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Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

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Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#171

Post by belorn »

tptacek wrote: post #106
nitrogen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International politics' favorite excuse for everything comes straight from the grade school playground: "He started it!" We ought to do better.

If you reread my comment, you'll see I didn't employ that logic at all. I asked a simple question. Should we declare war on France, China, and Israel?

If a french governemnt agency put a exploit in a nuclear reactor, and a bug caused a meltdown inside the US, should the US declare war on france?

let me ask your question with an other question: How many lives can a spy agency kill until it is no longer acceptable?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#173

Post by lern_too_spel »

qiqing wrote: post #164
lern_too_spel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're discussing espionage. They screwed up and bricked the routers accidentally. If they had been successful, the routers would have appeared to function normally.

And if they took down a power station accidentally, that would make it better somehow?

Espionage is something countries are expected to engage in even in peacetime, especially to gain intelligence on affairs that will have serious geopolitical consequences (like a civil war in the Middle East, for example). Do you disagree?

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#174

Post by Intermernet »

adventured wrote: post #156
baddox wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We nuked Japan. Should they nuke us?

They would have nuked us, if they had been able to. It was total-war. In a war for survival - which is what most of WW2 was - there are very few things off-limits. How does that situation have anything to do with today?

Today we're in a "war against terror". It too is total war, where there are very few things off-limits. The US has been implicated in torture, industrial espionage, world-wide surveillance and the killing of innocent civilians.

The "terrorists" (pick your current flavor of the month) are implicated in almost the same list of behaviours, excepting the global surveillance, due to lack of resources.

We aren't currently engaged in some kind of gentleman's war, playing by Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#175

Post by scintill76 »

tptacek wrote: post #80
drez wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no problem with the NSA spying on foreign communications or disrupting them. After all, that's their job. What else would we use the NSA for? Really? You don't have an issue with a foreign intelligence agency disrupting core infrastructure for a nation in the midst of a civil war? Especially against a nation we are not even at war with? What if the Chinese (or anyone else) did something similar? Would that n…

Do you really believe that France, China, and Israel haven't owned up US routers? Should we declare war on them?

If they entirely cut us off from the internet by bricking our routers, maybe we would declare war.

GP said it would be an act of war. That definition doesn't mean the victim has to declare war on the aggressor, does it?

I feel inclined to agree with other comments saying this boils down to childish morality: "everyone else is doing it."

If you're not intending to make any sort of moral argument, but simply one of consistency in policy, then consider that people are taking issue with their NSA committing an "act of war" on a volatile country they are not at war with. It's different than some friendly mutual hacking with, say, France. What gives NSA the right to make that call and hope it doesn't blow up in the entire nation's face? And if it was sanctioned "from on high", we can still be angry that our elected officials and their appointees would do such a thing.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#176

Post by lotsofmangos »

tptacek wrote: post #106
nitrogen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

International politics' favorite excuse for everything comes straight from the grade school playground: "He started it!" We ought to do better.

If you reread my comment, you'll see I didn't employ that logic at all. I asked a simple question. Should we declare war on France, China, and Israel?

Probably not. At least not all at the same time. It would be very inconvenient.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#178

Post by joeclark77 »

igravious wrote: post #20
AwesomeTogether wrote: post #7

"Among other things, I want to answer a burning question: What drove Snowden to leak hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents, revelations that have laid bare the vast scope of the government's domestic surveillance programs?" if the article presents a different answer than what's already known, through snowden statements communicated to laura poitras and greenwald, then they're probably not true, and if it repe…

Exactly. Snowden has answered this many times. He has said (and I paraphrase) that the public of the USA needs to know what is being done to them and in their name so that they can get to choose and have a decision on the scope and limits of these programs. In other words Snowden has said effectively that if the public could get a direct vote on these issues and the public chose the status quo then he'd go along with…

Right, but that's what's called a "lie" and everyone knows it, hence the question is still seeking an answer. No way did Snowden read hundreds of thousands of documents and decide that all of them were relevant to his personal crusade against whatever it was.

Re: Edward Snowden: The Untold Story

#179

Post by lotsofmangos »

yardie wrote: post #127
cyorir wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Considering the fact that the US was completely caught off guard by the scope and effectiveness of ISIS I have to question the effectiveness of SIGINT programs like the NSA. I have to assume honestly that these programs outlandish budgets are not for tracking terrorists but to control the domestic populace. I must disagree with this interpretation. I think that only the American public and (some) American media were…

A terrorist organisation has established a caliphate state in a country the US formerly occupied and control. If they are being coy about it they must love taking pie in the face. It doesn't look like it, that is a fact. The US doesn't have an answer to these guys. There is no upside to us losing influence in a region to a terrorist organisation and then letting them embed themselves as a valid government. How did th…

"There is no upside to us losing influence in a region to a terrorist organisation and then letting them embed themselves as a valid government."

The US and UK never properly seized control in Iraq. We were losing troops on a daily basis. Now we have withdrawn, leaving an entirely predictable power vacuum, things have got so mental that even Iran is collaborating with us, and they are currently the main external force now loosing troops in the area. Also, this new caliphate is completely surrounded by folk who really do not like them. To be honest the whole thing looks like a deliberate trap, that is probably going to be used as a drone proving ground, given the political statements about use of troops.

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