Snowden Gave 15,000 Documents to Glenn Greenwald; Obama Cancels Russia Summit 531
sl4shd0rk writes "The American journalist Glenn Greewald, who published much of the initial info on illegal NSA programs, plans to release more revelations on the NSA spying machine in 10 days. 'The articles we have published so far are a very small part of the revelations that ought to be published,' Greenwald said on Tuesday. Greenwald further elaborated on public posturing which many nations are currently taking: 'The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the U.S. government. All governments are doing this, even in Europe.'"
The U.S. decided to pull out of a summit with Russia next month, citing the decision to grant Snowden asylum as a factor: "However, given our lack of progress on issues such as missile defense and arms control, trade and commercial relations, global security issues, and human rights and civil society in the last twelve months, we have informed the Russian Government that we believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda. Russia's disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship. Our cooperation on these issues remains a priority for the United States, so on Friday, August 9, Secretaries Hagel and Kerry will meet with their Russian counterparts in a 2+2 format in Washington to discuss how we can best make progress moving forward on the full range of issues in our bilateral relationship."
Why are they putting a number on the amount of doc (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand why that information would ever be released. Are they trying to provoke the US government? I think so.
Assange vs Mannings vs Snowden vs Greenwald (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see how both Mannings and Snowden have broken the law. If you work in intelligence or in the army you cannot expect to get away with that. You need to be a journalist I guess. What are the chances for Snowden to avoid going to prison if he returns home? Zero. Therefore it is quite clear Snowden will try to avoid it, no matter how ''correct' or 'righteous' he may be.
Should the journalist Greenwald publish what they have? Well, isn't it his job to do so?
Is Assange a journalist? Hmmm. In a way, I guess. At least a hard-to-tell-kind-of-guy with a penchant for reluctant women yet locked up in an Ecuadorian dump.
Translation ... (Score:5, Interesting)
He of the "Nobel Peace Prize for nothing more than saying he'd be interested in talking" is taking his ball and going home until the US gets their way.
I'm not saying Russia isn't moving a little backwards over the last bunch of years, but let's not pretend that the US wouldn't grant asylum to someone leaving Russia under similar circumstances and call it defending freedom and liberty.
I view this as a diplomatic temper tantrum. 'Shared Agenda' in modern US diplomatic speak is code for "what we want".
I think you might see more and more countries deciding they are tired of being strong-armed into complying with what the US wants. Especially with the revelations of just exactly the scope of their spying and other activities.
This is like the guy you discovered screwing your wife cancelling your dinner invitation because you hurt his feelings when you kicked him out of your house -- there's a lot of "woe is us", but don't keep playing that victim card too much.
That explains a lot (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Bilateral relationship" (Score:2, Interesting)
The irony is Obama isn't getting what he wants, either. Obama's personal agenda is to eliminate all nukes worldwide and disarming Russia would help further that plan. OTOH, he also has said that he is willing to eliminate all nukes in the US even if other countries don't (the most asinine thing I've heard from him... I can just imagine in a Russian voice "give us all your food or we drop nukes").
Re:Why are they putting a number on the amount of (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a bit more than 4 years. Perhaps you'd like to read up about it [wikipedia.org]. There was also a good documentary series on Netflix I watched a while back, but I can't remember what it was called. It was mostly a live action re-enactment with narration, more a miniseries than a documentary really. Not much rah rah America but more historically accurate including even a sympathetic look at Benedict Arnold and his reasons for defecting. About 8 hour-long episodes iirc covering the period of time from shortly after the French and Indian War through the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Then there was the whole War of 1812 mess.
Moral of the story: revolution can happen, not everyone will support you, your reasons may not even be as righteous as you think they are, and it will be long, drawn out, and very bloody, and you'll probably lose unless an ally like late 18th century France sympathizes with you.
Re:"Bilateral relationship" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Bilateral relationship" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Small and vengeful and afraid (Score:3, Interesting)
You're reading these actions in light of your own narrative of the government as being wrong.
The government is wrong. But that means squat in a 'might makes right' world. I choose not to curry favor with that authority. You choose as you see fit.
Re:America needs to own up to its mistakes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Great idea but it's not gonna happen.
The US won't admit it even made a mistake. The politicians (both R and D) are doubling down on the "national security" threat and they see nothing wrong with violating the 4th amendment. The Constitution is trash to them.
At best, we may get some "reassurances" that they won't look at our data (unless we have something to hide).
We do have to thank Snowden for exposing this surveillance... now we all know just where we stand (and hopefully will take personal measures to guard our privacy.)
The US has been a superpower-bully for many years and will hang on to that role to the end.
Re:No, it won't be huge (Score:5, Interesting)
While spying on the American population seems to not make anybody angry enough, cutting off all large foreign customers for the computer industry would make a splash.
Re:Slashdot naivete (Score:4, Interesting)
Who here is stating a belief that the U.S. will stop all spying?
The goal here is to demand some accountability.... To say, "Look.... We know you have spy agencies, like all nation do. And while we might not care for spying on the whole, it's an unfortunate necessity to have our own organization to counter what the rest of the world still wants to do to us. BUT, there's NO excuse for putting resources and taxpayer dollars into warrantless spying on our own citizens, on our own soil!"
It appears to me that a good bit of what's happening now is Federal govt. paying private contractors to build some of these spying tools and to actually DO the spying for them. That way, government is able to claim it is following the Constitution and doing nothing wrong. (They're simply getting information handed over to them by a private party.) Then, govt. simply invests in the computer power to process and save all of this information that was "given" to them.
Re:Why are they putting a number on the amount of (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're smart they'll break up the data from least to most damaging and release it in that order...the more the US resists decency, the worse their reputation will get until the Americans (or hell, other countries) get together to kick some ass.
That's a dangerous strategy, though. It may end up just inducing a tolerance in the people if the damage is ramped up slowly like that. Already, we're seeing signs of that with the DEA's admission that systematic perjury and the outright fabrication of evidence is "a bedrock concept" in their cases. The public's response to that has been pretty mild and the whole thing seems to have blown over already. I'm not sure exactly what would be shocking enough to provoke a response from the public at this point.