Snowden Seeks International Help Against US Espionage Charges 351
An anonymous reader writes "Edward Snowden is calling for international help to persuade the U.S. to drop its espionage charges against him. Snowden said he would like to testify before the U.S. Congress about National Security Agency surveillance and may be willing to help German officials investigate alleged U.S. spying in Germany. Snowden is quoted as saying that the U.S. government 'continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense.' He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.'"
Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Funny)
He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior."
Has he even read the stuff he leaked?
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This has worked out with the US ignoring the UN/working around them whenever enough member states disagree with them, and going through the UN when it is politically expedient and success is likely.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Maybe he should go work for the UN. They've been trying to get the US government to abandon various forms of harmful behavior for a while. "
The UN only wants to trade what it sees as bad U.S. behavior by its own brand of bad behavior.
Remember that not all members of the U.N. are equal. It was created that way.
While I deplore the actions of my government, and wish it would stop the foolish and damaging things it has been doing, I have reservations because (A) I don't think it will happen unless someone convinces Obama that he's not a king, and (B) I would be happy -- ecstatic even -- if the UN disappeared tomorrow.
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He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior."
Has he even read the stuff he leaked?
Check with the Russian help desk [go.com] for an interview.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
He continues, 'I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior."
Has he even read the stuff he leaked?
Probably. And he lived in the country from which he leaked it. I think his attitude is actually quite heartening. I wonder if, like me, when he thinks of the United States he thinks not only of the abstract bureaucratic entity and its questionable activities, but that he thinks of the actual people that entity consists of and is made by. You know; his friends, family, neighbors, shopkeepers, etc. He probably thinks that most people would drop these charges and move on, and he may be right. But entities, yes, they don't drop charges. I'm not trying to oppose your point, but I think his optimism is reasonably warranted.
If your tire gets a leak, you shouldn't waste time or energy on punishing the nail - you should fix the tire and drive more carefully and maybe avoid that road you had just gone down.
The analogy can go further, but that's as far down that road as I'm prepared to go.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that there are a significant amount of people in the U.S> who believe that some of the things Snowden leaked are harmful to the US.
For example, he leaked that the U.S> was spying on specific Chinese Universities, to determine how they were hacking into our military and industrial computers. Now those universities know how to be more careful. It is unlikely they will stop trying to hack into us.
The problem Snowden has is that even if he "started a conversation" about U.S. intelligence, he still leaked a number of things that could easily be found to be harmful to the U.S. Even if 98% of the things he leaked were good things for the world to know, he will ALWAYS be at risk of being charged for the 2% of the things he leaked that are genuinely bad for the world to know.
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I'm always told "If I have nothing to hide...."
So can I just tell the police that the things I do are considered "Personal Security" and if they discover any illegal thing I'm doing, I can just tell them that they are traitors and have leaked harmful material regarding my Personal Security.
It's me breaking the law that is wrong.... It's the police finding out!
Gotta put more laws in place to make it wrong for them to find out about all these illegal things I do.... Yeah, that's it!
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Start with the revelation that we spy on allies. That shouldn't be a revelation to anyone, and most of them probably knew exactly what was going on. So a lot of this European and Latin American angst is probably cynical pols playing for the cameras.
But not all of them knew everything, which means that programs that are legal and strengthen the US will have to end due to his actions.
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The problem Snowden faces is that while a lot of people want people like Snowden when he's on their side, they go completely berserk when people like Snowden are not. That's why even as many countries rail against the conduct Snowden disclosed, most are very uncomfortable about unambiguously condoning his behavior directly. If a Snowden decided to leak the identities of Anonymous participants for what they perceived as the greater good for example - something which isn't even illegal - I doubt they would get the same deference afforded to Snowden.
France is the obvious example. They clearly want to get some mileage out of protesting some of his allegations, but OTOH when they thought he was on Morales' plane they not only refused to let Morales enter the country they convinced Spain, Portugal and Italy to follow suit.
Snowden will live out his days in Russia, saying exactly what Putin allows him to say. Obama won't make a big deal about getting him out of Russia, because an actual trial would be inconvenient and lead to lots more Americans talking abo
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It is human nature to punish the person who upsets the apple cart. It doesn't matter how right that person is if he ends up making everyone else uncomfortable or causes them extra work or to lose money.
If you ask most people in the US what they think of the spying they will say they just assumed that it was already happening. The problem is that Snowden pointed out the elephant in the room and now we're having to deal with it. I don't think Americans are defending what is going on. They simply don't car
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So most Americans like him. Most Americans liked Bradley Manning.
