251–260 of 374 posts
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We have the establishment clause to deal with that particular kind of abuse - this is completely nonreligious.
The Establishment Clause is irrelevant to the behavior of private citizens.
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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 a…
If Snowden didn't want to be involved in the NSA, he could have quit.
But like I said, you can't let individuals determine government policy by themselves. Otherwise we'd have no ability to keep information classified.
You can come up with a hypothetical that would justify leaking confidential materials, but I would strongly disagree that Snowden or Manning meet that standard.
If Snowden leaked that the US had an extermination camp, yea I'd support him. But the NSA surveillance programs are nothing like that.
The NSA isn't doing something that completely shocks the worlds conscience. The are following the laws Congress wrote for them. Snowden and other civil libertarians are outraged, but so what. You don't get to declassify stuff because it is against your politics.
The law shouldn't and doesn't give you cover for that sort of political action. How could it? Can a pro-peace activist leak military plans? Can a pro-Palestine activist leak Israeli diplomatic cables?
The standard can't just be "one guys thinks this is immoral."
>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.
Nobody ever has oversight over courts, directly. They are unelected on purpose to protect them from political bias. The People have oversight by writing the laws. If the People don't want FISA courts, ban them.
No warrant proceeding is in open court. You get a magistrate judge to issue you one in private.
As to 95%, that could just as easily be evidence that the DOJ is only requesting warrants in situations that are legitimate. Recall that they are only handing out ~3000 a year (probably many against the same person and many against foreigners). So it isn't like the DOJ is doing this in a dragnet fashion. Also, the FISA court requires substantive revisions of about 25% of those it approves.
The 95% rate is easily just proof that the government isn't abusing the system.
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Hong Kong was a stopover. It was the US gov made him stay there and blocked his travel to anywhere but Russia.
I doubt it. Part of Snowden's treasure trove was him revealing to China about US hacking into Chinese Universities. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-... Snowden explicitly collected how the US was spying on China, went to China, and then "publicly" gave out those details. I think he was expecting the Chinese Government to take him in and protect him after the big reveal. For whatever reason…
Wild speculations aside, you might want to consider the revelations on their own merits rather than a ham-fisted smear against the source. The fact remains that they have been confirmed as true and are therefore not some kind of black propaganda.
More worrying in some ways is that it seems he got everything using wget and further that there was no audit trail to understand what he got. If we believe as we are told that he was a relatively low level external contractor, that means internal security is non-existent and you can guarantee that any other competent agency also has everything (at least confirming part of your China theory above).
It's interesting to see that these people (1) installed the bust in such a way that it can be easily removed without damaging the existing structure and (2) went to great lengths to ensure that the new design is honoring the aesthetics that were already in place. One can argue otherwise, but I think this is a very creative and considerate form of protest which btw is also non-violent.
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.
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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…
Step 1. Police don't kick a person's door down and shoot everyone based upon a single unconfirmed report.
>What makes the modern era so different that Police aren't allowed to look at metadata anymore?
The volume of available metadata.
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Okay, you have a point, but that's about proxies, not normal calls between two people. If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata. >Now if you don't like it, that's fine. But know that you're moving from the status-quo. This is how the government has operated…
> If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata. Did you read the business records provision? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 Read it again. It requires the agencies to check off with a Judge . It already _has_ oversight built into it. If somethi…
In addition, the NSA collects data before asking for permission. And I am doubtful that their oversight is effective.
But I don't want to argue about it for hours. I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
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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.
Shouldn't the American way involve a vote or some other involvement of the democratic process at some point? Is America now all about individuals just doing whatever they want, and if somebody doesn't like it, too bad?
Or when MLK asked all of the south to politely, democratically fix the whole racism thing.
Sometimes protest has to break the rules. Because protest.
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> If the police can't get access to limited phone metadata with oversight, the solution is to give them a way to get limited phone metadata with oversight, not to give them access to all the phone metadata. Did you read the business records provision? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 Read it again. It requires the agencies to check off with a Judge . It already _has_ oversight built into it. If somethi…
From what I have heard, requests even by normal law enforcement are often for unreasonable amounts of data, and data is held onto and used for things other than the case they were requested for without oversight. In addition, the NSA collects data before asking for permission. And I am doubtful that their oversight is effective . But I don't want to argue about it for hours. I just want less metadata to be collected.…
Snowden's first revealed document was the court order where the NSA / FBI was asking for permission from the FISA courts. Now I don't think you've even read Snowden's docs.
> But I don't want to argue about it for hours.
Fair enough. I hope that in our short discussion, you learned how things actually work.
> I just want less metadata to be collected. Because even without the government it gets abused.
You're welcome to have your opinion, but your opinion was tainted by horribly inaccurate facts. I thank you for being a good sport and listening to me through this.
In any case, now you know the specific law that grants the powers. You can now write to a Senator / House Representative and argue specifically against the law on your own. Even if you are on the "other side" of this debate, we Americans are much better off when all sides understand the debate. Our political system also works out well when discussions like what you and I just had happen more often.
Summary: Business Records Provision of the Patriot Act. Know it well, so you can criticize it. Take it down and the metadata of the NSA should fall.
Good luck on the political battlefield. Again, thank you for working with me in this debate.
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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…
I think you are getting downvotes because you are making very controversial claims for which the evidence is very weak. For instance: 1. you say: "most successful double-agents in history" 2. you say: "probably sold US secrets to China and Russia" The NSA's leadership has repeatedly stated that they don't believe Snowden to be a foreign agent[0]. Unless you have more evidence than "based on the countries he fled to a…
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent (also double secret agent) is an employee of a secret intelligence service, whose primary purpose is to spy on a different target organization, but who, in fact, is a member of the target organization.
In other words, if Snowden worked for the NSA and spied on China or Russia, but at the same time was passing information over to China or Russia, he would then be a double agent. That's why it's so fishy when he repeatedly says that he specifically used to work on Chinese targets (for example: [1]), chose to flee the US and go to China, and his 3rd leak in the news was giving a Chinese newspaper a list of all of Chinese computers that had been targeted by the NSA[2].
That doesn't mean he's a double-agent, but it certainly raises some eyebrows...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVwAodrjZMY#t=7m16s
[2] http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1260306/edward-sn...