Civil Liberties Expert Argues Snowden Was Wrong (usnews.com) 209
An anonymous reader writes that in 2014, Geoffrey Stone was given access to America's national security apparatus as a member of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. Last week Stone, a staunch civil liberties supporter, moderated a live discussion with Edward Snowden from Russia, and this week he actually praised the NSA in a follow-up interview:
"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do. And they were careful and had a high degree of integrity... I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned, that they were designed in fact to collect information for the purpose of ferreting out potential terrorist plots both in the U.S. and around the world and that was their design and purpose...
"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.
"I don't doubt that Snowden was courageous and did what he did for what he thought were good reasons. But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy."
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Julian Assange opened at the Cannes film festival this week, revisiting how Wikileaks warned Apple that iTunes could be used as a backdoor for spies to infiltrate computers and phones.
well intentioned? (Score:4, Funny)
Good for pavement, I hear.
Re:well intentioned? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. The NSA reached spying on Americans one step at a time, each step thoughtful and with the best of intentions. Some paranoids may be shocked to learn there was neither nefarious intent nor careless disregard of people's rights. Just good intentions and thoughtful compromise.
Fascinating word, compromise. It's represents both the positive give and take of cooperation and the destructive loss of that which is important.
Re:well intentioned? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why did Clapper commit perjury in front of congress to cover up these programs?
Re:well intentioned? (Score:5, Funny)
He had the best, highest, most pure intentions.
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But then some bad things happen with the best of intentions. That is the whole point of the saying.
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Because both POTUS's Bush and Obama *ORDERED* the NSA, CIA, and FBI to do this illegal surveillance, torture, murder, invasion shit... with their customary excellence in execution [1].
And everyone knows that in American politics, and up until that man falls, one must ALWAYS protect the highest man involved, since he is the one who will get you a nice cushy job and life after you're gone for defending him.
That's why no President has fallen to the public in a very long time (and Nixon doesn't count, he quit).
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So why did Clapper commit perjury in front of congress to cover up these programs?
Besides, we have the documents leaked by Snowden, which revealed what they revealed. And as a result we know that we were lied to, and deceived, and criminally abused, over oh so many things...
Good intentions do not make up for that. Professionalism doesn't make up for that. Nothing, in fact, makes up for that.
Re:well intentioned? (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA reached spying on Americans one step at a time, each step thoughtful and with the best of intentions.
Bullshit. There is no possible noble justification for spying on and lying to the American public then trying to make an example out of the hero who revealed your treason. If some average person did something like that, say put a camera in a private area, then got caught, saying 'I had good intentions and just wanted to protect them' would look like a pathetic excuse. These assholes were on power trips, not making mistakes with good intentions.
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Don't lump Manning or Assange in with Snowden. Manning was an unhappy little cretin who decided to share the misery. He had and has no nobility of purpose. Assange is a megalomaniac. He just wants the attention and figured he'd get it if he picked a fight with goliath.
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When they are blatantly violating the US Constitution...it's not 'compromise', it's one more step on the road to fascism.
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An excellent point!
And it is the very nature of this compromise that allows for, over several iterations, the the situation that so many 'liberal democratic' nations find themselves in today.
To expand upon this, consider:
Your constitution provides a (theoretically and practically) static baseline of what is considered legal and acceptable. A mover and shaker at a certain alphabet agency conceives of an idea that would address the hot button issue of the day. Regulators and legislators examine his proposal,
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Only if you can tell the difference between "I disagree with that gentleman's opinion," and "That dude's just makin' trouble."
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You're welcome to look at me all you want. If you'd followed my home page link and done the slightest bit of research, you'd have answered your questions.
It's not as if shrouded my identity in secrecy and posted anonymously. Like you did.
Re:well intentioned? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most people who work for the government do so out of a feeling of patriotism and seeking to improve the common good? Sure there are a88holes in every job, but government jobs traditionally pay less than the civilian sector, many have a higher level of personal risk and those that require security clearances require you to forgo many experiences that the average citizen indulges in without worrying about the risk to their job.
I really don't think the majority of government workers, including the NSA workers, originally took the job because they want to engage in either power trips or voyeurism. I feel fairly confident most just want to do a good job defending their country.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Once you can look at everyone's data I imagine the temptation to shut down individuals and groups whose agendas you don't agree with are huge. And we can't for get the few a88holes who are in the system, who might rise to a position of power, as did J. Edgar Hoover.
