Why does everyone assume China is doing industrial espionage, but nobody imagines PRISM is being used for that. If a low level employee has such access, the only question is how many people are using this to cheat the stock market? Are there trading algorithms that have access to PRISM?
NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
91–100 of 359 posts
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#92Does anyone else find it ironic that they couldn't detect Snowdon communicating with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras?
Ironic? Not in the least. Even if he only mildly knew about the things he described he has an understanding of the points of tap the state actors have free access to. In all generalities hiding from the NSA should be trivial with simple precautions (as it pertains to the Internet). Part of the problem is that those points of access are generally revered as daily can't-live-withouts and present trivial access and coll…
You don't understand irony. Many people don't (Alanis Morissette.) If my house burns down, that's unfortunate. If I install a fire detection system in my house and through a fault in itself it burns my house down, that's ironic.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#93Is it just me, or does it seem like this guy probably isn't holed up in Hong Kong but elsewhere? I really hope this guy is smart enough to not actually advertise where in the world he actually is to a bunch of people that would likely have no problems disappearing him. I really hope he's already in Iceland.
It seemed suspicious that in his video interview he said "there's a CIA station right up the street," thus alluding to his location relative to the US embassy. That seems like a way too carelessly revealing statement for an NSA hacker who is so cautious he reportedly covers his keyboard under a sweater while he types his password. So careless it seemed contrived.
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Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#94Edward Snowden is a hero. This is a criminal government. Innocent citizens of the world are now enemies of the US police state.
why he choose the time Obama meeting with Xi, you know they will talk about network hacking issue? why he select Hongkong for asylum ? He was not such simple, he mean it.
Maybe he already joined the communist.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#9546 points in fifteen minutes and not a single comment? This NSA issue is seeming less and less like a discussion topic and more like a echo chamber, despite the rampant lack of information on all sides of the event.
HN stores comments permanently and offers no way in which to delete them. Given the current trends it's overwhelmingly likely that someone will eventually be detained, harassed or put on a no-fly list due to past comments on HN.
Given the subject matter, doesn't it seem reasonable that a lot of people would see more risk than benefit in commenting? If your primary goal in life is activism, then sure. But most of us have other primary goals.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#96I'm surprised we haven't seen more discussion of NSA leaker as a potential foreign intelligence coup. Think of the timing, right before a summit with China. And he defects to Hong Kong. Not to get too nutty here, but its worth considering. Arguably our government did all this to try and protect us and here we are going ballistic - what if the leak was a setup to shatter our negotiating leverage? Lesser of two evils k…
I said this in another thread* but I think that the choice of Hong Kong was shrewd. It puts him in a civilized country under the umbrella of a nation that won't be in a hurry to do the USG any favors, and would push back hard against any attempt to disappear him, since that would require action of an arguably military nature on their turf.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#97Neither word apply. "Patriot", to me, suggests a unquestioning loyalty, lack of thought or perspective. "Traitor" suggests selling out both government and people to a foreign enemy. Both are too broad, blunt, and loaded to describe anything useful. What this man did was expose the government for the sake of the very people the government are supposed to answer to. The problem his the the huge disconnect between gover…
Don't confuse patriotism with jingoism.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#98To call him a whistleblower would presume wrongdoing. The govt can't admit to wrongdoing, so they have to use the word traitor.
That's a very observant point. The language they're taking is as defensive of their own actions as it is offensive against his.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This whole story has had a baffling effect on HN. For the last few days 4/5ths of everything on the frontpage has been related to the NSA. I'm not saying that its not an important issue, but Christ do we need to have every bloggers opinion upvoted to the top? Even Apple was only able to make the top of front page for a short time. This is HN and Apple's latest news is not the top story. It's like I'm on a completely…
What astounds me is that the mainstream media is not similarly in uproar. People don't seem to understand what this means: the government is spying on us, it is lying about the spying, and now it is telling us to not worry about it, to just move along, AND WE'RE DOING IT. This is the most alarming thing I've seen in my adult life.
This is the second most alarming thing, on a national discourse level, that I have seen in my adult life. The first being the lies and media complicity readily swallowed by the u.s. public preceding and during the invasion of Iraq.
Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor
#100I dislike how the focus is on Snowden now, and not on fixing the problem.