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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

#51

Post by deelowe »

enraged_camel wrote: post #44
mtgx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

s/americans/american government and media(for a lot of us at least)

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#54

Post by gwgarry »

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.

Time for Americans to wake up to the tyranny they have been subjecting the rest of the world to since WWII. If foreigners don't have rights, then sooner or later those same rules will get applied to Americans. In fact that's already happened, just not on American soil yet.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#55

Post by rorrr2 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #44
mtgx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

US is actually less democratic than many countries - Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Democracy_Index_2012_gree...

[2] http://www.democracyranking.org/en/ranking.htm

If we're talking about economic freedom or the freedom of press, it's even worse:

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#56

Post by pvnick »

Not surprising. This is an incredibly opaque administration that's prosecuted more whistleblowers under the espionage act than every other administration combined.

The contrast between campaign Obama and president Obama is staggering. One would not be too far off the mark in calling him a liar, as simply an objective observation. I say this as someone who campaigned for him in 2008, which I now regret immensely.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#57

Post by Dylan16807 »

mpyne wrote: post #49
Silhouette wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whis…

Discretion is good in the short term and bad in the long term. It's something that ideally would almost never be needed.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#59

Post by magicalist »

mpyne wrote: post #39
steveklabnik wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can we prove something guilty when we don't even know it exists?

We knew PRISM existed though. It's even mentioned in job postings, and we already knew about FISA and Section 702 as well. We just didn't know we cared.

The parent poster should have been more specific. The reason lawsuits have largely be stymied has been the claim of state secrets (whether or not everyone in the room knew the program existed, the executive branch argued that details would reveal things that would be detrimental to the state) and because no one who sued could prove they had standing to sue because no one knew who was actually being monitored.

So, yes, we knew section 215, FISA, etc existed, but no one has been able to (yet) successfully challenge them fully because any legal basis for challenging has been (in many cases actively) kept secret.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#60

Post by jlgreco »

deelowe wrote: post #51
enraged_camel wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

s/americans/american government and media(for a lot of us at least)

To be fair, those people are exclusively Americans.

Not all Americans think of America as a "beacon of democracy", but pretty much anyone who does is themselves American. Also, rectangles are not squares, though squares are rectangles.

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