Except For Millennials, Most Americans Dislike Snowden 686
HughPickens.com writes: Newsmax reports that according to KRC Research, about 64 percent of Americans familiar with Snowden hold a negative opinion of him. However 56 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive opinion of Snowden which contrasts sharply with older age cohorts. Among those aged 35-44, some 34 percent have positive attitudes toward him. For the 45-54 age cohort, the figure is 28 percent, and it drops to 26 percent among Americans over age 55, U.S. News reported. Americans overall say by plurality that Snowden has done "more to hurt" U.S. national security (43 percent) than help it (20 percent). A similar breakdown was seen with views on whether Snowden helped or hurt efforts to combat terrorism, though the numbers flip on whether his actions will lead to greater privacy protections. "The broad support for Edward Snowden among Millennials around the world should be a message to democratic countries that change is coming," says Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "They are a generation of digital natives who don't want government agencies tracking them online or collecting data about their phone calls." Opinions of millennials are particularly significant in light of January 2015 findings by the U.S. Census Bureau that they are projected to surpass the baby-boom generation as the United States' largest living generation this year.
So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
If you rule out everyone who thinks Snowden's a pretty cool guy, you still can't make it to "all Americans hate Snowden"?
Keep grasping for them straws, brownshirts.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm 64 and I like Snowden.
I don't know if he's a snob, an asshat, a jerk or a nice guy and I don't care.
What he did was a great service to the population and citizenry of the USA.
I love my country, America, but I fear my Government.
These frakking polls are bovine scat.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
--
JimFive
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)
I like what you wrote because I feel the same way. I think he provided a great service to the whole world.
I'd also be curious how many of the millennials would hire him to work in their business. I bet the % would be significantly lower and I wouldn't blame them.
I'm curious if the older generation would think more of Snowden if he faced the music after releasing the information? After all, heroes of the people have either suffered or even died for their cause to be recognized.
Re: (Score:3)
Or had fled to a neutral country.
That he is in Russia is going to lose a lot of support from people who lived through "Duck and Cover."
https://archive.org/details/Du... [archive.org]
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IQ, Standard deviations, and propaganda (Score:5, Informative)
Do you really think that people who think Kim Kardashian is interesting and like the NFL are really going to give this any serious thought?
Whoa . . . don't conflate the enjoyment of professional sports with contrived, superficial, reality TV bullshit. There are plenty of us geeks out there who follow both the NFL closely (the draft is a week from tonight and I'm hoping my team lands Bud Dupree!) *and* are interested and aware enough to carefully analyze what Snowden did and form our own opinions. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: So let me get this straight (Score:3, Funny)
Amongst the 60 plus demographic in my circle, Snowden is regarded as having colossal brass clangers, and a giant, throbbing, majestic....moral compass.
Re: (Score:3)
24% isn't "rare," nor is it such a small number that there is any utility in people raising their hands to say they are in that group.
It reminds me of the 60s. The media would have us believe that it was a "cultural revolution" that led to a bunch of liberal changes, but the history shows that most of the young people during that time actually became more conservative in response to the "revolution," leading to the War on Drugs and a general increase in criminal penalties for a wide variety of crimes associ
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a nuanced opinion about Edward Snowden. I think he's a patriot who may or may not have compromised national security but I also don't know if that's a bad thing or not.
I do have a very low negative opinion of people who make Nazi allusions because of complex international security and policing issues.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm partially sympathetic to the Government. The Government isn't a monolithic entity where they're all marching lock step towards the same totalitarian goal.
No, it's worse than that, in that we have some parts being turned into agencies and departments that no one wants to reign in because heaven forbid someone put a check on law enforcement power, lest you be considered to be "weak on crime" or "weak on national defense." It's why we still have outdated ideas about incarceration and justice despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary that this shit doesn't work. No one wants to be told prisons don't work, they just want the safety and security illusions of having a prison system. Once they're told that the whole system is broken the illusion of safety is gone.
That's harder to fight. If there was a conspiracy or a tyrant running the NSA doing awful things, it's easy to point that out and say, "Hey, get them! They're the problem." When the problem is more endemic and harder to check than just saying, "The Government is spying on it's citizens and that's bad for a whole host of obvious reasons."
