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Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

reuters.com

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Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#381

Post by listenallyall »

darksaints wrote: post #379
listenallyall wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're a funny guy. hyperbole much?

Don't you find it exhausting trying to defend a president that is dumber than you? I don't know how you do it. Your partisan loyalty is not worth your mental health.

When did I defend Trump? All I've stated is that Covid isn't his fault. What seems exhausting to me is spinning every single thing that happens to somehow be the fault of one single person. He's not a monarch, not a dictator, and his power, by design, is quite limited. Why not get rid of governors, state and city governments, Congress, heads of CDC and FDA, postmasters general, school boards, hospital admins, etc. if they have no agency -- if all their decisions are inconsequential? You've already stated Trump is 100% to blame... therefore, everyone else must be at zero. Stop wasting mental energy on how to blame Trump (or inventing fairy tales where some alternative president would have cured it) and direct it towards something productive.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#382

Post by throwawaygh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #378
throwawaygh wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The case up-thread was Manafort Oh, I see. I was speaking into the even further up-thread context of Snowden :p Sorry about that. > I'm not sure which State laws Snowden might have violated E.g., http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/law/08-732/Jurisdiction/Haw... > I can see an argument against double jeopardy in the Federal->State direction as opposed to the State->Federal direction: the former, if allowed, could see…

> a lot more than 1 because of Native American jurisdictions Native American jurisdictions generally only have criminal jurisdiction over their own members for actions on their own land, that jurisdiction is Constitutionally an application of federal sovereignty, so where it applies it doesn't add an additional possible prosecution, just replaced (or provides an additional option) for one of the existing possible pro…

Correct; for that subset of cases this conversation is relevant but the same conclusions hold (lara)

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#383

Post by ttyprintk »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #350
cryptonector wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd been paying attention you'd know that the President has the absolute, unquestionable power to pardon offenses against the United States, which specifically means: offences under Federal law, but not offenses under State law.

Pardoning a whistleblower who was just trying to protect the Constitution and help stave off intelligence agencies from spying on everyone a bit less seems like exactly what pardons were created for. What bigger injustice is there than upholding the law of the land and being declared a traitor despite only trying to help save our democracy from autocratic forces?

Snowden's oath to the Constitution is only relevant for his disclosures about surveillance within the national borders.

His disclosures of the capabilities of the NSA in other countries, where the Constitution does not apply, has been the problem since Obama.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#384

Post by ttyprintk »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #94
dx87 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's debatable whether he should be pardoned for leaking the domestic spying information (I don't think so, he didn't try to bring it up through proper channels first), but he leaked information that had nothing to do with that. For example, he gave the Chinese government information about which computers the NSA had access to. My personal theory is that he just gathered as much information as he could get hi…

>For example, he gave the Chinese government information about which computers the NSA had access to. When did he give them what information exactly? >don't think so, he didn't try to bring it up through proper channels first The two sides disagree whether he attempted this. Snowden say he spent tremendous effort trying to report things through the proper channels.

I can't comment on the parent, but here are some disclosures of international capability that Snowden could have kept to himself:

- RAMPART-A

- Anything collected and shared by Five Eyes would have originated overseas. There's quite a bit of GCHQ material, such as Karma Police

- NSA ability to cross airgaps in China

- NSA Core (undercover human agents tapping China, South Korea and Germany) and TAREX (target exploitation running that out of embassies)

- NSA MonsterMind

All of these are only deployed overseas and there are many more such documents. Some have unredacted names of regular people who run these programs, and pieces of info that're miscellany to you and me, but gold to state intelligence services. Both Wikipedia and Lawfare distinguish between Snowden's disclosures of perhaps-unconstitutional domestic surveillance and probably-consitutional international surveillance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/snowden-revelations

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#385

Post by deanCommie »

koheripbal wrote: post #346
andrei_says_ wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. He exposed clearly illegal activity and framing him as a leader changes the narrative. He is a whistleblower who upheld his oath to protect the constitution of the US, in the face of severe consequences.

The problem is that he also exposed a lot of not-illegal material. Things that were entirely legal, yet classified. I don't think there's any legal way Snowden wouldn't face a conviction if he was returned to the US, even if you exclude all the "illegal" activity he exposed from evidence against him.

I agree with you that legally Snowden was offside.

The problem was that I think that a lot of the things that leaked people either

A) THOUGHT were illegal

or

B) Thought that while legal, the government does not do and would not do (particularly because spokespeople have implied under sworn oauth that they do not do.

I'm talking about domestic surveillance.