Snowden's got a huge problem in that he was trusted by the government with data, and he abused that trust. Some of that can be justified by saying he wanted to expose mass data collection. But that's not all he exposed. He also exposed spy operations on quite a few countries. If the US Government lets him get away with that then they risk all kinds of other operations coming to light.
For example it would be pretty much impossible for us to mai
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He is pitting the outrage against itself. You can't support and condone spying without implicitly approving these programs. So either they are voicing faux outrage, or they have to consider him a whistle-blower worthy of at least protection.
I expect more quotes like this, building from subtle trolling to using actual quotes either in support of his case or against the programs in question.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not a hero. He's a traitor.
Going against the petty interests of a minor group in favor of the broader interests of humanity is the kind of stuff for which one's remembered as an hero down the line, including despite one's personal faults.
He would have been a hero if he leaked the NSA spying on US citizens and stopped there.
As a non-US citizen I most certainly disagree.
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Neither. But having concrete knowledge is better than having vague suspicions, for it at least allows for some change to happen, even if just a tiny bit of change.
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Suppose that you have friends, one of them is particulary nice with you, you let him pass the weekends in your house, go with him and your family on vacations, and so on. Then this guy tells (and proves) you that your "friend" is stealing you, banging your wife, that was him the one that broke your windows not your son, poisoning your food, and plotting to make your boss fire you. So, your reaction is (a) put in jail the guy that warned you, calling him traitor, killer or whatever, while keeping in close
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The US hasn't used this data to physically harm anyone. There are plenty of allegations that the US used the data for economic advantage, but no examples of specific operations that did so. And if such operations existed Snowden would have exposed them.
Even if you don't consider planting backdoors and weakening crypto damage, Presidential Policy Directive 20 [schneier.com] is about having ready for using those intrusions, backdoors and so on to harm. And Petrobras [reuters.com] is an example of specific operation of using that data for economic advantage. But even snooping with other intentions than detect that is a terrorist there is damaging enough, even if it is just to find how to access and plant backdoors in a otherwise secure network (i.e. Tor users [theguardian.com])
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, one of the best things about Snowden is that not only he exposed the abuse of powers by the government, but it also exposed the worthless ass-licking cunts like you who would rush to sign up to become Stasi informers if only given a chance. It's very refreshing to have you guys come out in the open like that, and proclaim loud and clear that you are who you are. Thank you, Mr Snowden!
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Repeat after me: You're an idiot!
You do realize this is only funny if you get him to say "I'm an idiot."
As is you just insulted yourself, and gaver him permission to repeat the insult.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the entire problem the US has is it's designed to be too collaborative. "Checks and balances" is a fancy way of saying "if all y'all motherfuckers can't agree on shit, shit don't happen." The Senate makes consensus requirements even more onerous because one guy can bring the entire Legislature to a halt for six days per bill voted on. Any Senator can force three days of debate on the question of "Should we debate Bill X," when those three days are up he can force another three days of debate on the actual vote. If the House insists on changes to the bill the Senator can add another three days by filibustering the conference report.
The end result is a legislature that talks a whole bunch of shit about shit (which nobody will care about six months from now), and doesn't actually do anything, which allows the Executive branch to run wild. Since the elected people in the Executive are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with aforementioned BS (which nobody will care about in six months) Obama doesn't have time to over-see the Executive. Which means that the executive branch people running wild have very little to do with the people we actually elect. In a Westminster system nobody would believe a PM who claimed he didn't know he's tapped Merkel's phone. In the US everybody's like "Oh I can see why if they put in the fifth bullet point of a presentation that he had to squeeze in between dealing with Islamists/political opponents with a political death wish/North Korea/etc. Obama might not notice that."
More collaborative government would just make this worse. You could never change anything complicated because individual voters always vote no on complex changes. When things get rough (ie: the ObamaCare rollout) they tend to decide to abandon the changes on the basis that if everything stays the same there's no risk of things getting worse. You'd end up with a lot of small-c-conservative stuff. For example, it would be impossible to change the zoning in any neighborhood because the local busy-bodies would all vote hell no and nobody else would bother voting. On national issues it would be even worse. If you have a vote on gun control people aren't going to let you sit out of the gun control debate.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I'll play.
> "Checks and balances" is a fancy way of saying "if all y'all motherfuckers can't agree on shit, shit don't happen."
Remove the profane language and actually, that's pretty much what James Madison said. Our system was designed that way on purpose. Of course, then you say ...
