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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

Your assertion that the NSA as "experts" are incapable of abusing the rules or violating our Constitutional right to privacy is moronic.

Your assertion that I made that assertion is dumb as ****. I never said they were incapable, did I? The only thing that I implied was that there was no proof they had. But of course, the chicken littles are in a rush to believe anything, while their hero gives secrets to the Chinese.

Of course, imagine how dumb the average person is and keep in mind half of everyone is dumber than that.
 
Your assertion that I made that assertion is dumb as ****. I never said they were incapable, did I? The only thing that I implied was that there was no proof they had. But of course, the chicken littles are in a rush to believe anything, while their hero gives secrets to the Chinese.

Of course, imagine how dumb the average person is and keep in mind half of everyone is dumber than that.

Exactly what I was thinking when I read your diatribe.
 
tucker's tots take on one of the "experts," one william binney, 30 years technical director for nsa

NSA analyst William Binney explains what They know about you | The Daily Caller

in the course of 5 pages of q&a, the professionally trained mathematician asserts:

data is collected from some 40 to 50 companies, nsa can access the content of any phone call, no digital communications are secure from nsa data collection, no textual materials from email or phone, 500k to one million are targeted---all their textual material is looked at...

the contents of the phone conversation between tamerlan tsarnaev and his wife, for example, were disclosed by going back retroactively and listening in to recorded discussion, which didn't prevent boston...

they're collecting so much data they're dysfunctional, 10 gigabits per second or 1.25 million 1000-character emails per second, so much data they can't move, restricted to "retro analysis..."

for example, this interview with the caller---i'm on nsa's target list so the nsa and/or fbi can go back and listen in on this entire conversation, and since the caller is now part of my community you can assume you can now be listened to too...

unlike snowden i went to the ig, it didn't do any good...

if snowden has access to the system then, yes, he can bring up emails, passwords, credit cards, phone calls...

tremendous amounts of data collection but very little analysis, so the probability of preempting what they're trying to prevent is very low...

snowden's leaks tell the enemy nothing they didn't already know, the people really clued in for the first time are the american public...

that's who they're trying to keep secrets from, the terrorists already know...

it would be very simple to target any group of americans, for example tea party groups, you just take the key point tea party and plug it in the graph and you've got everybody...

is any of this data passed to the irs---that's a question the govt needs to answer...

but when do they tell you the truth, only after they've been exposed, and then they tell you no more than what's been made public...

it is certainly possible hypothetically to target domestic political opponents for snooping...

oversight by congress and the courts is a joke, the intel community throws around technobabble to people who have no idea what it means, it's a rubber stamp, zero fisa requests were denied in the last year...

take it from an expert?
 
tucker's tots take on one of the "experts," one william binney, 30 years technical director for nsa

NSA analyst William Binney explains what They know about you | The Daily Caller

in the course of 5 pages of q&a, the professionally trained mathematician asserts:

data is collected from some 40 to 50 companies, nsa can access the content of any phone call, no digital communications are secure from nsa data collection, no textual materials from email or phone, 500k to one million are targeted---all their textual material is looked at...

the contents of the phone conversation between tamerlan tsarnaev and his wife, for example, were disclosed by going back retroactively and listening in to recorded discussion, which didn't prevent boston...

they're collecting so much data they're dysfunctional, 10 gigabits per second or 1.25 million 1000-character emails per second, so much data they can't move, restricted to "retro analysis..."

for example, this interview with the caller---i'm on nsa's target list so the nsa and/or fbi can go back and listen in on this entire conversation, and since the caller is now part of my community you can assume you can now be listened to too...

unlike snowden i went to the ig, it didn't do any good...

if snowden has access to the system then, yes, he can bring up emails, passwords, credit cards, phone calls...

tremendous amounts of data collection but very little analysis, so the probability of preempting what they're trying to prevent is very low...

snowden's leaks tell the enemy nothing they didn't already know, the people really clued in for the first time are the american public...

that's who they're trying to keep secrets from, the terrorists already know...

it would be very simple to target any group of americans, for example tea party groups, you just take the key point tea party and plug it in the graph and you've got everybody...

is any of this data passed to the irs---that's a question the govt needs to answer...

but when do they tell you the truth, only after they've been exposed, and then they tell you no more than what's been made public...

it is certainly possible hypothetically to target domestic political opponents for snooping...

oversight by congress and the courts is a joke, the intel community throws around technobabble to people who have no idea what it means, it's a rubber stamp, zero fisa requests were denied in the last year...

take it from an expert?


