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Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

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Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#201

Post by tjradcliffe »

pharke wrote: post #89
hullo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd done the same thing with a bust of your mother 10 years ago, they'd have covered it up as well. Try the same thing (with Snowden, or your mother) in France or China, and see what happens. Just because they parks department is doing their job doesn't mean democracy is ebbing.

Do you have examples of precedent where this occurred in the U.S.? If not, you're simply speculating based on your own opinion/mood/blood sugar level. Graffiti is rarely covered up so quickly unless it is found to be particularly offensive. My personal belief is that this statue was deemed to be politically offensive and inciting as well as likely to draw media exposure and so was quickly removed from view even thoug…

There have been many different opinions expressed here with regard to how quickly a politically innocuous statue would have been taken down, with different people claiming "it just makes sense" that such a statue would/wouldn't be covered and removed as quickly. This is a nice illustration of why the human intestine has such limited epistemic utility: my gut and your gut will rarely agree and there's no way based on gut feel alone to decide which if either is correct in any given situation.

So the right thing to do now is to put up a politically innocuous statue and see how long it lasts, or to find cases that are closer to this situation than graffiti, which is both commonplace and relatively less obtrusive, and less likely to be taken for an "official" statement of anything.

I used to live beside a park where a local artist erected an extremely strange Transformer-like statue in a central location that took several weeks to be removed, but it wasn't in the US and it was in the poorer area of a small town, so there are too many differences to draw any useful conclusions from it.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#202

Post by ics »

jjcm wrote: post #180
ics wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in another response: it's a political statement made with public art. As far as Parks and Rec is concerned, it's big heavy piece of vandalism, the integrity of which they know nothing about. To put this in a programmer's perspective: imagine if artists wanting to make political statements suddenly started littering your linux kernel with binary blobs which caused your boot screen to flash an image of Snowde…

Vastly different. In this situation, it's very clear what you need to do to remove the addition to the sculpture park. In your example, the presence shows that the integrity of your system has been compromised. If this sculpture showed up inside of a high security museum display case, then your analogy would make sense.

Well as someone who lives right nearby, visits the park from time to time, knows people who work in the park... the integrity of their system has been compromised. Sure, the threat may be considered pretty mundane (by non-sculptors at least; anyone who has watched art students attempt large sculptural installations may get a twitch) but I think that you are massively underestimating the expectation of infrastructural safety in public parks.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111221041147/http://www.artfla... http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2014/jun... http://hyperallergic.com/11146/8-deadly-works-of-art/

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#203

Post by Dylan16807 »

cdbajorin wrote: post #79
Semiapies wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a plausible argument what Snowden did that went "too far" that boiled down to more than "he did anything at all". At most, you get a side order of " mumble mumble national security mumble mumble he should have done it 'differently' mumble mumble he went to RUSSIA for sanctuary! mumble mumble

Similarly: "I've never seen a plausible argument supporting what Snowden did that boiled down to more than [my morality is more important than your laws]. At most, you get a side order of [George Orwell] mumble mumble [he wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything if he tried to do it differently] mumble mumble [The government was so evil towards him that he fled to RUSSIA!]". These aren't arguments that people a…

Perhaps you could be one of those better conversational partners instead of implying that he's lying?

Also I think you have something to learn about human nature if you don't believe people will bluff on a political opinion without being able to give a coherent argument.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#204

Post by darkmighty »

dragontamer wrote: post #200
tessierashpool wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden's a hero and deserves his place on that memorial. This whole deal with the people putting up a statue of a hero and the government tearing it down? Not what America's supposed to be about. Combine that with the fact that most of the senators who voted for the Patriot Act probably read 1984, and didn't object to the obvious propaganda in the name Patriot Act? Not what America's supposed to be about either.

Snowden is a traitor who happened to bring up an important debate. Probably sold US secrets to China and Russia, while releasing public information so that he can have public support while doing so. He's one of the most successful double-agents in history, with excellent public relations. If a double-agent were to happen again in the future, they'll do what they can to study how Snowden handled his case. No, I don't…

Good ole' fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#205

Post by cryoshon »

rhino369 wrote: post #167
cryoshon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state wants it to be so, it will be legal. The holocaust was legal. Segregation was legal. Stop mentioning legality of the NSA spying; the government writes the laws for their own benefit, of course what they do is legal. Legality of government actions is utterly, brutally, critically, inhospitably irrelevant when compared to what is ethical. A dragnet isn't ethical. A police state isn't ethical. Furthermore,…

I agree morality and legality aren't the same thing. But we cannot have a personal morality exception to classified materials. I'm sure many people who work for the Department of Defense think the Iranian Nuclear deal is wrong. Should they be able to leak a bunch of classified information to sour it? I'm sure they'd believe making peace with, in their minds, genocidal maniacs with nukes is completely immoral. >Furthe…

We can, should, do, and must continue to have a strong and overriding sense of personal morality when dealing with government-- "just following orders" is not, has not, should not, and will never be an acceptable response to government wrongdoing as committed by the people who make up the organs of the government.

Without Snowden, Ellsberg, Drake, Binney, Manning, and the other leakers, we would still be completely and utterly in the dark about most of the malicious things our government is doing. It is solely by these people's sense of moral agency that the wrongdoings came to light! If we left it up to the government to regulate itself within the rules, we would absolutely never have any kind of citizens oversight specifically because they make their own set of rules, and those rules include keeping us in the dark for the purposes of making things run smoother.

As far as claiming there was some kind of debate over the dragnet-- no, some representatives quibbling about the wording from time to time does not count as citizen oversight. The representatives didn't even know how deep the NSA rabbit hole went. They didn't even understand the interpretations of the Patriot act that were being used to justify the spying. They were almost as clueless as we were. So no, there was no debate, no oversight, no way for the citizenry to say "stop" before the fact, and so far, no listening to their cries after the fact.