> bring the entire Legislature to a halt for six days per bill voted on ... force three days of debate ... another three days of debate on the actual vote
These are simply the (admittedly dumb) rules which the Senate has decided to impose upon itself. Those rules could be changed at any time. That's why I view Washington as a slapstick comedy: they keep shooting themselves in the foot, the whine and wail about how bad it hurts. :)
Actually, what scares me more than anything is the slow move in this country toward "rule by elites." Whether Republican or Democrat is irrelevant to me. One other thing that the Founder Fathers specifically tried to prevent was the appointment of "special masters" -- especially Caesars (or to use the more modern form of that word, "Czar") -- with broad power and the ability to act *WITHOUT* a consensus on the part of the governed.
That might seem like a good idea to you NOW, as long as a "special master" is in place making changes that you like. But change masters, and you might not think it's such a great idea.
This, in a nutshell, is why our Constitutional system of government was set up the way it was. No one person (or small group of people) was to have power to rule by "dictat" and decree.
Finally, what troubles me the most about this country is that we've forgotten how to compromise. Political compromise basically boils down to, "we hammer out an agreement that no one really likes, but that everyone can live with." Instead, we have people on both Left and Right screaming that it MUST be all done their way, no compromise ... and that's the REAL reason why nothing gets done.
Just my opinion, and worth precisely what you paid for it. :)
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I'd agree the filibuster isn't technically part of checks and balances. But it is something that makes collaboration in US Government much more important then anyone outside DC thinks.
The Czars are both more and less then people make of them. They are less in that the President technically doesn't give them any powers, he simply says "obey this guy as you would me" to a huge department. OTOH in a lot of ways that's what a Cabinet Secretary is. They're basically a relatively recent shot in the power-struggle
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> As for forgetting how to compromise, the problem is that there's no actual moderates left. Everybody's on a side.
So let's compromise. I'm a conservative: after realizing that we have (for example) HUNDREDS of freakin' destroyers in our Navy, not to mention that we're building planes that are being put in storage because we don't need them, and on and on ... I'd be willing to accept substantial and severe cuts in military spending. Stop being the world's policeman. Don't touch military pay and benefits,
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There's all kinds of potential compromises Pelosi would offer you for substantial military cuts. Put some of the money into tax cuts, the rest into food stamps. Or hell, use some of the money for tax cuts, some to cut the deficit, and declare that's enough to justify abolishing the damn debt ceiling.
The problem is when Pelosi comes back with an offer the GOP is gonna be like "I wonder how much sweeter this offer will get if we are mega-dicks on this issue?" and the media is gonna be like "Whose winning this
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's compromise. I'm a conservative: after realizing that we have (for example) HUNDREDS of freakin' destroyers in our Navy, not to mention that we're building planes that are being put in storage because we don't need them, and on and on ... I'd be
willing to accept substantial and severe cuts in military
spending. Stop being the world's policeman. Don't touch military
pay and benefits, because those folks have earned it. But there's
plenty that could be trimmed, billions and billions of dollars.
OK ... so what are my liberal friends willing to surrender in
return? It's got to be something near and dear to their hearts. :)
So ... according to you a compromise means that you are willing
to get rid of something we both agree is wasteful and unnecessary
only if I am willing to give up something I believe is essential,
non-wasteful, and perhaps even provides good ROI. This is
exactly the kind of "compromise" the Tea Party recently proposed.
They were only willing to do something they agreed needed to be
done if others would make significant concessions in unrelated
areas.
Doing something we both agree should be done is not a compromise; it is agreement. Demanding additional concessions in other areas before you are willing to do what you agree should be done is about as far away from compromise as possible; it is extortion and hostage-taking. It's basically saying "we're going to ruin it for everyone unless we get our way".
You have perfectly encapsulated the reason why there are no longer any compromises in DC.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK ... so what are my liberal friends willing to surrender in return? It's got to be something near and dear to their hearts. :)
Right now the conservatives have cut food stamps, and they want to eliminate it entirely.
Food stamps are one of the most effective welfare programs we have, supported until recently by Democrats and Republicans alike.
Without food stamps, we'd be back to third world hunger like we were in the 1930s, with people stealing bread and children with rickets.
Is that a realistic compromise? Can I in good conscience bargain away food stamps and let people go hungry again?
I don't believe in false balance. Both sides aren't equally wrong. When you ask the Republicans what they want on health policy, they say, "Abandon Obamacare and leave the free market in its place." I can't go back to that. This is the free market. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1312793 [nejm.org] Obamacare was already a compromise with the Republicans, modeled on Romneycare and the Heritage Foundation plan. Obama gave them everything they wanted, and they were still against it. How can you negotiate with people like that?
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Interesting)
The british system works nicely to stop a dictator. At any point, the parliament can elect a new prime-minister, or in effect force a new election. And there is the nuclear option, where the queen can in theory sack a government.