These people generally aren't evil, they just are the victim of the boiling frog syndrome like the rest of us. In may ways they must be protected from themselves, for out sake and theirs.
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but government jobs traditionally pay less than the civilian sector
Perhaps are you not taking into account that some people are motivated by power over others rather than money? I.e. the multitude of police officers who are hopped up on 'power' over the less civilians?
Frog boiling (Score:2)
If you put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat, it eventually JUMPS OUT. This has been tested.
Slippery slope: Yes
Frog boiling: No
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Swearing just makes everyone think you're a tool, incapable of controlling yourself.
You are correct.
The devil is a gentleman who speaks with a honeyed tongue.
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No, you're just not getting it. They weren't breaking any laws. They have a massive amount of internal oversight to stop them from breaking any laws. Review boards and sign offs and you wouldn't believe the paperwork.
Here's what they don't have.
When a program is proposed or changed, nobody is tasked with brainstorming how the program or data could be misused. Because nobody assesses this, no mitigations are built in to the program. The entire focus of the oversight is on complying with the law.
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But then who would be left? If your definition of fascist is so permissive, it would include almost anyone.
Just doing its job (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is not to say that the NSA should have had all of the authorities it was given. [...] The NSA did its job -- it implemented the authorities it was given."
Just did its job. I've heard something like that before. If I can only remember where...
Re: Just doing its job (Score:4, Insightful)
The NSA probably did stay within what the courts authorized. I don't see why anyone would doubt this.
The FISA court is a rubber stamp. They almost never reject an NSA request. Why would the NSA go around the FISA court when they know the court will say yes? That would be stupid.
The problem is the FISA court isn't following the law, sometimes carving out ridiculously large exceptions to the law and the Constitution. They legislate from the bench, and all of this is done in secret.
As I understand it, lawyers are appointed and paid to argue against the NSA before the FISA court. The problem is these lawyers are paid by the government to argue against the government, which is a conflict of interest. I'd say that because there's no reason to expect those lawyers to mount a serious defense, it should be legal for someone else like lawyers funded by the EFF or ACLU to instead argue before the FISA court.
I'd also say that it makes sense to allow secrecy for a limited period of time when a warrant is issued for surveillance of a particular suspect. You probably don't want to tip off a terrorist that you're specifically monitoring them. For general surveillance, when the scope goes beyond a specific individual, there should be no secrecy at all.
Re: Just doing its job (Score:5, Interesting)
The FISA court is a rubber stamp. They almost never reject an NSA request. Why would the NSA go around the FISA court when they know the court will say yes? That would be stupid.
This was debunked around the last time Slashdot covered it. I don't know if the debunking ever made it here, though. I saw it from SwiftOnSecurity, I think. In short, the FISA rubber-stamped most requests only after heavy revision that happened before the final request was submitted. The reviewers looked at requests, had a hearty laugh, and suggested changes to the search scope so it wouldn't be rejected.
Back when I worked in government contracting, we'd do the same thing. We'd get the test criteria from the customer and make sure our tests passed before the government representatives showed up. Our record never showed any failures, because they never made it to the final scored test.
As I understand it, lawyers are appointed and paid to argue against the NSA before the FISA court. The problem is these lawyers are paid by the government to argue against the government, which is a conflict of interest.
There's no evidence that any such conflict has actually affected anything. The government is not a coherent entity. It is a multitude of departments, agencies, and hierarchies, usually with very intentional disagreements in purpose. If one guy is being paid expressly to advocate for human rights, and another guy is being paid to advocate for security, there's no reason to assume either will shirk their duties, regardless of where their paycheck comes from.
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Re: well intentioned? (Score:1)
Who's trying to prove anything, except you? He's just reminding people that good intentions mean squat.
Re:well intentioned? (Score:4, Insightful)
When it comes to governance, good intentions aren't worth the air used to state them. The personnel in these institutions perpetually change, and there is no way to ensure that the new crop have the same good intentions as the prior crop.
So, any overboard powers you grant with the understanding that good intentions will prevent their abuse will eventually be abused.
More commonly than not, the original crop doesn't have good intentions either, they are just pretending in order to deceptively win hearts and minds, with abuse being the primary intention.
