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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

#101

Post by philwelch »

pandaman wrote: post #100
philwelch wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolute nonsense by any meaningful definition of the word.

Can you elaborate? It's pretty simple in my opinion: democracy is the power of people and in a democracy (which would be also a republic, since it's not a monarchy or a theocracy) the people is the ultimate source of power. That could be either a direct democracy (where all people get to decide) or representative democracy, where the people choose representatives to decide everything. There is no power above the peop…

> In the USA the ultimate source of power is the Constitution of the US

...which starts with "We the people, for a number of good reasons, establish the following Constitution." So you're kind of stuck there.

If you're willing to draw these kinds of distinctions, no country is a democracy and the word is meaningless.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#102

Post by pandaman »

philwelch wrote: post #101
pandaman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? It's pretty simple in my opinion: democracy is the power of people and in a democracy (which would be also a republic, since it's not a monarchy or a theocracy) the people is the ultimate source of power. That could be either a direct democracy (where all people get to decide) or representative democracy, where the people choose representatives to decide everything. There is no power above the peop…

> In the USA the ultimate source of power is the Constitution of the US ...which starts with "We the people, for a number of good reasons, establish the following Constitution." So you're kind of stuck there. If you're willing to draw these kinds of distinctions, no country is a democracy and the word is meaningless.

I will skip the nonsense point of me being somehow stuck, if you think more than 5 seconds I believe you can figure out how this works yourself.

As for your second point: it contradicts reality. There had been even direct democracies (ancient Athens among many others) and, judging by the frequency that constitutions change around the world in most democratic countries you need just a referendum to entirely repeal the constitution.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#103

Post by _bfhp »

_bfhp wrote: post #92
mpyne wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter that the Guardian is an American LLC. If you walked up to some dude on the street, who hasn't already agreed to protect NSI, give him a confidential sheet, he's under no legal obligation to protect it (though, see below). That's one of the surreal effects of our 1st Amendment rights is that for whatever reason J. Random Citizen (and especially the press) are not bound by classification requirements…

Can you explain the labeling of WikiLeaks as an enemy organization and fears that Assange has? Why don't you tell these things to Greenwald himself on Twitter or in an email? The release of any secret through a media outlet could be considered a "threat to national security"; James Rosen, the New York Times, AP, and Antiwar.com all know this now that they've all been indicted and some of their phone records have been…

The current incarnation of the U.S government has _tortured people_, I doubt they'd have any problem with disobeying their own laws and just going after Greenwald and figuring out the justification later. If you disagree, then we differ there and on more fundamental issues as well, probably.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#105

Post by philwelch »

pandaman wrote: post #102
philwelch wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the USA the ultimate source of power is the Constitution of the US ...which starts with "We the people, for a number of good reasons, establish the following Constitution." So you're kind of stuck there. If you're willing to draw these kinds of distinctions, no country is a democracy and the word is meaningless.

I will skip the nonsense point of me being somehow stuck, if you think more than 5 seconds I believe you can figure out how this works yourself. As for your second point: it contradicts reality. There had been even direct democracies (ancient Athens among many others) and, judging by the frequency that constitutions change around the world in most democratic countries you need just a referendum to entirely repeal the…

Since the American democratic process is capable of passing arbitrary Constitutional amendments into law, and since the Constitution itself says its establishment derives from the will of the people, your interpretation is completely untenable.

Of all the hundreds of democracies established throughout history, almost all of them had governance through elected representatives and almost all of them had some kind of legal limits on what could be done through the democratic process (at least not without using some other democratic process to revise those limits). At that point, if you don't want to count them as real democracies, feel free to continue inventing your own language because you're not speaking the same English as the rest of us.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#106

Post by epsylon »

philwelch wrote: post #66
adventured wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was never a beacon of democracy. That's not a desirable goal. It was a Constitutional Republic.

This semantic argument is completely tiresome. There's no contradiction between being a democracy and being a republic. The US is a democratic republic. Non-democratic republics include ancient Rome and 18th-century America (where slaves couldn't vote). Democratic non-republics include the UK, Canada, and Holland (which are monarchies). "Republic" doesn't actually mean anything aside from "not a monarchy". When the f…

I'll also add that democracy does not imply elections.

Actually, in Athenian democracy, decision makers were elected through sortition [1] (drawing of lots). They considered elections to be the very mark of an oligarchic system, which is what (in my opinion) most so-called "modern democracies" have become. (As illustrated by the importance of parties and of a class of professional decision makers, namely politicians, who have incentives to increase their own power and limit the number of people who reach their status. Usually this is done by rigging the electoral system.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#107

Post by rorrr2 »

contingencies wrote: post #88
rorrr2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The notion of democratic itself is a flawed one - meaningful representation left the building a long time ago. It is often used to evoke some sense of greater social justice. Notice though, how notions such as 'willingness to invade other sovereign nations' or 'laws on books against fundamental human rights' or 'presence of any constitution or meaningful court of higher appeal' or 'centralization of media ownership'…

Why don't you create a better ranking and see how it does?

I bet the results will be nearly identical, if not worse for the US.

Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks

#108

Post by TheCondor »

beloch wrote: post #76

1. A small group of people violate the privacy of people everywhere around the world. 2. Another, even smaller group of people violate the privacy of the above group. 3. The first group says, "Hey, trust us. It's for your own good", and then promptly hunts down the second group for being dirty-stinking-traitor-terrorist criminals. 4. Profit?

Read Top Secret America by Dana Priest. These are among the highest paying government jobs. The strongholds of NSA are in the wealthiest counties in the nation. And we don't even know what they do... I think it's reasonable to call it profiting.
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