This is never used, as it would create a constitution crisis the monarchy probably wouldn't survive. But if the government was seriously dysfunctional, and was unpopular, the queen could just about politically get away with it. The closest case is sacking of the australian Witlam government in the 70's by the governor general (queen's representative in australia) for the government being in deadlock over a budget and having to shut down functions. So basically the equivalent of the government shutdown the US has just had.
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I suspect your wording was specifically designed to impart images of slavery and prejudice
That's right.
I grew up during the 1960s when the southern states were arguing that the federal government had no constitutional role in passing and enforcing federal voting laws that would force the states to allow black people to vote, much less a constitutional role in interfering with their free choice to discriminate against black people in hiring, education, and seating on buses. Those were decisions to be made democratically by the states and the (white) people.
That's what "states' rights" meant for 5
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironically the title "President" was chosen rather than something lofty like "Prime Minister" specifically to try to keep the office humble. A president is (was) that guy who runs the local XYZ club, not someone with real power.
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
But rather than the title humbling the office, the office instead made the title grand.
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> You'd end up with a lot of small-c-conservative stuff.
I love how your mind is so tiny that you can't even conceive that Americans might think this is a good thing. Obama and his cronies are supremely frustrated that they can't just slash and burn the U.S. government to their liking. Obama himself even said that the government was "broken" because he didn't get what he wanted. That's by design, it's not a goddamn mistake. It's a good system that's resistant to change. The 20th century was full of
Re:Abandon their harmful behavior? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with your argument is that you're not actually making an argument. You have told us what you want in principle (less federal government), but have yet to tell us which major functions of government you want Obama to give up.
The ones that make the Feds dominate the economy (Social Security, Medicare, and the VA) don't actually take up much of his time. They are also clearly within his Constitutional powers because he has a 16tth Amendment right to the income tax, and he can spend it promoting the "general welfare." Defense and Foreign Affairs are the only ones you've unambiguously said he should keep, and they're the really complicated ones that are causing him all these NSA problems.
I find this is actually a fairly common problem when dealing with Conservatives. They really want to gut the size of government, but they're totally unwilling to tell you that they think Florida should do it;'s own damn hurricane forecasts. It's kinda like my food budget. I'd really like to spend less then $10 a day on food, but I don't have a pantry so I can't make my lunch, so I have to eat out, and I always end up spending $6.69 at Wendy's.
Too bad Snowden will only be 33 in 2016 (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Too bad Snowden will only be 33 in 2016 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or Joe Shmoe disagrees with you.
Say what you will about Snowden he released all kinds of data on NSA operations that were perfectly legal. Tapping the Chancellor's phone wasn't nice, but it is not only perfectly legal it's also pretty much the entire reason we created the NSA in the first place.
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But a Nobel Peace Prize nomination would probably embarrass the next president into pardoning him.
(or if something other than a democrat is elected), a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
With everyone in the NSA suddenly swearing on stacks of bibles that they never told Obama didly-squat
you can almost see how this is being set up to plays out.
Still, you have to wonder if he doesn't wake up dead some day of a .22 caliber aneurysm.
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If he's ever harmed, the world will rise up! That would be the dumbest move in history!
Doubt the world would do a damn thing about it.
At least a third of the people posting here still think anything Obama says is gospel.
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If he's ever harmed, the world will rise up! That would be the dumbest move in history!
If he's harmed the world will think "gee, I wonder what he did to piss off Czar Vladimir the Terrifying?"
Re:Too bad Snowden will only be 33 in 2016 (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because THAT'S what's keeping him from being elected. It's not that a good percentage of the country has bought into the line that he's a communist traitor who has put American lives at risk, handed over secret documents to the "enemy", and was acting out of a desire to harm the United States. None of those things are true, mind, but that's not stopping people from demanding we send SEAL Team 6 into Russia.
The anger directed toward this man was so quick to start, so widespread, and so homogenous in tone and intent that it makes me suspect an NSA influence operation using internet sockpuppet accounts, and the already completely dominated mainstream cable channels (I won't use the word "news" to describe what they are). We actually know the government does this, we even knew before the Snowden documents, so it's not that much of a stretch in my mind. But on the other hand, I know quite a few living, breathing, people who really are that intellectually retarded. They're vociferously and sincerely calling for blood. He wouldn't live to see his name on the ballot if he comes back here. Our government has spoken: he's a traitor aiding foreign powers. We kill people for that.
Re:Too bad Snowden will only be 33 in 2016 (Score:4, Interesting)
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Well, he does not seem to be guilty of treason in a legal sense; he did betray a special trust invested in him (by the government in this case) and is therefore a traitor in the colloquial sense.