We aren't in an age where the Stasi-like agents are stopping cars asking for papers, but the transition from there to here would be gradual. It's a ... not slippery? Slightly moist and lightly more lubricious than average slope to a terrifying police state no one but the most ardent control freak wants but we wound up with any way because of partisan electoral politicking.
I don't think that Park Services is tapping your phone line and I don't think that DOT and DOE are interested in your private conversations, unless you're out to burn down a forest or school or rest stop.
Even then, that's an FBI matter.
teal dear:
I do still trust the Government, but with a whole lot of caveats.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
What you said, and more. People born before 1950 should remember that there were real spies stealing real military secrets that could have, and in some cases probably did, result in American deaths. Snowden appears not to have been entirely able to distinguish that sort of secret material from safer stuff.
Government domestic spying has become egregious, and by exposing that in a manner that stays in the news, Snowden has advanced freedom. Whether the balance of the effect of his actions will be positive will probably never be known.
It is beyond question that what he did was dishonest, in violation of legally binding agreements he made with his employers, and in a narrow sense treasonous. Let's hope the net result is better government behavior, not a doubling down on domestic spying.
That's not what they tried to make it say (Score:3)
Roughly two thirds of the people surveyed in the US have an opinion (or even recognize the name). You need to drill into the original survey to find that number.
Of the people who have an opinion, in the usual demographic breakouts only the 18 to 34 y/o group tends to have a positive opinion of him.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you can have a negative opinion of him but think he did the right thing, also. I don't think he did the best possible thing, I don't think he tried very hard, I think he was angry, didn't get the response he wanted from the right people quickly enough and acted brashly. I think he could have done more to protect secrets that need to stay secrets (because lives are on the line), while also revealing how incredibly bad our government was acting. But what he did was still better than keeping quiet.
I also suspect that the older you are, the more foreign enemies scare you than domestic ones. That's not a statement that indicates the older crowd is correct in their fears either, if anything the foreign enemy threat is in fact somewhat lower, but the domestic enemy threat has grown tremendously in the past 40 years. Just look at the people funding the republican party? I cannot imagine a scarier group of people with a more frightening ideology.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Informative)
he gave all the secrets to several newspapers and THEY became the judges.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit!
Snowden had no goddamn choice -- NONE WHATSOEVER -- because going through the quote-on-quote "proper channels" would have resulted in his whistleblowing being ignored or buried and nothing changing.
Spot on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spot on (Score:5, Insightful)
I get told all the time by fellow vets and Marines, who theoretically swore the same oath I did, that torture and indefinite detainment are absolutely ok and not violations of the Constitution. I get called a bleeding heart liberal for thinking those things matter.
The only upside to this thoroughly depressing situation, is I then get to say "oh, so wanting to hold to my oath, and actually follow the Constitution is what makes me a liberal? then what defines conservatism?"
the apoplectic fits that follow are always entertaining.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
He did go through the proper channels. He did bring this to his supervisors.
This fact is left out a lot of the discussions.
It is only when he was ignored that he took it a step further. Maybe if more people knew that he actually did try to go through the proper channels first without success, they might have a better understanding of the situation and a better opinion of Snowden.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Informative)
Iwhat IF he followed proper channels and allowed the process to either work or fail.
He did follow proper channels, and he did allow the process to either work or fail. It failed. His concerns were ignored [wikipedia.org]. If he pushed anymore, he would have ended up like other NSA whistleblowers, such as Thomas Drake [wikipedia.org], who was arrested and jailed. If we want people to use "proper channels" then we need to stop destroying the lives of people that do exactly that. During his first campaign, Obama promised to protect whistleblowers, but once in office, his administration has persecuted them with more fury than ever before, with disastrous results for our country.
Re:So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Snowden is that he unilaterally made himself the judge of which secrets should be released and which should not.
You may dislike the current system, but it is system put in place by people we elect. If you have people arbitrarily deciding which parts of the system are invalid and which aren't then all you have is anarchy. I realize that many of you would like that. But the system is what prevents people that disagree with you from hunting you down and murdering you.
So you either work with the system or you take your chances outside the system.
No, no, and again, no. Ed Snowden released his information to certain specific news organization that he thought would be responsible in their reporting. That is, people who would expose what was happening but protect identities and not release information that would do more harm than good. So please get it straight before you get your back up about it.
