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Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

reuters.com

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Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#41

Post by AnthonyMouse »

claudius wrote: post #18
philwelch wrote: post #11

It's incredible how the presence of the word "leaks" turns the whole headline from promising to sinister. Why can't they investigate the NSA for once? Isn't that what a democratic country would do?

It appears this was justified by a specific law that was passed by the representatives of the people for the people, so why should they investigate the NSA, especially in a democratic country?

Are you saying they should investigate Congress instead?

(I noticed that nobody has specified who the "they" is. In a democracy, maybe the "they" is supposed to be "us"?)

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#42

Post by jivatmanx »

mayneack wrote: post #6
mtgx wrote: post #4

So which is it? Is he "welcoming a debate over spying on Americans" or is he prosecuting the whistleblowers (again) and requesting state privileges to protect themselves against further scrutiny? I don't think the two can really co-exist. And if all of this was "already known" what's there to prosecute then? The amount of double-speak from the Obama administration astonishes me.

What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original…

The process of classifying material is uncontroversial because in general parlance, we assume that material is specific intelligence of people, place, and times.

The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#43

Post by Silhouette »

mpyne wrote: post #29
ohazi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in the midst of several legal cases that are trying to argue that the NSA spying program is criminal conduct.

Well that the flip side of "innocent until proven guilty" is that merely having an open case is not enough.

Curiously, the UK government made an argument to the contrary just recently when talking about when an alleged sex offender should have their name disclosed, which has been a big issue here of late after a wave of allegations about inappropriate behaviour by high profile media personalities going back many years. The argument was essentially that if you disclose the identity of a suspect before they have their day in court, you might encourage other victims to come forward with evidence that will build the case, which is presumably favourable if the suspect actually is guilty but obviously has severe potential consequences if in fact they are innocent but publicly associated with sex crimes anyway.

I'm not sure what the parallel with whistleblowing should be in a case of allegation but not yet a conclusive decision in court, but I'm pretty sure governments shouldn't be entitled to more protection against potential damage to their reputation than an alleged but not convicted sex offender.

(Just to be clear, I'm not commenting on the appropriateness of the policy toward disclosure of suspected sex offenders, just the double standard that would arise if the UK government objected to this kind of whistleblowing using your "innocent until proven guilty" argument.)

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#44

Post by enraged_camel »

mtgx wrote: post #25
paul wrote: post #22

If the government hasn't done anything wrong, then they shouldn't have anything to hide from us :) More seriously, some amount of surveillance is probably necessary, but they need to be a lot more open and transparent about it. Secret laws and secret courts are not the stuff a free society is made of.

Apparently, they do. FISA spying has been found unconstitutional since 2011, but they are keeping it a secret: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret... This is happening in the "beacon of democracy" of the world.

For the record, the only people who see the USA as the "beacon of democracy" are Americans.

I'm not saying this to start a flame war, but to simply point out that the USA is no more democratic than many other Western nations.

(My personal opinion is that the USA is much more of a beacon of imperialism than of democracy. But that's neither here nor there.)

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#45

Post by jivatmanx »

ownagefool wrote: post #19
kingraoul3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't have that debate if we aren't informed about what's being kept from us.

We barely even need to have that debate, we know our Government are using classified information to cover their own asses and for political reasons. Transparency is pretty much the only weapon we have against Government corruption, thus we really should to be doing more to help protect legitimate whistle blowers and to stop documents being classified or redacted without some overseeing from a party without skin in th…

It's one thing to oppose a system such as PRISM in the legal abstract, quite another thing to hear about the wanton details of a real one, and see the CEO's of Microsoft, Facebook and Google publicly fib under FISA gag orders.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#46

Post by lifeguard »

mayneack wrote: post #6
mtgx wrote: post #4

So which is it? Is he "welcoming a debate over spying on Americans" or is he prosecuting the whistleblowers (again) and requesting state privileges to protect themselves against further scrutiny? I don't think the two can really co-exist. And if all of this was "already known" what's there to prosecute then? The amount of double-speak from the Obama administration astonishes me.

What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original…

As wikileaks has shown the government tends to classify EVERYTHING.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#47

Post by jzs »

What is there to investigate? The criminals has clearly been found thanks to the whistleblowers. The whistle blower is the hero while the criminals are NSA and the government for doing such acts against democracy. A democracy needs to be transparent. Otherwise it is a system that you can put no trust in.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#48

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #41
claudius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears this was justified by a specific law that was passed by the representatives of the people for the people, so why should they investigate the NSA, especially in a democratic country?

Are you saying they should investigate Congress instead? (I noticed that nobody has specified who the "they" is. In a democracy, maybe the "they" is supposed to be "us"?)

[deleted]

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#49

Post by mpyne »

Silhouette wrote: post #43
mpyne wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that the flip side of "innocent until proven guilty" is that merely having an open case is not enough.

Curiously, the UK government made an argument to the contrary just recently when talking about when an alleged sex offender should have their name disclosed, which has been a big issue here of late after a wave of allegations about inappropriate behaviour by high profile media personalities going back many years. The argument was essentially that if you disclose the identity of a suspect before they have their day in…

Well the US definitely "has their cake and eats it too" on your example. We will oftentimes (incl. for alleged sex offenders) publicly mention the name of a suspect, mug shot, general details, etc. even while the case is ongoing. In fact I'm convinced that's the only reason Americans know about "innocent until proven guilty", to remind them that the suspect hasn't been convicted yet.

But here we go, perhaps the whistleblower technically broke the letter of the law. It doesn't sound like he was leaked illegal activities so he doesn't have the benefit of that particular shield. And just the other day a few on HN were arguing that a prosecutor should not be able to use prosecutorial discretion.

I think we can all definitely agree his heart is in the right place though (and all the previous elements of my ode to him still apply), so I wonder what we would think of prosecutorial discretion after this?

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