Snowden did commit a crime and should be punished.
That said, your comments on the media manufacturing public opinion (or at least, distorting the percentage of people who agree with specific positions) are right on.
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Keep in mind three things:
1) People hate political arguments. Many times I have thought someone was a moron, but not said anything because the argument would have been a waste of time.
2) Most people have lives. This means they don't follow the issues closely, which means they don't have a strong opinion. Your well-thought-out support for Snowden sounds well-thought-out and grounded in American principles they go with it.
3) The only groups that actually care are ineffective techno-libertarians (this is proba
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I have yet to meet a citizen that considers him a traitor...
Now you just did. Snowden is a traitor [...]
He gave aid and comfort to the United States' enemies — the American people? Because he told us about the crimes being committed against us on our own dime?
Is this belief based on enjoyment of being ruled by authoritarian criminals, hatred of the US Constitution, basing your opinion on the "facts" from television, or something else? Are you a powerful criminal, such as a mob boss, who empathizes with the law-breakers drunk on the power they have over the rest of us?
[...] and will eventually pay...
He's already paid — he had to
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He gave aid and comfort to the United States' enemies — the American people? Because he told us about the crimes being committed against us on our own dime?
Since when has Angela Merkel been an American?
That's Snowden's problem dealing with US-Government-types. many of them would probably be sympathetic to the argument that he had a duty to stop PRISM. But many of them are gonna see that he outed the perfectly legal operation against Merkel and think "he betrayed that operation, therefore he is by definition a traitor."
That's the problem with being a data dump guy. Unless you personally vet every damn document you dump you're gonna dump at least one thing peopl
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He gave aid and comfort to the United States' enemies — the American people? Because he told us about the crimes being committed against us on our own dime?
What crimes specifically? If crimes have been committed who has been arrested, charged and convicted? Perhaps you are basing your opinion on the "facts" from television (or slashdot as it may be).
What crimes? The mass, unwarranted surveillance of the US population, in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution.
Why are you expecting there to be arrests or charges? Do you think that if the Executive branch is willing to blatantly ignore the limits on its power, — as defined by the Constitution — that it's going to charge itself when it's caught violating the Constitutional rights of the US populace? You seem to be under the impression that the federal gover
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The NSA collect meta data. You can't deny this. They collect it indiscriminately. They just suck it all up, for everyone, all the time. This is now confirmed, right from the horse's mouth, the head of the NSA. This is unreasonable, thus a violation of the 4th Amendment. If you think it is reasonable, then you and I can't have a meaningful conversation with each other. We'll just have to stop here. You fundamentally accept a bigger and more onerous government than I do.
Re:Too bad Snowden will only be 33 in 2016 (Score:4, Insightful)
If as you say it's common knowledge that all governments spy on all other governments, then it shouldn't have done much harm to have what we already knew confirmed.
But that's not true, not all governments engage in this behavior, and not all that do take it as far as the US. Tapping the private phone of an allied head of state is out of bounds. It's not the kind of thing we should be doing. It's the kind of thing that causes an embarrassing international incident when it is revealed. Imagine our own government's reaction if the tables were turned.
Also, Snowden released the information to reputable journalists who have been selecting what to release. He didn't just dump it on a website for all to see. Those journalists have been reviewing the material and redacting anything that would actually put lives at risk. Snowden carried this off in the most responsible, most honorable, fashion possible.
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Pet peeve alert:
Germany's a Republic. That means the Head of State is (by definition) the President. Last time I checked that was a guy names Johannes Rau, but I haven't checked in years because he's powerless. Their President technically outranks Merkel, but has less power because Merkel is Head of Government.
Moreover you are assuming that because Sweden and Brazil exist most of the world's countries act like Sweden and Brazil. The French undoubtedly have more then taps on the phones of their numerous Afri
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You're willing to support someone that has committed crimes that have put all citizens of the US in danger...
Wrong.
Snowden put no one in danger but himself from the US government's efforts to exact revenge for Snowden shining light on corrupt criminal government cockroaches. The US government put US citizens in danger themselves by knowingly violating the restrictions on government powers set forth in the US Constitution. Snowden simply revealed their ongoing crimes and constitutional violations.
Snowden is as much a criminal as is a woman who reveals her cop-rapist's identity to higher authority. In this case, the
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He probably wouldn't win; but he might break the record set by Eugene V. Debs [wikipedia.org] for most votes cast for a prisoner (or in this case, person exiled due to charges) as POTUS. At least, I'm assuming it's a record. From Wikipedia:
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Why do you assume that the Democratic and Republican parties would allow him to participate in their presidential election process?
