I'm just hoping that Greenwald doesn't "get in a car crash."
Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
71–80 of 114 posts
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#72So which is it? Is he "welcoming a debate over spying on Americans" or is he prosecuting the whistleblowers (again) and requesting state privileges to protect themselves against further scrutiny? I don't think the two can really co-exist. And if all of this was "already known" what's there to prosecute then? The amount of double-speak from the Obama administration astonishes me.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that he does the direct opposite of whatever he promises. He promised to end all this when he was elected, yet expanded on what Bush had started.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#73Out of curiosity, has anyone's opinion of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange or Wikileaks changed over the last few days? From the previous times the topic has come up, my impression is that this community is more or less whether they're doing good work or not.
@wnight: You have been hellbanned for several days.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#74"The law enforcement and security officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said the agencies that normally conduct such investigations, including the FBI and Justice Department, were expecting a probe into the leaks to a British and an American newspaper." So basically the fact the NSA leaker was going to be prosecuted was leaked, how can the the security officials who leaked this piece of information no…
The government (especially prosecutors/police) routinely leak information to serve their own ends.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#75This was not a leak. It was a dare.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#761. A small group of people violate the privacy of people everywhere around the world.
2. Another, even smaller group of people violate the privacy of the above group.
3. The first group says, "Hey, trust us. It's for your own good", and then promptly hunts down the second group for being dirty-stinking-traitor-terrorist criminals.
4. Profit?
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Whistleblowers are needed for a healthy democracy, unless we have a pretend-democracy at this point, too. How do you uncover dirt on the government if every single act of whistleblowing and investigative journalism on the government is being prosecuted? Not only does that create a very chilling effect, but it also takes out everyone who did it, "before they cause too…
> So the whistleblower law is just a "pretend-law"? Not sure why you used the phrase 'pretend-law' in scare quotes, since the post you responded to said no such thing. Either way, there isn't really such a thing as the whistleblower law (IANAL). Aside from the first amendment, the closest thing I could find was the Whistleblower Protection Act [1]. It's a young law by any standard (1989), so you'd be hard pressed to…
I found this which explains a variety of protections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_protection_in_Uni...
Additionally it would be interesting if the leakers leaked more to get a softer punishment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_state%27s_evidence
Also, I have to add, I'm a little ashamed of my country today. But I feel vindicated as a programmer that we were right! We knew it all along. Things like this have been reported for years. But no one cared. Finally this is plastered on every major publication and people no longer think it's some conspiracy theory or exaggeration of normal security measures. So now's the real test. What do we do? How do we fix this? Our innate liberties have been trampled and threatened. Have some self-respect and speak your mind at work, people.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well the US definitely "has their cake and eats it too" on your example. We will oftentimes (incl. for alleged sex offenders) publicly mention the name of a suspect, mug shot, general details, etc. even while the case is ongoing. In fact I'm convinced that's the only reason Americans know about "innocent until proven guilty", to remind them that the suspect hasn't been convicted yet . But here we go, perhaps the whis…
Discretion is good in the short term and bad in the long term. It's something that ideally would almost never be needed.
Ideally we wouldn't need crypto, locks, weapons, or legally-binding contracts either though. :-/
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US was never a beacon of democracy. That's not a desirable goal. It was a Constitutional Republic.
This semantic argument is completely tiresome. There's no contradiction between being a democracy and being a republic. The US is a democratic republic. Non-democratic republics include ancient Rome and 18th-century America (where slaves couldn't vote). Democratic non-republics include the UK, Canada, and Holland (which are monarchies). "Republic" doesn't actually mean anything aside from "not a monarchy". When the f…
There is no contradiction between being a democracy and being a republic however, as you add "constitutional" in front of "republic" it becomes a constitutional republic, which is not a democracy.
Re: Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point of classified information if you don't punish those that leak it? Don't get me wrong, the treatment of Bradley Manning is absurd, and there shouldn't be any sort of prosecution of the journalists involved (which has been happening recently), so it's fair to complain that they are coming down too hard on whistle-blowers. However, you have to expect some sort of investigation into who did the original…
The process of classifying material is uncontroversial because in general parlance, we assume that material is specific intelligence of people, place, and times. The extension of that definition to include classified courts with classified rulings used as the legal basis for programs like this... is not the generally accepted one.
I don't know why you'd assume it's specific intel of that. Classified info is literally anything that would be a risk to national security if released in an uncontrolled fashion. The 3 different tiers of U.S. classification are literally just the 3 different levels of damage that would accrue to U.S. national security, nothing more.
So in the case of programs like this, if the hypothetical terr'ists know about it, that lets them know services to avoid, or communications methods to avoid, etc., which might enable them to form networks that the NSA would otherwise have been able to unravel before their next terrorist attack.
So it's not completely inconceivable that there's a valid reason to apply classification standards.
I happen to think that the importance of transparency is such that we need to at least have that public discussion about what types of records NSA would be storing, searching, and examining.
But at the same time the NSA has literally been doing this for decades, Congress has had classified hearings for longer, and the Republic has refused to fall. I don't know for sure about classified courts, but neither would that surprise me too much.