You say the System is what keeps people who disagree with me from hunting me down. Maybe so, to a degree anyway. But what do I do when the person who wants to hunt me down works for the System? What happens when I join a protest, or speak out against whatever ill-advised foreign adventure our leaders decide to get into next? Hell, what happens when I end a romantic relationship with one of them? You know that protesters and activists have been spied on and interfered with by the System, and that it has been abused for personal purposes. If the System protects me, why is it interfering with me exercising my rights? Where do I go when I consider the System to be the enemy because it is treating me like one?
Re: (Score:3)
I'll absolutely agree that the "Only following orders" defense is NOT a defense. There is a difference between keeping a secret, and actively enabling a governmental policy. The German higher-ups weren't charged for leaking secret information about what was h
Re: (Score:3)
In the US most of those people got reelected with the support of not much more than 25% of the voters. And most of those were probably actually voting against the other guy. Funny definition of popularity you've got there.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, no. Not voting is generally interpreted a few ways, none of which are "You're protesting against the political system". It's usually "You're too lazy to get out and vote", "You couldn't be bothered to remember the date of the election", or "You were so uninformed that you didn't know there was an election".
You may want to consider the message your non-voting habit actually sends, and adjust your actions accordingly .
Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because the elderly suffered much more stringent brainwashing as children that leads them to say that they "support those who fight for our freedom" while also promoting a police state worse than Orwells worst nightmare. The younger crowd grew up with much more access to information and see the police state for what it is and do not have the blind worship of government that the elderly do.
I wonder how those elderly will feel as their Social Security and Medicare programs are stripped clean in order to pay for that police state they champion so much...
This isn't just about information. Cost is a huge factor too, and perhaps felt a hell of a lot more with the younger generation who is still paying the full brunt of those "terror" taxes.
Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how those elderly will feel as their Social Security and Medicare programs are stripped clean in order to pay for that police state they champion so much...
So the generation that votes wants to maintain Social Security and Medicare, even if it plunges future citizens into debt, and the generation that doesn't vote wants a different policy on Snowden. Which generation do you think politicians would listen to most?
Re: (Score:3)
The generation who doesn't vote is busy building technology which renders the politicians' mandates increasingly-impossible to enforce.
By the time that generation is done, it won't matter what the politicians say anymore because math will trump force [nakamotoinstitute.org].
That's the possibility that should really terrify the Boomers and make them clamour for increased surveillance - the possibility that their grandchildren might have both the means and the desire to avoid paying the payroll taxes which keep the Boomers' monthly
Re: (Score:3)
The generation who doesn't vote is busy building technology which renders the politicians' mandates increasingly-impossible to enforce.
By the time that generation is done, it won't matter what the politicians say anymore because math will trump force [nakamotoinstitute.org].
That's the possibility that should really terrify the Boomers and make them clamour for increased surveillance - the possibility that their grandchildren might have both the means and the desire to avoid paying the payroll taxes which keep the Boomers' monthly checks flowing.
It's funny we sit here and talk about the environment and what are we doing to secure the planet and natural resources for future generations as you spitball about future generations literally being sabotaged by the younger generation.
I only have one thing to say to that. Better fucking hope the youth of today discovers immortality.. Funny how they've have forgotten they will get old one day too, and get screwed over by their own policies.
I'm certainly not saying the current system is perfect, but shortsig
Re: (Score:3)
The will rediscover the value of personal savings, and won't rely on a Ponzi scheme for their retirement plan.
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Oops! Too late, I suppose that boat has already sailed. A secure country doesn't need to be a police state. That's a fact.
Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more likely to be because people under 35 are the first generation that have no memory of the cold war. People born before about 1980 lived in a world where there was a very strong, clear delineation between us vs them and that divide was seen as an existential struggle between good and evil. Merely by being born into a certain country, you too could take part in an epic ideological struggle between right and wrong. It is perhaps not surprising that people who lived most of their life in such a world instinctively support a strong, authoritarian state and react badly to a "traitor who gave our national security secrets to the Russians" or whatever garbled version of the story they received via Fox News. There's definitely a clear and strong tendency in older populations to support our side regardless of what that side actually does, and things that seem to bring back old certainties strongly appeal to them. Hence the desperate need of the establishment to make "the terrorists" to new Big Evil.
