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Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

infosecurity-magazine.com

121–130 of 131 posts

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took 7 years for the courts to finally figure that out It was ruled illegal in 2015 by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. > inserting spying equipment in Google data centers There is no evidence of this in the Snowden leaks or anywhere. Google would know if it had unaccounted for hardware in its datacenters. They put network analyzers on international links that carried Google traffic. > they were intercepti…

Frankly I read about all this years ago so I'd have to spend a lot of time looking all this up and that's unlikely at the moment. I may very well have some details wrong. Re: parallel construction reference here though clearly this is more recent: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/28/hemisphere-phone-records/ At the bottom of this article it references the NSA and Snowden but says no explicit links was proven. https://e…

Your link shows parallel construction from Hemisphere, which is separate from the NSA phone metadata collection program.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#122
post #39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people forget that leading up to the Iraq war, France and Germany were aligned with Russia and very much against US interests. They were a frenemy at best. I'm not saying it's right - we were in the wrong on Iraq and that was obvious before it started. But just like the US has had a HARD turn towards fascism, there's nothing stopping that from occurring to our allies as well. I'd argue it's dereliction of…

I'm curious about what interpretation of events leads you to the conclusion that, say, France was aligned against US interests? What about Canada? Edit: And it's one thing (not necessarily a great thing) if you and your allies are knowingly and willingly exchanging intelligence about suspicious activities you pick up in each other's countries to tip off law enforcement. Exfiltrating corporate industrial and technolog…

I literally just said that France and Germany were against the war. Assuming you were old enough to be an adult leading up the war literally EVERYTHING leads me to that conclusion. Their populations protested, they were very vocal and it was obvious to anyone watching international news broadcasts.

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

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

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#123
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both because it's good policy. I "want" insofar as I would expect any government to maximize our position via basic game theory. It's inevitable because those who maximize their position are going to be the dominant player over time.

(I posted a similar comment elsewhere but it's short, and relevant here too). That's not what game theory says. Defecting against everyone you meet is a losing strategy in an iterated multi-actor prisoner's dilemma. Tit-for-tat does much better. Establishing and maintaining mutual trust, to cooperate with those who are willing to cooperate with you, is in a nation's interests.

> Defecting against everyone you meet is a losing strategy

You are changing the topic, subtly and importantly.

Maintaining an operative network to support an information network and flexible operations (either to help or hinder a nation-state) is THE winning strategy.

> Tit-for-tat does much better.

That is incorrect, in context.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's your interpretation, but the same text has been considered perfectly compatible with chattle slavery for more than a hundred years, starting immediately as it was written. So I don't think it's as clear cut as the text might make you think.

If the plain text as written ought to have forbidden slavery but the people including the people that wrote it acted as if it didn't for a century their failure to act doesn't and shouldn't constrain others from interpreting the plain text different from the framers or even its author.

You can also say "if the writers of the constitution considered slavery to be acceptable, the the intent was for the constitution to allow it, so we should consider that it does, current meanings of the words notwithstanding".

Of course, the conclusion to draw from this is that a new constitution is needed, one that does actually, at the time of writing, explicitly intend to disallow slavery and other offenses against human rights. Why should a document that has been shown to be compatible with slavery (and anti-gay sentiment, and segregation, and extra-judicial killings, and internment camps for the japanese and so on) be considered to carry any weight?

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the plain text as written ought to have forbidden slavery but the people including the people that wrote it acted as if it didn't for a century their failure to act doesn't and shouldn't constrain others from interpreting the plain text different from the framers or even its author.

You can also say "if the writers of the constitution considered slavery to be acceptable, the the intent was for the constitution to allow it, so we should consider that it does, current meanings of the words notwithstanding". Of course, the conclusion to draw from this is that a new constitution is needed, one that does actually, at the time of writing, explicitly intend to disallow slavery and other offenses agains…

A fine sentiment but for practical purposes advancement by the path of constitutional amendment is nearly impossible at this point. Should we forever forgo meaningful change even when well supported by the plain text of the law in order to cleave to what we believe someone meant 200 years ago?

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also say "if the writers of the constitution considered slavery to be acceptable, the the intent was for the constitution to allow it, so we should consider that it does, current meanings of the words notwithstanding". Of course, the conclusion to draw from this is that a new constitution is needed, one that does actually, at the time of writing, explicitly intend to disallow slavery and other offenses agains…

A fine sentiment but for practical purposes advancement by the path of constitutional amendment is nearly impossible at this point. Should we forever forgo meaningful change even when well supported by the plain text of the law in order to cleave to what we believe someone meant 200 years ago?

If you don't accept that, then what can stop a court from interpreting a law that says "the penalty for jaywalking is 100$" to mean "the penalty for walking around somewhere the locals don't want you is 100$"?

If the courts are free to interpret the letter of the law without thinking about the intention of the framers, and the meaning that was given before, what is the difference between courts and lawmakers?

Note: I'm talking entirely philosophically here. In practice, I'm extremely happy that the Supreme Court doesn't allow slavery and that they consider gay marriage to be a human right, that elective abortion is also a human right etc. But, as happy as I am that these are accepted as fundamental human rights, as I think they should be, I don't understand what the point of the constitution really is in this place.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#127
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defecting against everyone you meet is a losing strategy in an iterated multi-actor prisoner's dilemma. Establishing and maintaining mutual trust, to cooperate with those who are willing to cooperate with you, is in a nation's interests.

> " ...everyone you meet... " As the old joke goes "Don't anthropomorphize countries; they hate it when you do that." There is no guarantee of continuity in leadership or national policy because of periodic leadership turnover (elections, etc.) so exactly what would a country be extending trust to?

There's even less of a guarantee when a nation's unsupervised services have a century of experience replacing uncooperative foreign leadership with "more friendly" puppets. Unfortunately such regime change doesn't seem to ever benefit the people of either the interfered or interfering nations...

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#128

> he fled immediately to Russia He did not flee to Russia. He got stuck there on transit to Ecuador because his passport was allegedly cancelled. He came from Hong Kong. Read his book.

So he just got lucky in that his stopover was in one of the few countries on Earth that wouldn't extradite him? What a coincidence.

Is that why he was at the Russian consulate in HK a few days before, and in constant contact with the lawyer from Wikileaks (a Russian Intel cutout)?

Come on.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#129

Edward Snowden is an American patriot. He followed his conscience and acted in good faith to defend the constitutional rights of the American people.

98% of what he stole and leaked had nothing to do with domestic surveillance on the American people.

Re: Time to Pardon Edward Snowden?

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I think he’s a tool of Russia and got paid to tarnish America and diplomacy worldwide.

The American government tarnished itself, Snowden just revealed it to us all (at great personal sacrifice). I consider him a patriot.

> (at great personal sacrifice)

Yes all he had to gain was international celebrity.

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