Wasn't that zero FISA requests out of thousands. One request to Verizon was for all data for three months. That's not one call intercept, but all USA data for three months. One request out of thousands. Do the math.
 
They are acting under warrants issued by the FISA court in compliance with Congressional approval. I do not agree with current activities, but one is not enough to stop the activity...

It is an abuse of the warrent procedure. The warrants are meant to be taken against people, individuals, that are, with probable cause, committing an illegal act. Now I don't know how many people verizon has subscribed but there are definately thousands of people subscribed to them. Is anyone here, or even in the NSA, have actual problable cause, as defined under our warrant system, to search and seize the records of those thousands of people? Of course they do not. It doesn't matter whether the FISA court and Congress approved of this, it was illegal for them to do so under the 4th Amendment.
 
Whistle-blowing is revealing illegal acts. It's not about revealing top-secret information.

Agreed. And the NSA monitoring and seizing thousands of peoples phone records and god knows what else that Verizon gave them was certainly illegal. Unless of course they actually had probable cause to search and seize from each and every single one of those people. I would love for the NSA to prove that they had probable cause to search and seize my records...I happen to be a verizon customer so I'm sure my name is somewhere among all that data they have.
 
BTW, anyone ever remember just before the Patriot ACT was passed? How the politicians kept telling everyone that the only thing that it would be used for is to search for terrorists? And those that supported it kept saying that "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about". Guess all that was a load of BS.

pfft...another prime example of how the government will abuse its power also.
 
Whistle-blowing is revealing illegal acts. It's not about revealing top-secret information.

Did Snowden reveal top secret information or information can can reveal top secret information? The Russians want him and consider him a top prize, a golden prize.
 
there was no proof they had

there's no proof prism or boundless prevented anything, despite the admin's passionate efforts to posit otherwise

Lawyers and intelligence experts with direct knowledge of two intercepted terrorist plots that the Obama administration says confirm the value of the NSA's vast data-mining activities have questioned whether the surveillance sweeps played a significant role, if any, in foiling the attacks.

NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say | World news | guardian.co.uk

najibullah zazi, the ny subway plot, and david headley, who went to india to scout for the mumbai massacre which killed 168 innocents in 2008

both products of "conventional surveillance," "old fashioned tip offs," worked by british intel and scotland yard

zazi began with a cid investigation of a terrorist cell in northwest england which led to an arrest in 2009 and the seizure of suspects' computers

an email address, sanapakhtana@yahoo was traced to pakistan, a warrant was obtained to track it, so when zazi in colorado contacted sanapkhtana to confirm a bomb recipe the fbi had him

fbi agent eric jurgensen testified thus in court, zazi's lawyer michael dowling confirms to the guardian the account, and british foreign minister david davis concurs

"that was the operation that led to the initial data links to zazi," says davis, who credits "traditional investigative work," "clue driven," and not the result of "grand data sweeping stuff" which doesn't merit a warrant

headley---in july, 09, the brits were watching him cuz they suspected he was plotting to bomb a danish newspaper for printing anti prophet cartoons

"an intelligence expert and former cia operative who asked [the guardian] to remain anonymous because he had been directly involved in the case" said, "nonsense," prism and boundless "played no role at all in the headley case, that's not the way it happened at all"

headley was first spotted when he contacted a cid informant

headley is "a peculiar choice for the admin to highlight as an example of the virtues of data mining, the fact that the mumbai attacks occurred with such devastating effect in itself suggests that the nsa's secret programs were limited in their value as he was captured only after the event"

headley was an informant for the dea as of 05, perhaps an informant for the fbi and cia as well

his wife, faiza outalha, told the us embassy islamabad that her husband was on a "secret mission in india," who was also "a drug dealer, terrorist and spy"

buzzfeed (tina brown, formerly newsweek) says the same

Public Documents Contradict Claim Email Spying Foiled Terror Plot

are you familiar with ben smith?

read much?

obama, yes, he has matured...

but has he come clean?
 