If there was any justice, then the thing should have been a wakeup call for the US populace and government and new laws would have been introduced to make the things that he leaked illegal.

Alas...

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#386

Post by darksaints »

listenallyall wrote: post #381
darksaints wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you find it exhausting trying to defend a president that is dumber than you? I don't know how you do it. Your partisan loyalty is not worth your mental health.

When did I defend Trump? All I've stated is that Covid isn't his fault. What seems exhausting to me is spinning every single thing that happens to somehow be the fault of one single person. He's not a monarch, not a dictator, and his power, by design, is quite limited. Why not get rid of governors, state and city governments, Congress, heads of CDC and FDA, postmasters general, school boards, hospital admins, etc. if…

Jacinda Ardern also has limited power. But she's an actual competent leader. One who didn't fart around pretending nothing was wrong for months while competent advisors said the exact opposite. One who didn't act like they got blindsided and started shifting blame after months of doing nothing. One who didn't peddle fake cures and hold mask-optional campaign rallies that directly led to the deaths of his own supporters.

And as it turns out, by being a competent leader, you can actually do a hell of a lot without having absolute power.

Yes. Trump is 100% to blame. Hundreds of thousands of people died, whereas if we had Jacinda, maybe a couple hundred.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#387

Post by ttyprintk »

smsm42 wrote: post #380
0xy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "floating" is A/B testing. Chances are, if this passes some formula of (left wing people won over) - (right wing people who hate it) > 0 then he'll do it.

Exactly. It is strange how many people who know what A/B testing is and have done it themselves are surprised when politicians do the same.

I took the video to be more like "This Snowden guy -- how would you (the media) cover it if I pardoned him? How would you cover it if the pardon also came with some dirt I need?" This type of test will serve to settle his direction without having to completely remember his past positions, or even precisely who Edward Snowden is.

This is a bit different than the way we do it -- we expect more statistical power with a saved history of repeated trials. "Floating" has been mentioned here. Perhaps "floating" involves trying two different frames to see how the media covers each, rather than numerous A/B trials for more statistical power.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#388

Post by ekianjo »

jeffbee wrote: post #216
ekianjo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Trump is trying to do is access the libertarian/tech worker vote. Thats a pretty small niche of voters. Not saying its a wrong assumption, but libertarians are typically a lot more concerned by trade and individual freedoms than whistleblower issues if you were to list up their top priorities.

Everyone has their own pet definition of libertarian. Call it techno-libertarianism if you want. What's clear is Trump has very powerful allies in Silicon Valley and has figured out that he only has to tap the tiny minority of right wing sympathy at Facebook etc and they will let him do whatever he wants. The idea that web companies are liberal and unfair to conservatives is popular and widespread. Appealing to other…

> The idea that web companies are liberal and unfair to conservatives is popular and widespread.

For being unfair to conservatives, it's not clear, but web companies being liberal is pretty much a fact. Even Zuck said it directly in last year's congressional hearing - I forgot the exact words but he pointed out that Silicon Valley is located in a very progressive State so it's hard not to account for that trend within the company employees as well.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#389

Post by ekianjo »

smt88 wrote: post #210
ekianjo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which distract from the real news: Covid killing hundreds of thousands under his care, Nevermind that in the states the main actors responsible in times of health crises are the local State authorities not the Federal ones. Your 'under his care' is terribly loaded.

He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward). He is also influential among a large group of Americans, as is any president. He called for Obama to resign after a single case of ebola[1] in the US. Clearly he agrees with me that the presiden…

> He has control over the FDA, which bungled the early response. He also controls the CDC and has appointed many inexperienced donors to important positions (many of my friends work there, and whistleblowers have come forward).

Yet this has nothing to do with the fact that whether to go into lock-down or not and what kind of measures to take are taken by State actors, not the federal government. We can see that right now with the debate on school opening: the Federal government has no power.

I am not sure where you think that States play almost no role, the USA is one of the countries where the local States have the most power compared to any other Western democracy out there.

Re: Trump says he is considering pardon for Edward Snowden

#390

Post by ttyprintk »

dnautics wrote: post #260
sixothree wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any measurable metrics by which he is doing a good job?

He'll be one of two presidents that have reduced the US's carbon emissions between first year and last year in office.

Insofar as economic growth is considered positively correlated to carbon emissions, I head the GDP outliers referred to as "decoupling" from emissions.

On as state-by-state basis, something like 40 US states are decoupled now, for various reasons (none of which seemed to be related to politics, to me). I suspect that, nationally, GDP seems correlated to carbon emissions.

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