So, the trite saying might not be true in all cases, but in this case it applies.
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Intentions are utterly arbitrary. The core requirement of democracy is truth. Any action taken by government that would impact the vote of a citizens, should not be kept secret from that citizen, any action what so ever. It is the right of every citizen to decide at election whether or not the actions of their government where acceptable and the current representatives elected or were deemed to be unacceptable and those representatives replaced. That is the core of democracy, the right of citizens to know
Re: well intentioned? (Score:2)
This is ridiculous on the face of it. Do you expect a General to consult with the populace on war tactics? These types of activities have always existed, the only question is, do they have an independent body for oversight. That's what Snowden's concern was. That these programs were being given enormous power without the checks necessary on that power. In interviews he repeatedly says spying and covert ops are necessary.
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"well intentions" is very rarely a good thing for any police or spy agency to follow.
And there is still no explanation why, when the NSA has someone on staff only to tell them if a given "program" is legal or not legal, presumably with the highest clearance level, they don't actually run all their programs by that person. It's almost like they know it's not legal, but what the hell, we've got good intentions.
And now that data gets to be datamined by the FBI looking for domestic crimes...
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And now that data gets to be datamined by the FBI looking for domestic crimes...
Suddenly an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes to mind.
You load sixteen tons
What do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the Company store
-"Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford
Strat
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Harshly stated, but there's a fair question here about whether the NSA looked long and hard for somebody who had both "civil liberties credentials" and a predisposition to be swayed by their arguments. And only that guy, chosen from hundreds, got the job. It's expensive searching for him, but its "credibility gold" and worth the money.
"Civil Liberties Expert" (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously not.
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You can be an expert on a subject without necessarily participating in it.
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If this is the same Geoffrey Stone as the man on the board of the ACLU, the man is a respected author and previously practicing lawyer on various import civil rights cases, with insights on the Supreme Court's handling of abortion cases.
I'm concerned that his remarks were edited and published completely out of context in the article. It's difficult to reconcile the claims in the article with any knowledge of civil rights or constitutional law.
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Given that his job was apparently basically to be the civil liberties guy that acts to make sure things were going as they should it sounds an awful lot like he either let them pull the wool over his eyes, or he wasn't really paying much attention to his job and now he basically can't admit that he fucked up so blames Snowden instead.
Everyone makes mistakes, but even some of the most well intentioned people struggle to accept blame when the shit hits the fan. His comments sound exactly like that - that he's
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[citation needed]
Sports enthusiast... aka, armchair quarterback.
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That or I was going to say that a Hepatologist doesn't need to experience liver failure to be an expert at understanding liver disease.
So, post-Snowden (Score:3, Insightful)
""The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."
Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.
Re:So, post-Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
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The letter of the law would be "unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause"
Randomly listening in on people doesn't qualify as "staying within bounds"
Unfortunately, when people vote for a big government that "solves problems", they kinda forget that it's that government itself that decides what it's allowed to do.
So if Snowden's revelations pissed you off about the scope of the US government, QUIT VOTING FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GROW THE GOVERNMENT.
If Snowden's revelations piss you off but you still like Obamacare, you're an incoherent, unthinking fool. You can pick a big powerful government, or one that respects your rights. You're living on a planet wh
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Remind me which candidates were against the NSA? Sanders? Paul? Anyone else?
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The government is not a monolithic entity, and it's possible for some parts of it to grow without harming civil liberties. Especially the parts that reign in corporations, such as the FTC can be funded in ways that would make America more free.
"it's possible" , "can be funded", "would make".
Really?
Nice hypothetical answer, and it's really nothing but a No true Scotsman [wikipedia.org] fallacy: no true government would abuse its power. All you did was invent a form of "true" government.
Now, go out and learn about the REALITY of regulatory capture [wikipedia.org] and how the business wind up using the government to help themselves.
Start THINKING, please.
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> There is substantial academic literature suggesting that smaller government units are easier for small, concentrated industries to capture than large ones. For example, a group of states or provinces with a large timber industry might have their legislature and/or their delegation to the national legislature captured by lumber companies. These states or provinces then becomes the voice of the industry, even to the point of blocking national policies that would be preferred by the majority across the wh
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This is naivety. The FTC is full of people from the same corporations that it is suppose to be controlling. This is the pattern of big government. The revolving door goes between the entities that are suppose to be regulated and the government branches regulating them. The bigger the government regulators get the more people from the entities being regulated get temporary positions in the government so that they can control how the regulations are written and applied, before they go to even better jobs outs
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> How is a larger government more corruptable?