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Why do you assume that the Democratic and Republican parties would allow him to participate in their presidential election process?
We need to vote those crooks out, and keep 'em out. We already have better left and right parties to replace them: Green and Libertarian.
I'm well aware that achieving that may be an insurmountable task, but it's what I'm after, regardless of how the deck is stacked, and I'm never going back.
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Snowden has a better chance of being elected President of the European Parliament than he does President of the United States.
When did the U.S. swap governments with East Germany? A Republic an not survive when the government keeps data bases on all it's citizens. If the Supreme Court wasn't in the pockets of the fascists now running this country, we could have our Constitution back and become a Republic again. Presently the Executive Branch run the entire country and the other two branches are lapdogs.
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Snowden has a better chance of being elected President of the European Parliament than he does President of the United States.
When did the U.S. swap governments with East Germany? A Republic an not survive when the government keeps data bases on all it's citizens. If the Supreme Court wasn't in the pockets of the fascists now running this country, we could have our Constitution back and become a Republic again. Presently the Executive Branch run the entire country and the other two branches are lapdogs.
You do realize that the US government has historically had more data on it's citizens then almost any other government in the world? It's called the US Census, and you had a patriotic duty to answer those questions. Hell, you can't run a republic at all without a very large database on people, their ages, and their place of residence. It's called a voter roll. Well technically you can run a Republic without voter-rolls, because a dictatorship without a King is technically a Republic, but that's not what you
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He has a better chance of getting elected the President of Russia than either the US or the EU parliament. He's not enough of a politician for the latter two but the Russians seem to appreciate ex spooks.
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He's got plenty to leak. He was the guy who taught NSA spooks China's spying capabilities. this means he could gut China's spying capabilities with a single press release, using only the data that exists in his head.
But he won't do that because the Russians want him to be a quiet, boring propaganda victory for them.
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That Snowden didn't won the Nobel Peace Prize (but did the organization that aligned closely with current US message) gives you a hint that at least some parts of europe are just following US orders, so no chance for president of european parliament neither.
And they are now realizing that that submission don't saves them from being victims of the US spying/sabotaging machine too.
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That Snowden didn't won the Nobel Peace Prize (but did the organization that aligned closely with current US message) gives you a hint that at least some parts of europe are just following US orders, so no chance for president of european parliament neither.
And they are now realizing that that submission don't saves them from being victims of the US spying/sabotaging machine too.
You know there are worse fates then having your data in a database in Washington DC. It could be in Moscow. Countries like Poland probably don't like that their data is in anybody's database, but they have some pretty strong experiences with what precisely happens when your superpower ally decides to abuse it's data on your people. And they can confirm that it's much better to be in US database then the Russian.
I'm not saying that the US was actually right to collect all the data it collected, especially th
Don't do it Edward (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't do it Edward (Score:5, Insightful)
As it should be. Regardless of how one feels about what he has done, be it for or against, he broke the law and should have his day in court.
Barrack Obama broke the law, and didnt got his day in court. George W. Bush broke the law and didn't got his day in court. Bill Clinton broke the law and got his day in court even though it he didn't deserve that. Personal sex life is private, nobody should be allowed to asking these questions and therefore lying about it is fine.
America is more interested in blow jobs then corruption, waste of taxes payer money, unlawful wars, secret court and execution without due process.I don't want to live on this planet any more [youtube.com].
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Don't need to go so far, James Clapper lied to the congress [slate.com], was found out, and as "punishment" is be his own auditor [techdirt.com].
By now if the government of US says that 2+2=4, you should bet that they are doing math in base 3.
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I'm sorry, but this is just argument by assertion. Both you and who you were responding to.
President Obama did not break any laws. Period. If he had, especially in this environment where the GOP will even damage the entire country just trying to hurt him, they'd have been all over it like flies on shit.
Screaming "Obama broke the law (of I wanted someone else elected)" doesn't even make it to the courts, much less through it.
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I suspect the poster accusing Obama of breaking laws doesn't mean actual laws (ie: statutes). He means the Constitution.
Re:Don't do it Edward (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, reporting a crime is not breaking the law, it is adhering the law and in point of fact it is a criminal act not to report witnessing a crime, accessory after the fact. Will he be able to return to the US, not for decades, all the psychopaths in power will have to be removed first. They will permanently target him as an example, they will take hostile moves against any country that harbours him and most western countries will not bother protecting him as he is not one of their own.
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You are absolutely a hero if you expose the systemic criminal behavior of the government even if you have to break the law to do it. We need more heroes like Snowden.
