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NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

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Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#351

Post by stcredzero »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #291
guelo wrote: post #104

We don't need an NSA or CIA or any other spy agency. I know I'm an extremist on government secrets, but I think there should be none. Nothing should be outside the reach of a FOIA request. In my ideal world all government officials' documents and emails would be made publicly accesible in real time, they're working for us. Any exception or loophole to transparency gets abused, every time. If that makes it harder to c…

Security by obscurity has always been a bad, unsustainable policy. It also only happens to be the one method of security most idiots can understand.

Ultimately, all security is by obscurity or delay by physical impediment. Kerckhoff's doctrine is just an abstraction in a limited context. Throw in all complications of the real world, and your left with just those two.

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#352

Post by varjag »

jetti wrote: post #348
varjag wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior. You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.

But the current system, with all of the "security" it provides, already has a handful of really really bad people that commit crimes. So why should I give up freedoms to try and stop these bad people when despite everything, crime still happens?

I'm not sure what you argue exactly. That policing has no effect on crime rates?

The modern state we have is here not to build Heaven on Earth, but to avoid Hell. Eliminating all crime is impossible, but without state intervention you end up with Somalia, Afghanistan or post-Katrina New Orleans.

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#353

Post by anigbrowl »

javajosh wrote: post #329
anigbrowl wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Projecting, mainly. Just like you. No, I think we should have more robust privacy protections and that this would require a constitutional amendment, but I'm also aware that my view has little traction at present. I'm sanguine about monitoring of things like CDRs because it seems an inevitable result of technology, and it's unrealistic to expect the government to put itself at a legal disadvantage compared to individ…

> people are more concerned with external threats than internal ones > most people assume taht the government already has/had access to what you do on your cellphone/facebook/internet searches so actual evidence of data manaing doesn't seem all that big of a revelation. No, you're not projecting at all, are you.

When the matter is considered a good punchline on late night chat shows, I think there's some evidence for my view of what people in general think. I spent over a decade working in customer-facing IT so I'm summarizing my experience of the attitudes I encountered. I'm not sure what axe you're trying to grind here.

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#354

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #326
adrianbg wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between a normal government and a colonial government is the degree of integration. If you live under any government you are ruled, not free. The countries we have now grew by conquering and accumulating territory -- that is except in the cases where territories decided to give up their independence like the states in the US.

Sorry, this is complete nonsense.

[deleted]

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#355

Post by wycats »

godgod wrote: post #21
suyash wrote: post #9

In my opinion, he is a Traitor just like Bradley Manning for jeopardizing National Security.

National security...give me a break. "Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither." - Benjamin Franklin Make no mistake, we live in very dangerous world but it's now clear that the danger is being generated or at least perpetuated by the US government. The war on terror is a lie. We're openly funding terror. The police state is here. The industrial military complex war machine will never stop. The Patrio…

Also Jefferson: "A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means"

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#356

Post by shpxnvz »

rtpg wrote: post #330
shpxnvz wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first part is true; forcible coercion does usurp freedom - and even more so when done by the government. The second part is fallacy; you obviously cannot remove the ability to point a gun (or knife) at someone and make demands, and any attempt to do so necessarily tramples other's rights. In reality there are two effective choices - the person being mugged can defend them-self and/or the government can attempt to…

it's a balance. By preventing people to point guns and make demands (to a certain extent), you (for example) allow for more freedom to walk around at night without a fear of getting mugged. Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free sp…

it's a balance. By preventing people to point guns and make demands (to a certain extent), you (for example) allow for more freedom to walk around at night without a fear of getting mugged.

When I say you cannot remove the ability of people to do it, I mean only that - you cannot remove the ability. And that is what all the gun-grabbing hoopla is about - physically removing the ability to do so by restricting access to guns. That, I contend, is impossible and absolutely infringes on individual rights.

The threat of retaliation, either by the victim immediately or after-the-fact by the government, is of course effective at prevention. The former is more effective, as evidenced by crime rates in areas where the government does not infringe on the right to self-defense.

Everything is a tradeoff, saying 'tramples other's rights' is misleading because it doesn't indicate which rights. Some rights are more valued than others to people (I'd gladly trade my right to kill myself for my right to free speech, if such a tradeoff existed).

It does not matter which rights - the government may not pick and choose which individual rights to value over others, it's their duty to protect them all equally - and for all people equally.

Of course it is your right to determine which rights you value the most, but it is not a power of the government. And it's a power of neither you or the government to determine which rights I value most.

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#357

Post by fexl »

baddox wrote: post #301
fexl wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even governments cannot rely on taxation to fund armies or anything else they do. For centuries, they have relied instead on seizing monopoly control of money and then debasing it. This has the effect of stealing people's savings and the benefits they would otherwise obtain by increased productivity, and it is much harder to detect than blatant taxation. (By all means read "Creature from Jekyll Island" to learn the d…

Yes, that's very true, although I still think that a large part of the reason the USD is still trusted internationally is that a large group of wealthy people (Americans) have to pay their taxes in the USD. Another large part is the US military, of course.

"Although" is not the right word here -- you're supporting my point. :)

The requirement to pay taxes in USD is the primary "inherent value" which makes that particular commodity circulate as money. The "inherent value" is to increase the odds that one may continue living outside of a cage.

When I call that value "inherent", I am obviously speaking very loosely and tongue-in-cheek. Remove the threat of force, and USD paper cash has no significant value -- it's too rough to use as toilet paper and doesn't even burn particularly well in the winter. It is durable enough to function as wallpaper, though with a rather busy and avant garde retro design.

Combine that dynamic with the Mandrake Mechanism described in "Creature", and you have a very powerful monopoly fiat money, consisting of cash and bank "deposits", useful for financing horrors like World War I, the Marxist overthrow of the Kerensky government, endless bailouts of banks and corporations throughout the '70s, '80s, '90s, and '00s, and a litany of other ridiculous, juvenile schemes.

It is the monetary inflation, produced by the central bank buying government debt (i.e. a promise to tax), which gives governments most of their "spending money". Taxation itself merely gives people a reason to accept the USD in the first place, and also serves as the principal means of social engineering.

When you look at it that way, taxation and inflation are seen as two mutually recursive functions, whose fixed point is the gun.

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#358

Post by johncoltrane »

mpyne wrote: post #259
johncoltrane wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adversary has nuclear weapons because you (assuming you are a citizen od the US of A) have nuclear weapons.

I wish this was a picture so I could submit it to Cute Overload...

Because it is cute or because you find my comment ridiculous?

Re: NSA leaker is a patriot, not a traitor

#359

Post by fixxer »

einhverfr wrote: post #207
fixxer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAD works.

But only when combining deterrence with early warning and an agreement not to develop weapons to target early warning systems. Otherwise it is a recipe for "oops, I guess we weren't really being attacked. Sorry for the nuclear war."

Really? All evidence to the contrary.
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