Because a small government has no power worth corrupting.
If there are (next to) no rules, then why pay government to go around them?
Personally, I figure *someone* is going to be molding society to its desires, and I'd prefer that it be an entity that (1) is at least nominally responsible to the citizenry and (2) whom we can boot out every four years.
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> How is a larger government more corruptable?
Because a small government has no power worth corrupting.
And with no government at all, corruption will vanish ..... right?
If there are (next to) no rules, then why pay government to go around them?
You simply must give me the examples of the almost no Government success story countries. They have to be fantastically successful, and people will be enthusiastically attempting to emigrate to them.
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And how exact is the definition of "unreasonable"? And while we're at it, what is "speedy", "unusual", "cruel"?
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And how exact is the definition of "unreasonable"? And while we're at it, what is "speedy", "unusual", "cruel"?
You need to ask the GOVERNMENT what those words mean.
And we can TRUST our government, no doubt...
Re:So, post-Snowden (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.
Or, more cynically, that the NSA was making the civil liberties guy think they were sticking to the letter of the law.
Re:So, post-Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
That's pretty much the problem. Sticking to the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law.
Re:So, post-Snowden (Score:5, Insightful)
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Exactly and +1 to you.
It doesn't matter how well-meaned or "in the letter of the law" the things the NSA does, as long as it flies in the face of the spirit of the Constitution they are wrong.
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People see other spirits through their own. They can't do that any other way, because spirits are invisible to the physical eyes. The letter of the law, on the other hand, is just as visible as my body. We can thus disagree on the spirit of the law, but not on its letter.
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The letter of the law, on the other hand, is just as visible as my body. We can thus disagree on the spirit of the law, but not on its letter.
That depends on what the definition of "is" is.
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Re: So, post-Snowden (Score:1)
I actually think the NSA probably tries to stay within the bounds of what the FISA court has authorized them to do. The problem is that the court proceedings are in secret and the court has been willing to carve out ridiculously large exceptions to the fourth and fifth amendments. What Snowden revealed was what the courts in secret had authorized the NSA to do.
There's no reason for the NSA to go beyond the bounds of what the FISA court authorizes. That's because the FISA court almost never says no to the NS
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""The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."
Given the furor that was raised due to Snowden's revelations in 2013, it doesn't surprise me that - in 2014 - the NSA was sticking to the letter of the law with regards to their operations.
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Say what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
"But I think he was unduly arrogant, didn't understand the limitations of his own knowledge and basically decided to usurp the authority of a democracy"
That argument fails basic logic.
Because of Snowden we know the NSA routinely misled and outright lied to the democracy it was supposedly acting under the authority of?
The "authority of the democracy" had been thoroughly undermined by the NSA. Snowden brought this fact to light.
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The "authority of the democracy" had been thoroughly undermined by the NSA.
With a 95% reelection rate before and since, and probably again in five months, I beg to differ with that opinion. The "authority of the democracy" is thoroughly undermined by voter disinterest. The choice to play along is still a personal one.
Re:Say what now? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't vote for or against the NSA, you can only vote or against someone which only informs a representative that may or may not vote the way you want them to. And it's not like you have a whole lot of choice in candidates, the only viable candidates have been and always will be the same people.
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Your representatives are responsible for the operation of the government. The voters are responsible for the actions of their representatives, well, at least after reelecting them. The voters can petition to have anyone they want put on the ballot. And only the voters determine "viability". There is no excuse to reelect a crook into office. The choice is personal, from every angle.
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+1
The purpose of democracy is to hold our leaders to account. Snowdens revelations enabled that to happen for short time.
Our leaders create secret organisations that operate at arms length from them, but it doesnt mean they arent responsible for the actions they undertake. Snowden shone a spotlight on a secret organisation, the secret organisation hate it because they dont benefit from accountability, leaders hate it because its something they dont have control of which they should be judged for.
Never go fu
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner.
Remember LOVEINT?