Contrast to people under the age of 35 who don't remember the cold war and have never lived in a world where there were clearly defined conflicts between us/them or good/evil. Instead there has been a series of endless wars started by us against dramatically weaker foes, based on vague and uncompelling justifications, the results of which have mostly been bedlam. Older people love this because it's an attempt to bring back the old certainties they remember. It leaves young people cold because they don't care about the old certainties, as they never had them to begin with.
Combine all this with the fact that the average software developer is 30 years old [stackoverflow.com] and the average age of Congress is 57 [slate.com] ... nearly double their age .... you have set the stage for an epic showdown between the technology industry and the political establishment. Which is exactly what's happening.
Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
Astute observations.
And yes, the battle will be between the tech industry + users vs the political establishment.
The "young people don't vote!" thing is a red herring. Especially this generation, I absolutely believe they would vote, if there were anybody to vote for. They got burned with Obama, and do you think either the R or D candidate in 2016 is going to have "end government surveillance" as part of their platform? Absolutely not.
Re: (Score:3)
Statistics would disagree. It's always been this way - younger people tend to care less about voting. My theory is at that age you're still so engrossed with exploring your environment, that you put little thought into shaping your environment.
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Insightful)
I could equally say it's always been this way because politicians and The Establishment have always been old.
My theory is that political parties run by older people tend to focus on the wishes of people just like them i.e. older people. Due to the party political whipping system, young people who investigate politics quickly realise they will be forced to vote in support of social policies they disagree with, making the career unattractive. This results in a downward spiral in which politicians ignore people unlike them, those people get turned off from politics, and thus the demographic makeup of the political elite can never self correct.
Re: (Score:3)
Or, perhaps the young are still naive enough to believe their rage matters?
"Change is coming" - sure it is. What will change is only that the naive, hopeful young will grow up and recognize that short of actual revolution, nothing is going to substantially change (no matter how many "causes" you "like" on facebook!) and that their energies are better spent just focusing on the things and people that are important to them.
Re: (Score:3)
That's because the elderly suffered much more stringent brainwashing as children that leads them to say that they "support those who fight for our freedom" while also promoting a police state worse than Orwells worst nightmare. The younger crowd grew up with much more access to information and see the police state for what it is and do not have the blind worship of government that the elderly do.
What a crock. Ever since myspace came along, every millennial I know has been quick to jump on the next big tracking/social app that comes along. Many older but not "elderly" people won't do that precisely because they are concerned about being tracked. Aside from that, what Snowden did can't be simplified into right or wrong because some people object to the way he did it, e.g. running off to Russia instead of standing on his principles and others object to parts of what he did, such as releasing documents
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Insightful)
Millennials are the same group marching along trying to restrict speech on campuses. Saying that they're better informed seems to be off by a fair bit.
Re: (Score:3)
So because they don't agree with you, they must not be well informed. Brilliant logic, Sparky!
Who said anything about agreement? I'm talking about restricting speech to walls, "safe zones," "trigger warnings on lectures," "disrupting lectures by trying to shout down people" "pulling fire alarms because of subject matter they don't like." Perhaps you should spend a bit more time looking at exactly how messed up millennials are. And boy are they messed up.
FEAR (Score:5, Insightful)
Millennials know who Snowden is because they watch the Daily Show.
The real difference is that older people are more likely to be fearful of whatever boogey man du jour the government is pushing. When I was a little kid, my grandparents really were afraid of communists. When I was a teenager, I was told by older folks what horrible stuff marajuana was, and how it would definitely ruin your life. In 2002 I was having a discussion with an older co-worker, who was a really smart guy, and he told me that he was concerned and scared about Sadam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction.
Today government officials tell us we are supposed to be afraid of terrorists, and that Snowden hurt their ability to fight these ubiquitous terrorists.
I do not know why, but as people age, they watch more TV, become more fearful about the state of the world, and buy the official propaganda. I'm am trying to avoid this.
Re: (Score:3)
Except polling data from shortly after Snowden blew the cover disagrees [people-press.org]. Millennials were least likely to be following news reports of government monitoring people's private communications. Heck, the very first sentence in TFS eliminates what you're saying as a factor: "according to KRC Research about 64 percent of Americans familiar with Snowden hold a negative opinion of him."
