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Pardon Snowden

pardonsnowden.org

611–620 of 814 posts

Re: Pardon Snowden

#611

Who are these guys? Registrar is in Panama. The site says "partnership with ACLU and Amnesty International", but I cannot find any links from those sites to pardonsnowden.org Both ACLU and AI have their own petition forms with different letters. https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/take-action/edward-s... https://action.aclu.org/secure/grant_snowden_immunity Wondering if ACLU and AI are a little late to confirm, o…

ACLU blog links to it: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/obama-should-pardon-e...

Also, the FAQ page https://www.pardonsnowden.org/faq mentions, "We've partnered with the nonprofit Center For International Policy (CIP) so that we can offer tax deductibility to donors. Your donation goes to the CIP, they enable tax deductibility, and it is then transferred to us to be used for the campaign."

Re: Pardon Snowden

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Hume came to this conclusion in OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT (in the 1st paragraph). people of the United States are heavily controlled by the elite is too simplistic and some "elites" make the world better.

Isn't "making the world better" a value judgment that can be shaped by your peers and by your environment, and also not mutually exclusive with making the world worse? Thus, if an elite makes the world worse in my opinion by reducing diversity of competing opinions in mass media, they could use that platform to propagandize and publicize any philanthropic efforts they may also involve themselves with, such that your…

An example from the set of making the world better would be Bill Gates' foundation which is helping eradicate polio [0]. If that is not a good thing I give up.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080414095646/http://www.polioe...

Re: Pardon Snowden

#613
post #267

I'm still genuinely curious about what the intelligence community thinks of him, if it's bad, what are the arguments against him. I've heard Mike Baker on the Joe Rogan experience say that he did not trust Snowden one bit. In the intelligence world, it's common to be very cautions about leaks since foreign actors like Russia can really benefit politically from such scandal. It can be difficult to really know all the…

From what I've gathered, the intelligence community thinks bad things about him; their view is "fix it from the inside." Public leaks can be incredibly damaging to our operational advantages against various adversaries, and it's often non-obvious which data will be most helpful to them. The main reason I stand behind him is the matter of the director of the NSA lying to congress under oath. We don't even have the ill…

That's certainly not William Binney's view, but then, as a leaker himself, I suppose he's no longer part of the "intelligence community" as he reached similar conclusions as Snowden did.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#614
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things perhaps in capital driven liberal countries it's called Credit Ratings - rather than your worth being judged through your loyalty, it's judged through your willingness to spend and accrue debt. not trying to sound bleak and cynical, but just a thought.

why so tentative? i pay my limited bills on time, i have taken on debt twice and paid it off as soon as possible, living basically within my means, and because of this my credit score is terrible. i can't get a phone contract, a mortgage is out of the question. i automatically fall to the bottom of the list when trying to rent an apartment. don't know what went on at the places i applied to for employment that reques…

Have you got any credit cards? Get one. Before trying the crappy "secured" cards, try a Discover, they seem lenient if you don't have cards yet. Stuff it in a drawer, add something small to it, such as Netflix, setup autopay, forget about it.

Your credit score will slowly increase. And at no cost to you (other than the time to setup this, which can be minimal if you can get approvals online).

You can (and should) live within your means and that's fine. What creditors want to see is that you have access to credit and you use it responsibly (eg, paying on time). You don't actually need to use any of your available credit.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#615

You can't pardon someone who hasn't been convicted of anything, or even tried. Why are so many hackers unwilling to learn the basics of civics? The governmental system we have sucks, but if you're going to petition for people to act within that framework then the least you could do is develop a basic working knowledge of it first. It is neither legally possible nor politically feasible for President Obama to pardon S…

> Why are so many hackers unwilling to learn the basics of civics?

ahem

The two probably-most-famous pardons in American history - Ford's pardon of Nixon and Carter's pardon of draft dodgers - affected unindicted individuals (Carter's included people who had been convicted, but also included plenty of individuals where no action had been taken). And those are not the only two examples.

It is legally possible for President Obama to pardon Snowden. You are simply factually incorrect as it comes to American governance.

Many of us did pay attention in school (and many of us researched carefully afterwards).

Re: Pardon Snowden

#616
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the 3 possibilities for granting pardon (Obama, Clinton and Trump), the only real chance for Snowden is Obama.

> Of the 3 possibilities for granting pardon (Obama, Clinton and Trump), the only real chance for Snowden is Obama. Yep. I'd put it as zero with Clinton, non-zero but statistically insignificant with Trump, and 25% with Obama.

The cynic in me is happy Snowden is in Russia and not in Yemen, Obama would probably just sanction a drone strike and take him out otherwise. Fortunately for Snowden, not all collateral damage is create (with) equal (access to a nuclear arsenal).

Re: Pardon Snowden

#617
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want freedom from government interference in your life, Somalia is still a pretty good bet. And no, I am not being facetious. People like to think of freedom as a scalar, but it's actually a vector with complex interactions among its various dimensions, one of which is the government. That said, I am absolutely signing the petition. Ed Snowden put a lot more on the line by blowing the whistle than I am by sign…

Erm no. In Somalia you do have a lot of government interference - you just have many smaller (wannebe) ones there, fighting against each other for power, vs. one big.

That's exactly the scenario that would happen in a libertopia most libertarians describe - minimal government.

It's an incentive for other actors to try to imitate the role of government through other means.

Actually, not just Somalia - Africa is ripe with examples of these.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#618

Pardoning Snowden implies he did something wrong. apologizetosnowden.org

Pardoning Snowden implies he did something in violation of US law. If a pardon is a moral judgement at all, it is a judgement that what was done was not wrong.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#619

The thing I hate about all petition sites is that they ask for my personal information for... what purpose exactly? They don't even seem to try to verify anything. They just look like scams to me, which is a shame because I really think they shouldn't be...

Petitions cannot/should not be anonymous. The fact that your name and address is known to the entity receiving the petition shows that you really mean it. Also, for some entities it might be illegal to be moved by petitions signed by non-citizen. Unfortunately, those petitions systems only ask for your address, not for your citizenship. But we can assume citizenship from the address for the first order.

I know. Notice my complaint was about the lack of verification or other genuine need of the information. Not about the request for personal information itself. If they made legitimate use of it (and ONLY legitimate use), I would understand. However, the ones I have tried do not seem to verify anything, and instead use your contact info as a way to send you campaign materials and advertise to you in the future. That's the part that rubs me the wrong way - it feels like a scam designed to get your personal information. And in this age of identity theft, I really have little incentive to risk it.

Re: Pardon Snowden

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carelessness should have nothing to do with it. It's even more urgent to pardon her because she is already incarcerated.

Carelessness matters a great deal! The risks/damage to the security of the country are tied to the care of what and to whom things are revealed. Its the same reason Hillary should be tried, she was ignorant and careless w/ secure information.

Would you like to be specific about the damage?
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