What about recent allegations that many NSA workers are child-porn fiends [nextgov.com]?
When you operate with basically no oversight whatsoever, what's there to keep you within the bounds of basic professionalism?
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That is the fundamental problem. Almost no one actually believes that the NSA was acting in an unprofessional manner.
I do. Pretty near every abuse you can think of, the NSA has already done it. LOVEINT? Spying on friends? Spying on politicians to influence legislation? It's all there.
tbh I'm kind of surprised how fast the abuses happened.....I figured they could at last survive a couple decades before degenerating into corruption.
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Decades? This has been going on for millennia. It is the (anti?)climax of 13(46.5?) billion years of evolution.
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The earth is no different from the rest of the universe. It took all those years beforehand just to get the recipe right.
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Oh, I can think of a lot of abuses the NSA hasn't committed. Minor corruption or scandals (relatively speaking) like what have been committed are not the depth of this issue. It's the potential for much, much worse abuse that scares the hell out of me now that this precedent has been established.
Do you think US citizens are fundamentally immune to the sort of oppression visited on other people around the world? Americans would like to think so, but we're as human and flawed as any other group of people,
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> They have the guns after all. But they didn't. So it seems a bit strange to assert that they're seeking to construct this kind of society when it's easily done without it
"Almost no one"? Almost anyone who examines the extent and nature of the bulk, untargeted monitoring is appalled.
Translation (Score:4, Insightful)
>"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do."
"The more money the NSA give me, the more I'm willing to go out and schill for them in public."
Authority of a democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
He enabled democracy by telling voters what the government was doing. It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.
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YES
It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.
YES!!!
It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.
YES!!!!!!
It's not democracy when leaders hide their actions from voters.
No matter what... (Score:2)
Isn't that adorable... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is nice that his conclusion(and he doesn't think that he is being arrogant in assuming his carefully curated little field trip is sufficiently accurate and representative?) was that the NSA was mostly abiding by the rules they made up, rather than going mad with power; but it's simply smarmy nonsense to pretend that anything that clandestine has any meaningful relationship to democracy. On a good day, such an enterprise might be an unaccountable black box more or less attempting to do what they interpret a democratic society's mandate for them to be; but you could say the exact same thing about a hereditary despot who tries to govern more or less according to the interests of the population as he understands them: aligned with the objectives of a democracy only by their own preference, if at all.
intention (Score:1)
I came to the view that [the programs] were well intentioned
Almost *all* gov programs are well intentioned, at first. Then it becomes a game of empire building and power. Take for example the TSA. Well intentioned, in practice a total cluster fuck of 4th amendment violations.
They are breaking the letter of the law to enforce what the think is the spirit of the law. But wildly missed both.
Things like 'get a warrant' does not mean get a 'super warrant'. It means yeah you have to do fucking paper work.
Potemkin Village (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA led Stone through a figurative Potemkin village.
Who to believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who do we believe? The fellow who worked at/for the NSA back when they still have the cover of secrecy of a "pre-Snowden" world? Or the fellow who went for a rid-a-long after the NSA had knew they were being watched? One of them provided a bunch of evidence of NSA behavior. The other tells us they mean well.
The moment we were hearing the words "Unconstitutional but legal" the debate should have ended.
The best of intentions? (Score:2)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Sounds like the NSA has some juicy things on him (Score:2)
There is really no way he can come to this conclusion otherwise. It is a bit like praising the Nazis for mostly restricting themselves to killing Jews. And they were well-intentioned in that as well, if you take into account their entirely perverted world view. (No, I am not arguing they were anything but utterly evil. I am arguing that they thought they were doing good.)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and loss of common sense.
Democracy?! (Score:2)
He might have usurped the authority of a Republic, but no democracy. In fact, that is exactly the problem with it all: the political establishment determines the course of action rather than The People.
I don't dispute that most NSA employees are likely trying to be careful and exhibit integrity in their actions, but reality is that law enforcement types tend to be a little more heavy-handed, black-and-white types. This leads them to believe that "stopping the terrorists" justifies all their actions. I un
So what does this guy get in return? (Score:2)
Anything from money to his continued autonomy (I hesitate to use the word 'freedom') is my guess. Oh, he's on some 'presidential committee'. That makes everything ok. The government checked itself and found nothing wrong. March on comrades!