Here's the 2014 polling data on the same issue [people-press.org]. Interestin
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Informative)
I was referring to this study [mediainsight.org]. The largest source of news for Millennials is Facebook. That might seem like "the news" to someone without epic stupidity flowing through their veins, but some of us are so full of epic stupidity that we still think of Facebook as a place to get biased, self-reinforcing information from your little circle of "friends".
Re: (Score:3)
Perception of the cold was is similiar to the psychology of a nigerian s
Re: (Score:3)
I've often told them "you know, you could just stop taking A LOT of that stuff", especially after they tell me how sick they get from the side effects...
So why don't you write them a prescription for what they *actually* need. I'm guessing you're a certified doctor because you know what they should and shouldn't be on.
Please don't link Newsmax... (Score:2, Informative)
It's a nutjob neocon superchristian propaganda rag. More reputable news sources exist (yes, even Fox News is fine for stories like this).
Thanks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So you're saying that old people like Snowden and Millenials hate his guts?
Your summary dismissal of facts based on the source not being politically correct enough shows that you are very enlightened and tolerant.
During WWII, did your grandpappie tell his bosses to not trust that E=mc^2 crap because the guy who thought it up wasn't an Aryan pure blood?
Re: (Score:3)
Propaganda Works (Score:5, Insightful)
Propaganda Works. Smear someone for long enough, loudly enough, consistently enough, and people will eventually listen and believe. We've seen it happen to Assange, to Snowden, to dozens of other whistleblowers, in politics, in law enforcement, in finance. We've seen it happen to fucking gamers. Over time, a negative media narrative will stick.
The problem, at its core, is the media. They are not a fourth estate. They are the new First Estate.
Re:Propaganda Works (Score:5, Interesting)
Since propaganda can be seen as a specialized form of marketing, I wonder how that type of manipulation is going to adjust. It used to be that one coherent message would affect most of the population the same way, but increasingly the same techniques and narratives will have differing effects on different populations. So what we tend to see more and more of is propaganda generating smaller more fanatical groups along with others forming backlash against tem.. it kinda works if you examine only the successful parts of the application, but is no longer all that useful for changing general public perception, just creating partisans.
Re: (Score:3)
You've got the same biological responses that have always been in play (sex, emotional cues, peer pressure, etc.) that do just as much to serve as inhibit propaganda (some of the propaganda from WWII inferring peace-niks were back home having relations with lonely wives were just as likely to cause doubt as remind people what they were fighting for), and also disinfo campaigns (serving up several platitudes that you probably accept with a few questionable ones so you are less inclined to question their vali
Re: (Score:3)
Something I will be curious to see over the next few decades is how propaganda is affected by advertising saturation. Something that has been worrying marketers is that young consumers (ones more accustomed to multitasking and who grew up with heavy advertizing) filter out a larger amount of marketing than other groups. Even as their knowledge and skills improve (ah, the dark uses of all those psych majors), advertising is becoming more difficult and consumers more jaded and less uniform. Since propaganda can be seen as a specialized form of marketing, I wonder how that type of manipulation is going to adjust. It used to be that one coherent message would affect most of the population the same way, but increasingly the same techniques and narratives will have differing effects on different populations. So what we tend to see more and more of is propaganda generating smaller more fanatical groups along with others forming backlash against tem.. it kinda works if you examine only the successful parts of the application, but is no longer all that useful for changing general public perception, just creating partisans.
Having traveled to North Korea and seen what propaganda looks like, you are wrong. Good propaganda is something that people want to believe, or could easily believe, even if it isn't true. Good propaganda has no opposing viewpoint that is credible. Good propaganda speaks to the choir, where the choir intentionally designed to be the largest possible audience. And anyone who isn't in the choir is a bad person.
Consider as just one example the propaganda that in North Korea, everyone must choose from 28 [time.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Zing! And you missed it, and having listened to the entire bit about that little presentation, it's exactly the same. One is the media saying "listen and believe, don't examine" the other is a person which the media is giving clout to saying "listen and believe, don't examine."
Perhaps you'd like to explain the differences between a person which the media gives clout and refuses to examine her claims, and the media running with exactly the claims that aren't examined.
Dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
I am well beyond millennial status and I approve of what Snowden did so I am not sure I believe the survey results. While I do approve, I also wrestle with the fact that he broke the law and put Americans in jeopardy. That makes me wonder how the questions were asked. I mean I can certainly dislike someone but approve of what they did.
Re: (Score:2)
I've only just turned 35 so am on the border of being a "millennial", but I thought that phrase referred to people around the 15-25 range who were teenagers around the 2000-2009 time frame. 34 seems a bit old... More like gen X or gen Y.
Re:Dubious (Score:4, Informative)
I've only just turned 35 so am on the border of being a "millennial", but I thought that phrase referred to people around the 15-25 range who were teenagers around the 2000-2009 time frame. 34 seems a bit old... More like gen X or gen Y.
Generation X. The generation born by babyboomers, usually from 1970 to early 1980s. Teenagers in the late 80s and early 90s.
I think that what was shortly referred to as Gen Y are now millenials (Gen Y were those born too late to be Gen X).
Re:Dubious (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll be 50 in a couple of years and I think Snowden was a hero. Possibly he even qualifies as a super hero.
If you just look at the questions asked, they slanted the whole thing.
Of course Snowden hurt national security. But there are thins more important than national security. Like freedom.
If we don't have Freedom, then we are better off without national security, because maybe some freedom fighers (aka terrorists) will liberate the people of the US from the government.
Re: (Score:2)
I am well beyond millennial status and I approve of what Snowden did so I am not sure I believe the survey results. While I do approve, I also wrestle with the fact that he broke the law and put Americans in jeopardy. That makes me wonder how the questions were asked. I mean I can certainly dislike someone but approve of what they did.
Perhaps what you should be struggling more with is the fact that Snowden revelations haven't done a damn thing to hinder the abuses of our own government.
It's practically funny how you struggle with the fact that Snowden broke the law, and yet you find exactly ZERO laws broken on the government side.
Re:Dubious (Score:5, Informative)
These are large percentages we're talking about here. Even in the older age brackets about a third of people are supporting Snowden so the fact that you fall into that category doesn't mean much.
Re:Dubious (Score:5, Informative)
My Dad is an 89 year old WWII vet who is so conservative he makes John Boehner look like a member of the ACLU and HE approves of Snowden. He calls him a hero.
Re: (Score:3)
Can you actually explain how he did not put Americans in jeopardy, or does your aluminum hat cause you to automatically reject anything anyone from the government tells you.
Those idiots couldn't invade Pittsburg! (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.andycanfield.com/Th... [andycanfield.com]
I may be 66 years old, but Ed Snowden is my hero. He can sleep on my floor any time. He could sleep on my sofa if I had a sofa.
Re:Those idiots couldn't invade Pittsburg! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was at U.C. Berkeley in 1968. We forced the US out of Vietnam, we brought down Richard Nixon. We can do it again; we can bring down the US NSA.
How? The same way we did it before - by teaching everyone we meet. What did we teach them in the 1960's? "The government MIGHT be lying to you." Once they learned that, they began thinking and checking, and they saw that very often the government WAS lying. When Richard Nixon denied the accusations, noboty believed him.
What do we need to teach people today? Perhaps it is "The government does not TRUST you." The constitution says that Barack Obama is the boss of the NSA, and that the AMERICAN PEOPLE are the boss of Obama. So how can an organization not trust the boss? Keith Alexander has admitted to Congress that the NSA has lied to the American people, who are his boss. You lie to the boss you get your ass kicked. This posted message is part of that education.
The question is not whether Ed Snowden can get a fair trial. The question is whether Keith Alexander can get a fair trial. So far he hasn't had a trial at all, depite his confession that his agency broke the law.
Controlling for age effects? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if the study controlled for the fact that people tend to get more conservative as they age.
I bet if Snowden had done his thing in the 90's, the age distribution of approval would be similar, and I bet you'd get the same result in another 15 years, when those same millennials have kids and are facing their mortality.
Progressive ideals are risky, and it takes more courage to take risks as folks age and have more to lose.
Note this is purely an academic comment and is not meant to endorse or deny either snowden or the NSA.
digital natives (Score:2, Insightful)
Please, I hate that word. It's ok for Facebook and Google to data mine the shit out of the stuff their emails and instant messages, but when the govt does it everyone flips their shit. I'm not saying the govt is innocent, but rather, they should be boycotting these corporate entities with similar fervor.
