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Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

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Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#32

Also: What does everybody expect from "the debate"? Is there a way we can get out of this mess? I currently don't see any, besides the one with massive loss. Please, anybody, correct me.

Call me naive, but I would be surprised to learn that these systems are being used to overtly control the electoral process. So the way out of this mess is to talk to your friends and family and make sure they understand the issues and what is at stake, and make sure they do the same. Elect politicians who will do better - Obama promised and didn't deliver, but the issue only seemed to matter to a sliver of what were…

The electoral process has already been subverted through gerrymandering and a two-party system. All the good, honest, hard-working folks get stuck together with the parasites and psychopaths. In either party there is a very wide range of people from salt-of-the-earth types to scum-of-the-earth.

If you don't utilize gerrymandering then you lose, and if you're campaigning in a third-party then you lose.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#33
post #8

Today was disheartening. The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history. The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on w…

Evidence of harm?

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#34
post #22

NSA response to today's revelations: http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/press_room/2013/30_July_2013....

Neat. > Defending Our Nation. Securing Our Future. ...I read that as... Defending Our Own Money. Securing Our Own Power.

NSA surveillance foiled this potential terrorist and he is now incarcerated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najibullah_Zazi

He was going to bomb NYC subways.

Please, if you're going to participate in this so called "surveillance debate", stick to facts and refrain from hyperbole.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#35
post #21
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the one Bradley Manning got.

I know this will probably initiate a huge debate but I'm not personally convinced that what Bradley Manning released and what Snowden released is equivalent in scope. In the case of Snowden the documents seem much more targeted to exposing the problem he's trying to bring light on. While Manning made a much broad stroke release of tons of documents probably not even knowing the content of all those documents which to…

I don't think that's a controversial statement [1]. Now this doesn't per se mean Manning was unethical, but the two cases should be treated very differently.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#36
We are winning but nothing is done and nothing will be done. The whistle blower won't be pardoned, and in a few month nobody will care about it. I so deeply wish that this is going to hurt at some point certain businesses so that some big player might use the little influence they may have to change things.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#37
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me naive, but I would be surprised to learn that these systems are being used to overtly control the electoral process. So the way out of this mess is to talk to your friends and family and make sure they understand the issues and what is at stake, and make sure they do the same. Elect politicians who will do better - Obama promised and didn't deliver, but the issue only seemed to matter to a sliver of what were…

The electoral process has already been subverted through gerrymandering and a two-party system. All the good, honest, hard-working folks get stuck together with the parasites and psychopaths. In either party there is a very wide range of people from salt-of-the-earth types to scum-of-the-earth. If you don't utilize gerrymandering then you lose, and if you're campaigning in a third-party then you lose.

But that's not anything new, and there's not any reason to expect that subversion to prevent fixing these issues, and fundamentally if enough people are convinced, things will change - "enough" is higher than it probably should be, but I'm not convinced it's higher than it would need to be for a successful revolution or the like.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#38

Also: What does everybody expect from "the debate"? Is there a way we can get out of this mess? I currently don't see any, besides the one with massive loss. Please, anybody, correct me.

Call me naive, but I would be surprised to learn that these systems are being used to overtly control the electoral process. So the way out of this mess is to talk to your friends and family and make sure they understand the issues and what is at stake, and make sure they do the same. Elect politicians who will do better - Obama promised and didn't deliver, but the issue only seemed to matter to a sliver of what were…

> Elect politicians who will do better

How?

The 2-party system will simply not allow it. They have the monopoly over the 2 "choices" we're given each time. They will continue to give us "choices" that they can control. Remember how one of the earlier whistle blowers revealed that Obama had been under surveillance earlier? People who are under surveillance are controllable. If they are allowed to access power, it's really not a stretch to think that they just have the function of a puppet. The 2 parties are controlled by the campaign money donors, which are mostly corporate interests. Do you remember how the Republicans ejected Ron Paul from the debates by quickly changing the rules when he got traction? (Not that I would really want Ron Paul for President.) The media are controlled by the same interests, just look at how little coverage you find about the new slides in the mainstream media, today.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#39
post #8

Today was disheartening. The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history. The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on w…

| What does it take to get American's outraged about something?

Americans can get outraged just fine. The problem is that many people just don't understand exactly what's going on. They're either not very technical, and/or don't understand through the context of history, the ramifications of mass state surveillance.

This highlights the problem with our news-as-entertainment media model. It gives us what the country wants (sensationalism, excitement), not what the country needs (facts, context). Until not-for-profit media organizations can give the private news industry (in particular: CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS) some legitimate competition, we'll be stuck in this cycle.

Re: Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat. > Defending Our Nation. Securing Our Future. ...I read that as... Defending Our Own Money. Securing Our Own Power.

NSA surveillance foiled this potential terrorist and he is now incarcerated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najibullah_Zazi He was going to bomb NYC subways. Please, if you're going to participate in this so called "surveillance debate", stick to facts and refrain from hyperbole.

That's a good thing. But still, they let the other ones go: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23493323

Is that part of the old "keeping the threat alive" strategy?

(Considering the eternity it took them to find OBL. And the one hiccup during the hunt when Bush called the team back, when in reality they were pretty close, as I remember reading.)

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