You may bring up the FISA and warrantless wiretaps, but it's kind of a stupid thing to say: the FISA court is a rubber stamp body, approving well in excess of 95% of requests that come before it. Nevermind that the citizens have no oversight over the court, since it's held in secret, with unelected members. Nevermind that a democracy shouldn't have a secret court system.

It was a moral necessity to leak, it isn't germane to talk about legality in the context of morality. We either have leakers, or we're passengers to the system, which doesn't sound like a democracy to me.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#206

Post by dragontamer »

darkmighty wrote: post #204
dragontamer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden is a traitor who happened to bring up an important debate. Probably sold US secrets to China and Russia, while releasing public information so that he can have public support while doing so. He's one of the most successful double-agents in history, with excellent public relations. If a double-agent were to happen again in the future, they'll do what they can to study how Snowden handled his case. No, I don't…

Good ole' fear, uncertainty and doubt.

What? Swatting is a serious concern. How do you think we should solve the issue?

Have the police sit around doing nothing because they don't have the legal tools to look at business metadata? I'm trying to bring up an actual issue here. For a hundred years, the "metadata" standard has applied to mail, telephone records, business records and so forth as "free game" for the Police.

What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#207

Post by slg »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #156
slg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this reinforce my point. You are basically framing this entire debate as good versus evil. That is not going to change anyone's minds and it serves no real purpose outside of rallying your own side. There is a middle ground between our government can read everything and our government can read nothing. I don't know where that line is, but the only way we find that line is through open debate. Except no…

Middle ground does not always exist. For example, take the plans to set up decentralized networks outside of the government's control. There have been discussions on how to allow the government to still be able to fight certain forms of illegal data exchange (terrorism and child abuse) while banning it from being at all involved in the others (drugs). But there is no middle ground solution. Any network that comprises…

>As it stands, giving the government the power to read any one particular thing will result in it being abused to read other things that were never intended.

Isn't this potentially the real problem? It is why our original system required courts and warrants, checks and balances. The Internet doesn't have to be completely different than the offline world. The police can knock down my door if there is a threat of child abuse or terrorism, but aren't allowed to do the same for a traffic violation. Why would that system need to be different online? We just need to make the process of acquiring and executing a warrant more transparent. That political debate would take precedence over any technical problem like designing a distributed system that could accommodate this type of request.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#208

Post by Dylan16807 »

dragontamer wrote: post #200
tessierashpool wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden's a hero and deserves his place on that memorial. This whole deal with the people putting up a statue of a hero and the government tearing it down? Not what America's supposed to be about. Combine that with the fact that most of the senators who voted for the Patriot Act probably read 1984, and didn't object to the obvious propaganda in the name Patriot Act? Not what America's supposed to be about either.

Snowden is a traitor who happened to bring up an important debate. Probably sold US secrets to China and Russia, while releasing public information so that he can have public support while doing so. He's one of the most successful double-agents in history, with excellent public relations. If a double-agent were to happen again in the future, they'll do what they can to study how Snowden handled his case. No, I don't…

>Here come the down votes. Come on people, lets see your stuff. Truth hurts, doesn't it? Anyone wanna take me on?

Oh stop whining. You can't just accuse someone of being a spy and expect upvotes. Accusations without evidence (hint hint) are not 'truth'.

>how you expect police to actually deal with modern criminals (ie: Swatters)

Well for most crimes the police have traditionally gotten along fine without such vast metadata. For that crime specifically maybe they could use a warrant to the phone company? That seems easy to do without NSA interception. Or the police could keep track of calls to them and not have to do anything more than find the owner of a phone number.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#209

Post by Dylan16807 »

dragontamer wrote: post #206
darkmighty wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good ole' fear, uncertainty and doubt.

What? Swatting is a serious concern. How do you think we should solve the issue? Have the police sit around doing nothing because they don't have the legal tools to look at business metadata? I'm trying to bring up an actual issue here. For a hundred years, the "metadata" standard has applied to mail, telephone records, business records and so forth as "free game" for the Police. What makes the modern era so differen…

1. It was not free game. They could not take copies preemptively.

2. There is vastly more metadata being stored now, and the police don't need access to most of it. We might even be better off with laws against storing it.

Re: Massive, Illicit Bust of Edward Snowden Stuck to a War Monument in Brooklyn

#210

Post by krapp »

im2w1l wrote: post #78
krapp wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of users here who honestly believe that criticism of Snowden is the work of NSA agents and paid shills - so of course they feel their accusations are not at all gratuitously negative, but rather warning people not to be duped by the elaborate and subtle government psy-ops at work. Then again, I can't help but wonder why people bother asking if someone else is a shill, as if they honestly expect an…

I can see it serving to purposes. 1. It lets 3rd parties know you are suspicious. 2. You may get a revealing denial/non-denial. That said though I really dislike the atmosphere created by frequent shill accusations. It seems to rapidly create an echo chamber, where minority opinions are dismissed.

I'm not entirely certain those are valuable goals, though.

'3rd parties' who spend any amount of time here are perfectly aware of that a pro government, anti-Snowden point of view won't be popular. I doubt they would turn tail if someone suspected their presence.

And arguably, false positives and arguments about whether or not someone is a shill work in favor of actual shills. Notice how nobody ever seems to accuse the people making those accusations of having ulterior motives, despite the fact that a false flag strategy of deflecting attention to innocent accounts and derailing threads would be a much smarter strategy on their part than sockpuppet accounts making obviously noticeable propagandic statements.

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