Millenials are dumb. I do research on data mining (not for the govt).
Re: (Score:3)
Young people are fleeing FB in droves. Soon the only people on FB will be your grandma and your aunt locked in a never ending loop of right wing troll forwards. "RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: OBUMMER HATES AMERICAN PROOFS!!!!!!!!!"
Boomer Redux? (Score:4, Funny)
Not surprising (Score:2)
Fox news correlation ? (Score:2)
Was any attempt made to correlate people's views with the propaganda^w news sources that they viewed/read the most?
My Response (Score:2)
I bought a picture of his face with the words AMERICAN HERO right under it as soon as I read this headline. Guess it's time to get out and do some proselytization.
T-Shirt (Score:2)
That comment would have been a lot cooler if I'd written it correctly. I bought a T-Shirt with his face on. I'd look a right moron walking around with a printed, loose picture of Snowden saying LOOK AT THIS
Yes, slashdot, I know it's only been a minute since I posted a comment, but could you just let me post this and move on with my life?
Stazi (Score:3, Insightful)
Conventional wisdom says that the young and idealistic grow up and shed their naive ideals as they confront the real world. By that logic, as millennials age, they will recognize the need for the surveillance state to keep us safe from terrorism.
Real World? How about that terrorism isn't as big a threat as we are led to believe? We have a media that makes billions of dollars a month in scaring the shit out of us and by being bombarded by that shit, we begin to think that terrorism is right around the corner. Perception bias. I live in meth country, according to the media, I should be experiencing high crime and meth labs blowing up every day. We had one in the last five years and one before my state's legislature passed a law that made getting Sudafed harder to get than a gun - I'm in the South.
The other thing is, East Germany and the old communist states. My fellow old people forgot those abuses and are under the delusion that our government is beyond such things; when in fact, we are seeing an out of control security government bureaucracy. Are my fellow old people concerned? Nope. We are all worried about Clinton's email server, Benghazi, IS, gay marriage, and other social "issues" that some how are going to ruin our country and our freedoms.
I really don't think my fellow Americans know WTF Freedom means.
A question for ALL demographics. (Score:2)
Perhaps the standing question for every demographic as we try and paint a "Like" button on Snowden himself is, what if Snowden never happened?
Seems no one wants to think about how much worse this could have gotten. Unfortunately, apathy will ensure the inevitable, since I'm surprised the pollsters found enough people who still give a shit about this at all to form any opinion.
B.C., A.D., ... (Score:2)
Better than Congress (Score:5, Insightful)
Heard this before (Score:2)
Yeah yeah the current generation is going to go and change things. Just like how all the hippies in the 1960s went into government and legalized pot. Oh no wait they didn't. They sold out harder than ever.
Show the 64% the dick pics interview (Score:3)
Well (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm 45 and I say give him a Medal of Honor, the man is better for the US than all of Congress and the President combined.
They don't know who Snowden is (Score:4, Insightful)
According to John Oliver [youtube.com] most people think Edward Snowden is Julian Assange. Oliver did "man-on-the-street" style interviews in New York, asking people who Snowden was. Most people, if they knew the name at all, thought he was "the guy who sold government secrets to Wikileaks."
The report doesn't mention this at all, so I'm not sure what to make of the statistics. If you asked people "Which color is brighter: green or brown" but they had never heard of brown before, you wouldn't be able to draw many meaningful conclusions from it. The report itself [aclu.org] doesn't even mention what questions they asked people. There's really just no information here at all.
Is this ironic? (Score:3)
Generally it seems Millenials(the ones I know and work with) are more accepting of surveillance by the government and corporations.
Gen X and the Boomers have more of the 20th century leftover attitude that Americans have a right to privacy, and that the blood and treasure spent to keep the "World Safe for Democracy" by the "Greatest Generation", etc, The Constitution, etc, means we have those rights.
You would think Millenials would be more apathetic to the whole Snowden thing(which has been my experience talking to people about it). The attitude I've encountered is the usual, "I'm just on FB posting videos, etc, playing games, etc", "I'm not doing anything wrong", "why should I care?"
