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Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

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Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#261

Post by whythre »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #258
roenxi wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mr. Putin framed his decision to invade Ukraine as a last-ditch effort to halt the West’s hostile expansion ever closer to Russia’s borders. ~ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/putin-ukrain... > It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response…

He is completely correct. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia repeatedly tried to join NATO. It was rebuffed by the US - why? Instead of forging a new alliance, the west preferred to uphold old friend-enemy distinctions, and instead moved the NATO ever closer to Russia‘s border, ignoring its security needs and breaking old promises (as evidenced by the embassy cable leaks). Then, Ukraine shelled the Russian civili…

‘Russia was provoked into this war because of things that happened 30 years ago’ is such bullshit apologia.

NATO was a defensive pact against Russia- and just because the Soviet Union collapsed does not mean Russia is somehow now moral or benign. They are run by brital KGB thug who faked his country’s 9/11 so they could build some patriotic solidarity killing Chechnyans.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#262

Post by heywhatupboys »

brabel wrote: post #259
throwaway892238 wrote: post #176

Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I didn't have to sign an NDA to hear , scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn't realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though. I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks i…

Transparency is the key. Governments love secrecy because that allows them to do whatever nasty stuff they want while pretending to be righteous at the surface. Just look at past secrets that have been disclosed recently and think: should those things really be secret? I say absolutely no. The mentality of keeping things secret to hide your real intentions, or to not upset people too much (or they will panic!), or to…

See also this columnist's take on secrets:

"Biden’s classified leak isn’t the problem. The government shouldn’t have secrets in the first place."

https://cinchnews.com/2023/01/26/bidens-classified-leak-isnt...

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#263

Post by haakon »

selimthegrim wrote: post #238
FormerBandmate wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was flying to Ecuador and his passport was revoked when he was in Russia. If you speak out against the war in Ukraine in Russia you get shot, and he has a wife and kids now. He's done his part imo

You go to jail. Putin isn't Stalin. But Snowden isn't a Russia citizen, so the US could shoot him if rendered, now that Russia withdrew from the ECHR.

Snowden became a Russian citizen last September: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63036991

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#265

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

whythre wrote: post #261
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is completely correct. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia repeatedly tried to join NATO. It was rebuffed by the US - why? Instead of forging a new alliance, the west preferred to uphold old friend-enemy distinctions, and instead moved the NATO ever closer to Russia‘s border, ignoring its security needs and breaking old promises (as evidenced by the embassy cable leaks). Then, Ukraine shelled the Russian civili…

‘Russia was provoked into this war because of things that happened 30 years ago’ is such bullshit apologia. NATO was a defensive pact against Russia- and just because the Soviet Union collapsed does not mean Russia is somehow now moral or benign. They are run by brital KGB thug who faked his country’s 9/11 so they could build some patriotic solidarity killing Chechnyans.

That makes sense, you convinced me. To quote the righteous and merciful western leadership:

“…and the Russians are dying. That’s the best money we’ve ever spent.” — Lindsey Graham.

https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1662630291893256193

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#266

Post by saiya-jin »

phs318u wrote: post #242
still_grokking wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even a lie. It's just not democracy. The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that. "It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody. I'm not saying that everything would be…

Pure democracy as you describe it, even if technically feasible, would still result in tyrannies and terrible outcomes. The biggest problem isn't lack of influence on the laws, it's lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. And that problem exists whether it's x number of people influencing the outcome, or 1,000,000x. Every negative influence that politicians are open to, the masses are also open to (thou…

There is at least 1 place where it works in some extent for 800 years - Switzerland. Public votes few times every year on basically anything enough people decide to vote on (100k signatures needed in 8m population and you have a public vote). You want to ban mosques, or join Nato or have 6 weeks of paid vacation? Have a say. Also weak central government, and strong cantonal ones with their own rules and laws. THAT is true freedom in the hands of people, to decide on your lives, to have freedom to improve it or mess it up.

