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Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

m.washingtonpost.com

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Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#51

Post by samstave »

znowi wrote: post #44

I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. Despite a fair amount of indignation from the public, it seems to me that the majority has accepted the new surveillance reality.

The weird invasive thought I keep having is if Snowden could, if at all, be a limited hang-out-OP/MISO (PsyOp) to gauge just how much the public would accept.

There have been enough revelations to see that the NSA got to keep what it is in entirety; mission accomplished.

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#52

Post by pnathan »

snowwrestler wrote: post #32
jliechti1 wrote: post #7

If the "terrorists" are following this whole story, wouldn't now be a prime time for another attack? This could have the effect of validating the NSA's activities in many Americans' eyes ("see, the NSA is unable to its job without invading our privacy") and we would see a whole new round of new laws capitalizing on Americans' fears of terrorists (which means their terrorism succeeded).

The NSA makes the lives of terrorists much harder than it would be otherwise. Terrorists undoubtedly welcome Snowden's revelations--both for revealing tactics, and for creating the possibility that the NSA will be constrained by public outrage. That doesn't imply that what Snowden did was wrong, though. We trade security for freedom in a thousand ways in American culture, and now we have a chance to debate that trade…

> We trade security for freedom in a thousand ways in American culture, and now we have a chance to debate that tradeoff for digital data.

This is something really important: it's not out-of-the-box obviously wrong (talk to people who aren't into civil liberties for this perspective) that our communications are monitored. But it is very important that, as US citizens, we have an understanding and a grasp of what is done and what could be done in our name, and that we regulate its activities based upon our choices, not that of shadowy figures telling us we don't have the capacity to understand. As a representative democracy, we have the right to be informed and to select representatives & leaders who take policies that we can agree (up to majority) on.

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#53

Post by morganherlocker »

jonnybgood wrote: post #46
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #27

Jesus Christ some of the comments on that article. I wonder if there was some way to analyse what percentage of it is astro-turfing and what percentage is real red-blooded Americans just brainwashed into thinking government knows best. Americans you are lost. It's been nice knowing you.

I keep seeing on HN about how most Americans simply don't care about this issue and it being the reason there isn't more of an uproar. However, I have a different take: They have a different opinion than you. It's not that they don't care, are brainwashed, or "lost", it's just that they have a different opinion on the matter. Now I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but let's keep in mind that their opinion is jus…

They have a right to an opinion, but that does not necessarily mean that their opinion is valid. From Wikipedia on Validity: "an argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is logically entailed by its premises."

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#54

Post by aagha »

mladenkovacevic wrote: post #37
krapp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Americans you are lost. It's been nice knowing you. There are fewer than 500 comments on that site as of right now, that doesn't mean anything about anything. Sometimes I wonder if people are actually aware that the United States has more people in it than can fit into a single room.

It's what would in most industries be considered a reasonable sized sampling. When you then look at this poll then, things start to look grim indeed: http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-ph...

A reasonable sample is a function of the size of the overall population. Assuming you're talking a few million visitors in some fixed period of time, at 500 comments, you're still a little ways off from a 95 percent confidence interval and a +/-3 margin of error.

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#55

Post by cstavish »

samstave wrote: post #51
znowi wrote: post #44

I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. Despite a fair amount of indignation from the public, it seems to me that the majority has accepted the new surveillance reality.

The weird invasive thought I keep having is if Snowden could, if at all, be a limited hang-out-OP/MISO (PsyOp) to gauge just how much the public would accept. There have been enough revelations to see that the NSA got to keep what it is in entirety; mission accomplished.

That's one of the most thought-provoking comments I've seen in some time. Some of the revelations involving spying on allies seem pretty harmful...Either a lot of nations were in on the operation or a big risk was taken in conducting it the first place. Further, why would they include information on spying on allies if they just wanted to gauge the reaction on domestic surveillance?

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#56

Post by turkeyhead »

snowwrestler wrote: post #32
jliechti1 wrote: post #7

If the "terrorists" are following this whole story, wouldn't now be a prime time for another attack? This could have the effect of validating the NSA's activities in many Americans' eyes ("see, the NSA is unable to its job without invading our privacy") and we would see a whole new round of new laws capitalizing on Americans' fears of terrorists (which means their terrorism succeeded).

The NSA makes the lives of terrorists much harder than it would be otherwise. Terrorists undoubtedly welcome Snowden's revelations--both for revealing tactics, and for creating the possibility that the NSA will be constrained by public outrage. That doesn't imply that what Snowden did was wrong, though. We trade security for freedom in a thousand ways in American culture, and now we have a chance to debate that trade…

The problem is that public debate, for the majority of the US population, is basically dictated. There are six corporations that control 90% of media in the US (http://i.imgur.com/2ewvrzO.jpg). The small amount of legitimate debate on any political issue is usually narrowly framed which ensures status quo power structures are protected.

The people and corporations who benefit most from the current systems also happen to have the power and wealth to significantly influence the public channels of debate.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....” ― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

So how will the US plutocracy desire the debate of 'trading security for freedom' to go?

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#57

Post by samstave »

cstavish wrote: post #55
samstave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird invasive thought I keep having is if Snowden could, if at all, be a limited hang-out-OP/MISO (PsyOp) to gauge just how much the public would accept. There have been enough revelations to see that the NSA got to keep what it is in entirety; mission accomplished.

That's one of the most thought-provoking comments I've seen in some time. Some of the revelations involving spying on allies seem pretty harmful...Either a lot of nations were in on the operation or a big risk was taken in conducting it the first place. Further, why would they include information on spying on allies if they just wanted to gauge the reaction on domestic surveillance?

>Further, why would they include information on spying on allies if they just wanted to gauge the reaction on domestic surveillance?

A global psyop; it was a show of complete dominance?

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#58

Post by marze »

eliteraspberrie wrote: post #22

The Washington Post sat on the Collateral Murder video. [1,2] The New York Times sat on the warrantless wiretapping scandal at the request of the White House. [3] CBS sat on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal at the request of the Pentagon. [4] What is the Washington Post not telling us? [1] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/15617022129 [2] http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/wapo_denies_allegation_it_sat.... [3] http://fai…

What's your point? They are telling us a lot of things that Edward Snowden said recently that are interesting.

Why whine?

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#59

Post by [deleted] »

morganherlocker wrote: post #48
quesera wrote: post #5

> “If I defected at all,” Snowden said, “I defected from the government to the public.” He can't run til 2020, but I'll cast an early vote now.

I do not know if I would vote for him necessarily (not knowing much about the rest of his views), but a candidate who promised to pardon Snowden would receive a couple "get-out-of-terrible-policy-suggestion free cards" in my book.

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished

#60

Post by barry-cotter »

tokenadult wrote: post #23
Zigurd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel so strongly, you do it.

I've been telling people about the problems in China for a very long time. The Chinese embassy staff may have been videotaping out the window when I joined a large public protest outside the embassy.

Of course the Chinese embassy was videotaping you. The American embassy in Dublin does it, and Ireland is a political irrelevance from a US perspective.
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