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The crimes committed where so extensive, so elaborate, so extensively documented, that no person or group of persons was in any position to audit all of the documents to release only those that detailed crimes. It is obvious the more information that was revealed the more crimes that became apparent. Hence where does an honourable person with integrity stop, knowing that others will lie and destroy evidence given the opportunity and any further crimes detailed would be lost. There is only one thing a law a
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And since when is spying on a foreign head of government a crime? Because the only legtal change likely to come out of this is that Obama will sign a treaty agreeing to cut that shit out. Everyone involved will know it's a lie.
Please cite the statute.
Re:Don't do it Edward (Score:5, Insightful)
It is illegal to obey illegal instructions. Those documents detailed crimes and hence where classified illegally in order to hide those crimes. He disclosed those crimes publicly due to the conspiracy to hide them by a government department with the approval of elected officials. Seriously, what the fuck do you not understand about the idea that it is illegal for any government department to break any laws and the requirement for any member of that department to report those criminal acts, be they criminal or constitutional infringements. Do you get it yet? The government can not legally order anyone to break the law, end of story and in the attempt that person so ordered is required by law to report the attempted crime, let alone obey the criminal order. Crimes can not be legally hidden under the auspices of national security, that would be a licence to run the government as a criminal organisation rather than being the democratically representatives of the electorate. I don't have to try, the law is the law.
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From 2001 to 2010, the US executed 551 death-row prisoners and exonerated 48 on appeal (based on checking sources cited by wikipedia).
I don't know Snowden's opinion on it, but personally I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a court system that has an 8% rate of "oops, we found we wrongly sentenced you to death" (plus an unknown rate of never finding out), especially if I'd happened to seriously embarrass the government by revealing they'd been systemically ignoring the bill of rights.
Is Snowden facing the de
You go, girl! (Score:4, Insightful)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Fuck you, NSA, you filthy traitors. The constitution isn't just rules for others to follow...
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Snowden is a hero but he is making a mistake to expect sane behavior by the US government. Frankly we owe him a debt of gratitude but I suggest that he stay beyond the reach of US law regardless of any offers or so called agreements.
Poor, poor Ed... (Score:2, Interesting)
They all do this shit, and you merely put them in the spotlight. The ones not yet caught have, of course, feigned indignation at the US, for doing what they all do. (Hmm, which ones have protested the loudest here?)
Make no mistake, though, if the US has done worse than any of its peers, it has done so only through having more opportunity, not more will or effort.
TLDR: They all want you dead for exposing the truth. Do you really think the "truth" you've exposed ends at the Canadian
Re:Poor, poor Ed... (Score:5, Insightful)
They all do this shit, and you merely put them in the spotlight. The ones not yet caught have, of course, feigned indignation at the US, for doing what they all do. (Hmm, which ones have protested the loudest here?)
Make no mistake, though, if the US has done worse than any of its peers, it has done so only through having more opportunity, not more will or effort.
So tired of people excusing our government's behavior just because others do it.
Others include Pol Pot, Idi Amin, 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, and Joseph Stalin. (No point in invoking Godwin here).
We keep telling ourselves we are better than that. We keep passing whistle blower protection laws.
We pretend we have a constitution and that government is Of the People, By the People, For the People.
Then invariably when government gets caught doing something its not supposed to, some useful idiot comes along and says don't worry about it, every other country does that.
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You forgot the Stasi.
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And what exactly makes you think I meant that in any way apologist?
Make no mistake, I fully damn my own government for its evils. I damn all governments for their assorted atrocities. And someday, I look forward to seeing them up against the wall.
Today... Sadly, not that day.
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I think doing the equivalent of a "grep" of the Internet for terrorist keywords is just a tad less severe than dictators each guilty of murdering millions of their own citizens.
He's my lemma to Godwin's law: when you explicitly don't invoke it because you know your argument is so derpy that it fits, you still lose.
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Make no mistake, though, if the US has done worse than any of its peers, it has done so only through having more opportunity, not more will or effort.
The US has done worse. Why is of secondary importance.
How bad was... (Score:5, Funny)
How bad was his first day of work at the tech-support line?
Presidential pardon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Put up or shut up. Show me something he blew the whistle on that wasn't wrong. He took documents over the course of months, selecting only the damning and illegal activity, and then in an abundance of caution gave them to journalists, and only journalists, who have so far done an honorable and commendable job disclosing only material which details the crimes of the NSA without putting any individual person in danger.
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Does Snowden really think that what he did was "dissent"? Dissent is defined as expressing an opinion. The people who participated in Occupy Wall Street dissented. They're all walking around as free men and women.