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the white house welcomes debate...

Several news outlets reported in 2006 that the Bush administration was compiling a massive database of Americans’ long-distance and international calls.

politico above

under obama's boundless, all digital communications are accessible...
 
“In many ways it’s even more troubling than [Bush era] warrantless wiretapping, in part because the program is purely domestic,” says Alex Abdo, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project.”But this is also an indiscriminate dragnet. Say what you will about warrantless wiretapping, at least it was targeted at agents of Al Qaeda. This includes every customer of Verizon Business Services.”

NSA's Verizon Spying Order Specifically Targeted Americans, Not Foreigners - Forbes
 
Yes, terrorists are now forced to no longer use cellphones to communicate their terrorist plans.

They will have to rely on carrier pigeons and skywriting to get their plans across.

Be on the look out for terrorist pigeons.

carrier-pigeons.jpeg
 
Did you know that your government was recording every single email, telephone call and text in the world? Did you, I sure as hell didn't know it had gone that far. It sure doesn't make me feel safer, it makes me feel that they've gone ****ing nuts.

Although it should have been obvious this was going to happen. It doesn't make it right; we as a people just should have been more cynical at the passage of the Patriot Act and the broadening of FISA through the Terrorist Surveillance and Protect America Acts.
 
You need to go to a real history class, if you think this is something new.

Its not new... nor is sin, abuse of power, tyranny and oppression of the citizenry. It just becomes institutionalized as soon as citizens retard their vigilance and allow such to happen with a simple "oh well".
 
Illegal is the key word. We can't let people hide behind the term whistle-blower when they are revealing top secret information. So who decides if it's illegal? Some grunt sitting at a keyboard who's been sworn to secrecy? He'd better damned well be right or he goes to jail.

Illegal acts conducted in "top secret" does not make such acts legal.

if he is right, he will probably go to jail. This will not end well for him personally. The only question from his standpoint will be whether history treats him well and whether he lives the rest of his life believing this was "worth it".
 
if he is right, he will probably go to jail. This will not end well for him personally.


:shrug: maybe. Thus far his actions seem to indicate that he'd rather live abroad, trading "something" to other governments in return for protection from extradition to the United States.

Anyone have any guesses what that "something" might be?
 
:shrug: maybe. Thus far his actions seem to indicate that he'd rather live abroad, trading "something" to other governments in return for protection from extradition to the United States.

Anyone have any guesses what that "something" might be?

The real Obama birth certificate (in .pdf, of course)?
 
BTW, anyone ever remember just before the Patriot ACT was passed? How the politicians kept telling everyone that the only thing that it would be used for is to search for terrorists? And those that supported it kept saying that "if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about". Guess all that was a load of BS.

pfft...another prime example of how the government will abuse its power also.

I assume 95+% out of the mouths of 99+% of all federal politicians (from both parties) and major bureaucrats is BS.

Anyone that actually trusts a major, American federal politician/bureaucrat is ridiculously naive, IMO.

Unfortunately, that probably includes most Americans...or at the very least, a large minority of Americans.
 
He goes to jail anyway. Revealing national secrets to the public is treason, regardless of his beliefs. He'll be lucky if he gets anything under 25-30 years in prison. Both he and Manning should be executed to make an example for others to think about before they develop delusions of heroism.

From what I can tell there is a huge difference between Manning and Snowden. Manning leaked all of that information indiscriminately and did so for the sole purpose of hurting the US. Snowden actually leaked just enough information to let the public know that the people of this country are being investigated without good reason and no probable cause and did so with the intent to make America a better place. Snowden might not be a hero...but he sure as hell is not a criminal imo.
 
You don't have to like it - but this program had all three branches of government input to it, meaning that it had passed the bar for legality. I understand if you disagree with Snowden's logic that it shouldn't be, but that does not put you in the position of being able to call down shame or anything else on those who point that out to you. It is not Snowden's right to overturn our system of self-government because he does not like the conclusion it has come to.

You used the wrong term here. No one in the NSA was elected. They were appointed and hired by people that lied to American citizens. And for that, yes, Snowden, and every other American Citizen, has a right to overturn that system and get it changed.
 
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