161–170 of 393 posts
Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html
This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed. `Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws prote…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to cong…
You won't get any argument from me. I agree. And even in agreement, I still say that there's a much larger grey area in Snowden's case. We can and should discuss whether his actions were justified. I think they are. But I can at least appreciate that people who disagree have legitimate reasons to see it otherwise. Klein's case didn't come with all that other baggage.
Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if a sufficiently capable entity is interested in snooping on an individual like this, mimicking a sewer tv inspection van is a trivial endeavour. You don’t know at all what that van was doing.
Yes we do. It was a sewer inspection van. If it was the NSA, their van wouldn't look so goofy that people took one look at the photo and assumed it had to be an NSA van, which is what happened here. This is a bad movie plot trope: the bad guys can't simultaneously be omniscient and so dumb they're trivially outed like this, just like the real supervillain isn't going to monologue while you free yourself from the chai…
I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed. I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk. You should all be sup…
The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law. It makes no sense for the requirements to get a wiretap to be so stringent but the requirements to monitor someone's internet traffic to be nonexistent, just because it's laundered through "intelligence gathering" and you argue it's therefore not "law enforcement."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it was a sewer inspection van. Having said that, reading comments like this, I sometimes think it would actually be great cover. Because you have respected people, like yourself, unequivocally stating that it couldn't possibly be an NSA van. But, to say it again, I agree that I don't think the NSA would need to do this. My above line of reasoning certainly doesn't hold too much water under serious scrutiny.
A significant multiplier of my certainty here comes from the fact that I was responding to a thread full of people who seemed certain that no sewer inspection van could look like that, which to me says "this van is not inconspicuous", which defeats the whole purpose of having a cover-story van. You can second-guess that, but I think past this point, we're reenacting the duel between Vizzini and Westley.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You won't get any argument from me. I agree. And even in agreement, I still say that there's a much larger grey area in Snowden's case. We can and should discuss whether his actions were justified. I think they are. But I can at least appreciate that people who disagree have legitimate reasons to see it otherwise. Klein's case didn't come with all that other baggage.
The moment which struck me the most from all the recent confirmation hearings was the parade of senator after senator asking Tulsi Gabbard if Edward Snowden was a traitor. It was like the #1 priority for them that people believe that, and they would skip any relevant questions about the job only to pursue that one topic over and over.
Underrated in my opinion.
Has Gene Hackman (also topical, which is why I am rewatching) and Will Smith.