My experience is that Gen X and the Boomers are much more paranoid and concerned about rights, etc;
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I got a newsbreak for you, kid: grandpa doesn't ever die. The next generation just BECOMES grandpa. Every generation starts out more liberal and open-minded, and ends up more conservative and bitter. I can remember when my generation was against The Man too. And one day in the future the same millennials who are protesting in Ferguson and supporting Snowden now will be bitching about the leftie protestors and voting for Republicans.
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Informative)
Every generation starts out more liberal and open-minded, and ends up more conservative and bitter.
It's true. And in the meantime, issue by issue, slowly, things change. That's because even though they get more conservative as they age, they rode on the backs of their predecessors, being raised in a progressively more liberal society, giving each generation a slightly higher starting point than the one before it. In my parents' lifetime we've seen schools desegregated, interracial marriage legalized, gay marriage legalized, chemical weapons outlawed, pot decriminalized, etc etc etc.
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Insightful)
a substance that distorts reality, that can make you a veggie and slowly destroys your ability to have fun without it is just a way to make a whole generation less intelligent than the one before
You just described alcohol.
Re: (Score:3)
Research done in the 60's showed that almost 100% of heroin addicts ate cornflakes for breakfast as children. You could probably repeat the research today with Kinder Eggs in place of cornflakes.
If you are unhappy and turn to pot, it probably won't solve the problem. So you try something harder. obviously, it aint gonna work, so you take more and harder stuff, and it ends badly. If you start young, your judgement wa
Re:Disgusting. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't legislate it away though. That's not the job of the government and it wastes resources in a futile effort. Everyone clearly saw what kind of hell Prohibition caused so I fail to understand why they continue to repeat that mistake. You get rid of Pot the same way you get rid of cigarettes. Change the culture and make it uncool and ostracize those who partake. It's something society has to do not the government and no matter what you do there will always be a fringe that wont stop no matter what. This insanity of using the power of government to do things that government really can't do has to stop.
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Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Real change and progress in politics comes only as the old people die off and are replaced by the young. It's a slow process!
Re:Disgusting. (Score:5, Interesting)
> Real change and progress in politics comes only as the old people die off and are replaced by the young. It's a slow process!
It seems almost as if the survey didn't include my age group, or many of my colleagues from my age group. Some of us remember the 1960's, the frauds and nonsense of political and federal abuse against Vietnam protesters, and the Nixon era abuses of federal power quite well: Distrust of "the man" was fashionable, but demonstrably justified. And we had older acquaintances who remembered the "House Committee on UnAmerican Activities" of John McCarthy, and who'd lived with state enforced segregation in schools, or with being in American concentration camps for the Nisei, or in European concentration camps for being Jewish, gay, Communist, crippled, or for struggling against the invading armies.
Names change, and techniques of abuse change. So must the demands for liberty, and freedom.
Re: (Score:3)
It's shocking exactly how easy it is to verify this fact and how little difference that has made to the narrative.
Clearly the people who continue to verbally attack McCarthy aren't attacking him for being incorrect - they're attacking him for being right.
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Re: (Score:3)
Can you show me anywhere where it was said that the NSA was recording phone calls, reading mail (even email) or any other kind of surveillance on US citizens (except the metadata program, which was already ended by the time of the revelation according to the gov).
Every program I have seen exposed by Snowden was foreign surveillance, which is kind of sort of what we ask the NSA to do...
Re: Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
How did he destroy the economy? Did he write backdoors?
Did he intercept hardware and compromise it?
Did he wiretap American companies datacenters?
Oooh, I get it, he told you your government was doing this for your supposed safety.
Yeah fuck that guy, for telling me things.
We should shoot that messenger.
Re: (Score:3)
Now we might not get to eat too.
I don't see the problem here. Your food is not worth my freedom.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
How is willingly losing your hot fiance, 200k/yr job, etc. "put[ting] themself first" ?
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently he valued his own notoriety far more highly than either of those. It's a common trait in narcissists.
You mean the guy who said he didn't want the story to be about him? The one who gave hi information to responsible parties, so that he could stay out of the picture? That guy?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I was pretty sure that lying to Congress was illegal, but I guess I missed the part "unless you are too important to be put in prison, in which case it's totally legal", or that spying on your ex was illegal, using NSA resources.
Re: (Score:3)
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." That Ben Franklin quote gets thrown around quite a lot, but that's just because it's so demonstrably true. It's always possible that the people in charge right now are good and honorable