Every effin' politician knows it, yet they conveniently ignore it, or even outright attack it when they are spewing words like freedom and democracy. It doesnt matter if EU or US or any other place.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#267

Post by still_grokking »

account-5 wrote: post #256
still_grokking wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just made an anti-argument to your own claim. As people are people, real democracy would not be worse than the status quo as we're already ruled by people with lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. But you can't for example corrupt the majority of all people. So real democracy would be at least in this point better. By no means worse, but better in some regards is a clear win imho! > lack of kn…

I'd love to agree with you but people in general are easily manipulated on mass. Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything, making them even easily to manipulate. I'll include myself in this. For real democracy to work it's more than giving all people the right to vote on all things. They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that tho…

> I'd love to agree with you but people in general are easily manipulated on mass.

It's even easier with single persons or small groups… Just given them a little bit money or alternatively aim with a gun at them or someone they love. This method wouldn't scale to a whole society.

> Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything […]

> They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that those people can fully understand.

And you really think the "decision makers" are anyhow better informed, smarter, more altruistic and don't just think about their own well being most of the time? That's a very naïve stand, to be honest.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#268

Post by 0110101001 »

opportune wrote: post #187
nyokodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he was a Russian asset from the beginning I didn’t say he was a Russian asset from the beginning. I just said he was probably a traitor from the beginning. That may be quite complicated but he ended up a Russian asset.

What’s the reasoning then? As far as I can tell he thought he was doing the right thing at the time, even if you might think he was naive or misguided. Surely the support for his actions indicates to you there are people out there who would have done what he did if they were in his position no? I guess, to me being a traitor has connotations of deliberate intent to do harm due to some kind of external loyalty. While…

It seems either like his goal was treason, and going public was a bargaining chip to avoid being extrajudicially disappeared somewhere or whistleblowing was his goal and doing it in an adversarial country with loads of confidential documents that have nothing to do with any possible NSA wrongdoing was a bargaining chip to avoid US prosecution.

The latter seems far more likely to me as an observer, but in either case, both public revealation AND harm to the US were on the table.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#269

Post by herbst »

saiya-jin wrote: post #266
phs318u wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure democracy as you describe it, even if technically feasible, would still result in tyrannies and terrible outcomes. The biggest problem isn't lack of influence on the laws, it's lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy. And that problem exists whether it's x number of people influencing the outcome, or 1,000,000x. Every negative influence that politicians are open to, the masses are also open to (thou…

There is at least 1 place where it works in some extent for 800 years - Switzerland. Public votes few times every year on basically anything enough people decide to vote on (100k signatures needed in 8m population and you have a public vote). You want to ban mosques, or join Nato or have 6 weeks of paid vacation? Have a say. Also weak central government, and strong cantonal ones with their own rules and laws. THAT is…

This so much. It works for us and there is no reason it wouldn't work for others.

Politicians here have a completely different role in society. They ain't hero's, they ain't badman's the are just smart people doing their democratic jobs.

And society talks about concrete topics and not politicians.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#270

Post by wrp »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #236
wrp wrote: post #229

I didn't follow the Snowden story because I don't have the background to evaluate the claims, but there is something I recall that hasn't been discussed yet. Snowden was apparently fairly active as a protester against government surveillance before he got his gig as an NSA contractor. It seems he originally pursued the job with the intention of finding information to leak. If this is true, then a large part of the st…

>Snowden was apparently fairly active as a protester against government surveillance before he got his gig as an NSA contractor. This is a bastardized version of events. Snowden had a number of jobs that required high level clearance from 2006-2013. He supposedly took the final Booz Allen Hamilton job because it had a great deal of access to data, but he had long since passed the security checks necessary to get the…

So, was Snowden a visibly active protester against government surveillance before getting the job? If so, did the government fail to notice or did they notice and not care? How extreme should such activity be before it become a "real reason for Snowden to fail the security checks"?
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