Snowden has been charged with giving classified information to a person without appropriate clearance and stealing government owned laptops. He did that stuff.
Committing a crime for what you feel are justified reasons means that you go to jail with your head held high and with people cheering f
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
He reported a crime.
The powers that be wrongly classified the information about the crime in order to cover it up.
There is a long history in law of recognizing that even the best intentioned laws may sometimes be wrong and that breaking them may sometimes be justified. In that long history, such justified infractions are not to be considered crimes. This is where we get such things as justifiable homicide.
I don't blame him one bit for running. He is not likely to receive justice here at this time.
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The powers that be wrongly classified the information about the crime in order to cover it up.
That is certainly a valid reason to release classified information. If a Federal judge agrees with that, then Snowden will walk free.
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Somehow, I doubt he would walk free no matter how much he should.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the Patriot act did NOT authorize spying ion citizens except in the narrow case where that citizen was speaking with a foreign national suspected of terrorism. The NSA collected ALL call metadata and has been looking at it with their '3 hops' policy. That was not authorized. Notably, the NSA has repeatedly perjured itself before Congress on that very issue.
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They'll lock him up for the rest of his life- just like Bradley Manning. Why didn't Manning "confess he made the whole thing up"?
If you don't want to go to jail for releasing government secrets, then don't go to the DOD, apply for Top Secret clearance, and then voluntarily swear to follow their rules. The punishments for breaking those rules are clearly spelled out and you are reminded of them dozens of times before your clearance is approved.
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because as long as it is secret it is not illegal.
That's not true. There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them. If a federal judge rules that what he did was justified, then he will walk free.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.
He did. [techdirt.com] The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.
The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him. [theatlantic.com]
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There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.
He did. [techdirt.com] The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.
The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him. [theatlantic.com]
It's so amazing to me that geeks can act so knowledgeable about the Constitution and be so ignorant of how it actually works in the real world.
If he got stymied by the Executive he was supposed to Check and Balance said Executive by snitching to Congress. Wyden would have loved this data dump. More importantly Wyden would have been able to decide which bits of it could be released without hurting legitimate intelligence operations, whereas all Greenwald can be counted on to do is make sure he gets paid for
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wyden already had classified information about this stuff. [slashdot.org] He wouldn't do anything about it except give vague warnings.
What is so amazing to me are people like you who are always happy to criticize someone who took action for doing it "the wrong way." The problem with that attitude is that everyone has their own version of "the right way." Snowden got results, it ain't perfect but its 1000x more effective than what anyone else has done. He deserves enormous slack for that.
So many people just don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Show me a government that isn't hypocritical about something and I'll show a fantasy land. The world is too damn complicated for anyone to not be a hypocrite.
For example you are acting surprised that the government doesn't take a maximalist view of Fourth Amendment rights. This has been obvious to everyone else for years. It's very hard to not be searched by a cop when a cop wants to search you. He searches you, and if he finds nothing he fills out a form saying that you wouldn't look him in the eye (or tha
If he's smart, he'll stay in Russia. (Score:3)
May as well. The US has ceased to stand for anything good and it nothing more than a globalist enforcer. No meaningful number of Americans oppose that role.
That's not to say anywhere else will fare much better under scrutiny, but now that the ideological battle of the Cold War is finished and Russia, China, and the US share the same freedom from idealism there is no reason for a bright fellow like Snowden to want out of Russia.
elect Obama, he'll stop these abuses! (Score:3)
"I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient," Obama said in 2007, adding that "the FISA court works."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/jun/13/barack-obama-surveillance-then-and-now/ [politifact.com]
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There's a fundamental flaw in the OSIAAT.
The NSA seems to believe that they key to finding a needle in a haystack is to get a bigger haystack.
Others may try to follow this model but that would be stupid (not to say that "intelligence" agencies aren't stupid).
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The interesting property of some of the haystacks is that they are indexed, and you have an external value to match against.
I'll also point out that since one of the major trends in industry is "big data," you might think that there are both tools to deal with it, and some useful reasons for doing so. I hear data mining was all the rage in the Obama campaign, maybe some other places as well.
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A government should not have the right to decide which of its policies & laws should be kept secret from its' citizens.
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If should entered into it there wouldn't be a government. We'd all be living in a utopia, with no terrorism, poverty, theft, disease, etc.
In practical terms the only people who can order a government around are members of that government. That's kinda the definition of a government. Which means that at some level the people who decide whether a government report is secret or not are gonna be part of the government that wrote the report.
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but that is how humans of the highest quality actually operate.
Ironically, the lowest quality humans also behave that way, and on a much more regular basis.