This story is all that some need to hear.... (Score:1)
This kind of soothsaying is all that it takes for some people, even some who are convinced that the government is doing something terribly wrong, to go back to sleep.
The truth about our culture is that we are rewarded for going along with it in at every small turn.
The truth is that every day you go through your routine, just relaxing and sitting down to eat with your family without even mentioning anything that's wrong with the social situation strongly conditions you all to accept it; every aspect of it.
Pe
Meet Geoffrey Stone (Score:2)
So, who is this "civil liberties advocate" Geoffrey Stone? First, he was the dean of the University of Chicago Law School when Barack Obama worked there. During the Bush Administration, he wrote articles about how NSA surveillance was illegal (2006). In 2011, he was appointed to "The President's Review Group on NSA Surveillance" and magically he wasn't so strident any more. He is to civil liberties what Larry Fucking Summers is to the economy. Just another jobber waiting for their turn at the helm.
He'
foolish (Score:2)
"The more I worked with the NSA, the more respect I had for them as far as staying within the bounds of what they were authorized to do.
that's great and all but just because you can doesn't mean you should. i fail to see how he doesn't understand this.
We already have one arguing that he was right (Score:2)
We already have one human rights activist, Glenn Greenwald, arguing that Snowden was right. Glenn G. did issue some articles on probably 0.1% of the materials he received.
After that he received and took a job offer that he could not refuse from a private company, that happens to be a major AWS services provider to CIA and other governmental organizations.
So, Glenn Greenwald shut up. But he still argues that Snowden was right.
Where is the truth, then?
Hey stop picking on him... (Score:3)
Geoffrey Stone was shown everything, Like the secrets they had from the beginning of the country. We were doing a GOOD THING giving blankets to the indians, and ISIS contaminated them with SmallPox. We also paid handsomely and fairly to the indians for every square foot of land we peacefully bought from them.
Also Geoffrey Stone was shown how every single slave brought to america was not really a slave but instead an independent contractor that was paid handsomely for their work.
Next week Geoffrey Stone will be shown how only really evil people like mass murderers are in US prisons and we would never put into prison someone for drug related minor crimes.
He is ALMOST right about snowden (Score:2)
BUT, the rest that snowden outed should have made him eligible for a bullet between the eyes. He was a true traitor to America, as well as the west.
Ok, so now that he made the statement ... (Score:2)
... Have they let his family go?
How embarrassing for that to come out yesterday (Score:2)
And just one day later:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-... [theguardian.com]
Very senior DoD official was finally pushed out of his own job, protecting whistleblowers, because he kept, you know, trying to protect whistleblowers. He's now testifying that multiple senior officials broke the law in at least three ways to abuse and ruin Thomas Drake, the guy whose fate caused Snowden to practice civil disobedience.
Geoffrey Stone (Score:2)
If Geoffrey Stone was in front of me now, I'd tell him that I don't give a rip if he is right or not right about the NSA's programs. The issue is that neither he, nor secret courts, nor faceless bureaucrats should be making the decisions about what is acceptable or not. If it's truly a democracy and not a sham puppet of dark forces, then the people should get to decide that. The fact that he had to get deep insider knowledge of the NSA to come to his own private conclusions tells you right there and then th
I doubt that they've contemplated the implications (Score:2)
Second, Stone fails to grasp the potential for such data. With this data, an incumbent and his cabinet can identify potential troublemakers, sort them by level of influence, and then simply selectively watch them until they break some obscure law, and prosecute it aggressiv
I surp you surp. (Score:2)
Someone was definitely usurping the authority of a democracy, but I am not convinced that it was Snowden. I also believe that most of the people who work for the NSA have good intentions, but intent is irrelevant to the impact. If I unintentionally kill someone, that individual does not suffer a lesser harm as a result. He is still just as dead as if I had meant to kill him.
The NSA would have us believe that the trampling of Constitutional rights was simply incidental, and that may well be true, but it d
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He's very carefully avoiding commenting on the ethics and morality of domestic surveillance and focusing instead on the legality of it. One could mistake him for a Chicago economist.
Some would find ethical and moral issues with abortions. Ethical and moral issues aside abortions are permissible based upon a ruling by the supreme court
The activities of NSA were authorized by congress and had oversight from the judicial and executive branches of government.
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