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U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#51

Post by shawnz »

Applejinx wrote: post #49
koheripbal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia was probably his only choice. Every other country would have extradited him. I doubt he is happy with having to live in Russia - the main benefactor of his leaks. It's impossible to imagine that he is able to reconcile his hatred of US spying with the malicious actions of the government he now relies on for protection. ...and that's the ultimate crux of this whole thing. When you go up against the US governmen…

Out of the frying pan into the fire… but I think human nature suggests that he is making himself happy with it. He's dependent on being fine with everything about Russia, because it's that or be killed in one place or the other: last thing he could afford to do is antagonize Putin, he pretty much has to become 'All Russia, all the time' and that's a powerful motivator to persuade himself that now he is in the GOOD pl…

Then why didn't he just make himself happy with the NSA?

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#52

Post by ykevinator »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

That's precisely what a pardon is for. It's for exceptions.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#53

Post by Applejinx »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #15
mlang23 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now would be about the best time for him to make that move. With elections upcoming and all that.

Trump's pardoning of Snowden would lose more presidential election support than it would win. Sure, there are plenty of people who would support the decision to pardon Snowden, but I can't see them being the type of people to vote for Trump based on that. Existing Trump supporters, on the other hand, I could see "punishing" Trump for his weakness in pardoning a "traitor who fled to Russia".

No, they like Russia, and would be happy to consider Snowden's previous masters 'the Deep State'. The trouble there is that it only furthers a status where 'everything that is not literally Trump is the Deep State and must be destroyed'.

It's seriously weird to have a President and a large faction of Americans actively working to fight America as it currently stands. I'm sympathetic to ideas of reform, but they're not talking about reform, they're talking in terms like rounding up all those people and putting 'em in camps as unredeemable criminals/enemies. Nobody going on about 'Deep State' or 'Pizzagate' etc. are talking about reforms, they are behaving like it's an occupying army of absolute monsters that could never possibly be reformed or improved.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#55

Post by tssva »

marvy wrote: post #43
malwarebytess wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to the supreme court which will overturn I guarantee it.

Why so sure? Are you saying this program probably was legal after all and this court made a mistake?

Since this court ruled that another court was incorrect when ruling that the program was legal and allowed it to proceed it is not outside the realm of possibility that another court would find this one was incorrect. I certainly wouldn't say it is anywhere near guaranteed though.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#56

Post by thechao »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

Put me in his jury and I’ll happily give the US govt a lesson in the powers of jury nullification.

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#57

Post by alilsumpinditto »

raxxorrax wrote: post #41
koheripbal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia was probably his only choice. Every other country would have extradited him. I doubt he is happy with having to live in Russia - the main benefactor of his leaks. It's impossible to imagine that he is able to reconcile his hatred of US spying with the malicious actions of the government he now relies on for protection. ...and that's the ultimate crux of this whole thing. When you go up against the US governmen…

I do think he asked himself that question. edit: Saying Russia is the main benefactor of the leaks sounds like evidence of long lost cold war thinking to be honest. Perhaps it would also be to the benefit of the targets of surveillance? Because if you wouldn't want to hand Russia a win, not subjecting the population to surveillance would have been quite the strategy in this case.

Would just like to point out, Putin was on record in an interview talking about Snowden, and was pretty open about how these programs make sense from an intelligence point of view, and pretty much said that Russia is doing the same thing. He wasn't pretending like they're not doing the exact same thing. I believe it's somewhat of a don't hate the player, hate the game from the perspective of the CIA/KGB/what have you.

Why can't we just be open about our smart TVs listening to us?

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#58

Post by jacobush »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #37
hablameiato wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump's base is very pro-military and a lot of them believe that Snowden put military lives at risk (and also confuse him with Chelsea Manning / Julian Assange). So I don't see how that could ever happen.

That might prevent it from happening before the election, but win or lose he's still President between November and January and win or lose this is his last election.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#59

Post by [deleted] »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #30
parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

What you're saying is that the existing whistleblower protections are inadequate: > 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security clearance. Requirement of perfection and a superhuman level of ability to sift through more information than any individual could before shar…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. court: Mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal

#60

Post by arghwhat »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #30
parsimo2010 wrote: post #22

Since there are multiple comments about how the US government must/should pardon Snowden now, I'd like to make a top level comment to clarify some things about how this does not obligate the government to change his status. 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security c…

What you're saying is that the existing whistleblower protections are inadequate: > 1. The court only found that a single program exposed by Snowden was illegal. Snowden released a bunch of other information that was a violation of the NDA he signed when he was given a security clearance. Requirement of perfection and a superhuman level of ability to sift through more information than any individual could before shar…

Whistleblower protection are bit tricky to define.

When is something whistleblowing, when is it a leak, when is it malicious, and when is it espionage? It's easy to allow leaks about illegal acts, but if you start allowing leaks about secret but legal acts too, then things get blurry.

I personally don't think a government, ultimately a servant of the people, should be allowed to keep secrets from the people, but that's currently legal for e.g. military reasons, and thus needs to be considered.

Imagine for a second a parallel universe where the government wasn't evil, and while some of the released documents was showing illegal activity, others did not and in fact contained secret information about national security matters where releasing the information undermines the work (e.g. Russia/China/... monitoring, intercept measures, etc.).

> So a whistleblower has to spend how many years in exile before they get their vindication?

The legal system would be fundamentally broken if you could evade judgement by going into hiding, regardless of reason.

Snowden should have been pardoned a long time ago, but his time in hiding is and should be inconsequential from a legal standpoint until laws are changed and pardons are made. It's up to the citizens of the U.S. to fix their country and welcome him home.

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