic dance violates the spirit of the law.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#488

Post by eigenloss »

HashThis wrote: post #21

This is the "It is illegal to inform the citizen base that the government has removed their constitutional right" lawsuit. The NSA and FBI removed every US citizen of their constitutional right, to privacy. Edward Snowden informed the US citzen base on their constitutional rights being removed. This lawsuit is the government saying it is illegal for any US citizen to inform all other citizens when the government remo…

Where's the privacy amendment again? Asking for a friend.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#489

Post by peterkelly »

bb88 wrote: post #399
omarhaneef wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same issue with the other debate raging on HN: Stallman and Free Speech. The issue is that people -- not sure whether it was OP, or you -- conflate what is moral with what is legal. One person starts off with a moral premise: people should have free speech, or people should have the right to say what the government is doing. Someone else responds with what is legal : the law applies to government curtailmen…

> ... conflate what is moral with what is legal. We're not dealing with an authoritarian state. Laws by democratic governments are supposed to be mutable. It's possible say, that the laws haven't caught up to what we (as americans) consider moral. Or it's possible the laws themselves were driven by immoral actors. Or it's possible the law's were passed with good intentions but had side effects that were unforeseeable…

> So what are we to do? Is it more moral to work within the system to change the laws, or to break them entirely?

The United States would not even exist without the latter. Imagine if the founding fathers had tried to "worked within the system" of British rule instead of carrying out what the latter would have considered an extraordinary act of treason.

Previous whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Bill Binney tried to work within the system, and that didn't exactly go very well. Snowden learnt from their experiences that the only way to achieve any meaningful outcome was to break the law. I imagine if there had been a viable means for him to bring the issues to public attention legally he might have done so.

Re: United States Files Civil Lawsuit Against Edward Snowden

#490

Post by jacquesm »

kerkeslager wrote: post #449
jacquesm wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sticking to your principles works on an individual level, you can't generalize to what the effect of that would be on the whole population. There were plenty of 'good' Germans who refused to become part of the madness. Plenty of them ended up just as dead as the victims on the other side of the conflict. And in the end it did not matter much. But one thing is for sure: they kept their conscience clean and that counts…

> And in the end it did not matter much. I'd have to disagree with you there. I spent time in Israel and in Brooklyn, and I've personally met at least 3 Jews who were alive when I met them because of good Germans/Austrians who broke Nazi law to help them escape. I think HN often concerns itself with whole populations because a lot of what we're talking about is public policy, and policies at large corporations, which…

Fair enough. In the aggregate the effect must have been substantial for you to know three people like that.
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