• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Snowden embraces American flag in WIRED photo shoot[W:511]

I am more concerned with what the NSA has done to us, than what Snowden has done to the NSA...


what did he actually reveal:


1. Secret court orders allow NSA to sweep up Americans' phone records
2. PRISM
3. Britain's version of the NSA taps fiber optic cables around the world
4. NSA spies on foreign countries and world leaders
5. XKeyscore, the program that sees everything
6. NSA efforts to crack encryption and undermine Internet security
7. NSA elite hacking team techniques revealed
8. NSA cracks Google and Yahoo data center links
9. NSA collects text messages
10. NSA intercepts all phone calls in two countries



Now some of these, meh, yeah, probably ok, and should not have said anything. But "treason" which is what they charged him with? I don't think so. I think the NSA has been far more treasonous than snowden towards the US Constitution and it's people. (Hi, Carnivore!)
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
...you mean, all those Federal Judges on the FISA court? You act like all the judges who have weighed in so far are impartial and have been subject to judicial review.

I've already detailed why the NSA watching itself doesn't make a lot of sense. You should really try responding to one of my arguments. This strawman/cherrypick shtick is starting to get kind of old.
Click to expand...

Oh, I forgot: your legal education trumps theirs. But no, there's others. And you know this. You want it to be illegal. In your interpretation, it is. That doesn't mean it actually is, though. Your response to that minor point? "That's irrelevant".
 
ReverendHellh0und said:
I am more concerned with what the NSA has done to us, than what Snowden has done to the NSA...


what did he actually reveal:


1. Secret court orders allow NSA to sweep up Americans' phone records
2. PRISM
3. Britain's version of the NSA taps fiber optic cables around the world
4. NSA spies on foreign countries and world leaders
5. XKeyscore, the program that sees everything
6. NSA efforts to crack encryption and undermine Internet security
7. NSA elite hacking team techniques revealed
8. NSA cracks Google and Yahoo data center links
9. NSA collects text messages
10. NSA intercepts all phone calls in two countries



Now some of these, meh, yeah, probably ok, and should not have said anything. But "treason" which is what they charged him with? I don't think so. I think the NSA has been far more treasonous than snowden towards the US Constitution and it's people. (Hi, Carnivore!)
Click to expand...
Shockingly, spy agencies spy. I know, I know, I was surprised, too.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
Shockingly, spy agencies spy. I know, I know, I was surprised, too.
Click to expand...



Those particular ones I am "meh" about.


but then again we spied on Germany, why? What about all the other spying such as the domestic spying? you are ok with that?
 
ReverendHellh0und said:
Those particular ones I am "meh" about.


but then again we spied on Germany, why? What about all the other spying such as the domestic spying? you are ok with that?
Click to expand...

Metadata collection isn't spying, it's holding the data because the phone companies don't. If they did, it wouldn't have been an issue. Warrants are still required to access that data, so it's hardly spying.

As far as spying on Germany...everyone outside of Five Eyes spies on everyone else, that's just how it works.
 
cpwill said:
A SHORT list that I have posted multiple times for Snowden's defenders, only to watch them each time refuse to even admit that he did this
Click to expand...

1.Its a link to a forum.
2.Most of the links are about the US spying on allies and other non-enemies including a news agency.
3.Drone use should only be in countries we are at war with.I could care less how many alledged terrorist leaders they killed because for every alleded terrorist killed there are many innocent civilians killed.Yes innocent civilians get killed in war,however we are not at war with those countries we are using drones in.
4.Its kinds of hard to care about all those things considered the betrayal by the US government.
5.Those things on that list from that forum pale in comparison to the betrayal by the US government.
6.Those with their mouths on the cocks on the government don't seem to care about the government spying on the American people.Heck some of them even go as far to claim the government isn't spying on us or that snowden should have turned himself in to the one group of people ****ting on the constitution as though he should pay for his good deed.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
Oh, I forgot: your legal education trumps theirs. But no, there's others. And you know this. You want it to be illegal. In your interpretation, it is. That doesn't mean it actually is, though. Your response to that minor point? "That's irrelevant".
Click to expand...

An untested law cannot ever said to be legal or illegal, neither definitively nor contemporaneously. The actions of the FISC were beyond testing by the inherently secret nature of the subject matter. This is all in the very well thought out rebuttals that you keep ignoring.

Take indefinite detention, for example. There is a law that says "indefinite detention (of terror suspects) is legal." But there are several proscriptions of such an action in superior legal documents, and those proscriptions need to be examined against currently defined groups and practices, such as "who/what is a terrorist?", and "can US citizens be declared terrorists and voided of their due process in spite of the lack of open rebellion and/or invasion?" So in order to actually rule whether or not indefinite detention is actually legal, and considered so right now, it must be tested and subjected to judicial review (which it is currently undergoing). So please understand that when you spike the "WELL, IT'S LEGAL!" football, I am not being inconsistent or judgmental or acting like a superior legal authority than the entire Judicial System when I say it's current status of legality has not been tested and would not have had a chance to have been tested without Snowden. As of right now, how YOU see the law (and, in fact, how one small sliver of the judiciary has commented on it) is completely irrelevant, because the secret actions of the NSA and FISC were beyond the scope of review.

Even a passing study of the Constitution reveals a document that is charged with protecting the American people from unjust governance. Any junior high school civics student knows this. The federal government is only allowed to do what the Constitution specifically says it can do, with some minor wiggle room left for case law provided by contemporaneous judicial review. Congress has made fantastic sweeping legislative pushes beyond it's original boundaries (as has the office of the Executive) which then effectively allows the Judiciary to affect broader changes through review, but no matter how this process might conspire to undo the original intent of the Constitution, it is a process that has been wholly skipped so far as relates to the topic we are discussing. THAT is why I am so charged about the whole thing in the first place. Yeah, it's Big Brother, and there is a very slippery slope there, but the fact that Congress has legislated it's way from under the Constitution with the help of the courts is what really grinds my gears. That is exactly how you boil the frog.

When you continue to harp on the words "legal" and "irrelevant", I can't help but hear "Befehl ist Befehl". When you whine, "BUT IT'S LEGAL!", that doesn't mean it's right, and if it's not right, society will eventually call that illegal. Like slavery. Slavery was legal, and slavery was wrong; society eventually caught up and made it illegal. So if we were 19th century plantation owners, and you were screaming at me that "IT'S LEGAL!!!", I would similarly tell you that's irrelevant, because it's still wrong.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
Metadata collection isn't spying, it's holding the data because the phone companies don't. If they did, it wouldn't have been an issue. Warrants are still required to access that data, so it's hardly spying.

As far as spying on Germany...everyone outside of Five Eyes spies on everyone else, that's just how it works.
Click to expand...



You think it's just metadata?


https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline


read on my good man, read on.
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
An untested law cannot ever said to be legal or illegal, neither definitively nor contemporaneously. The actions of the FISC were beyond testing by the inherently secret nature of the subject matter. This is all in the very well thought out rebuttals that you keep ignoring.

Take indefinite detention, for example. There is a law that says "indefinite detention (of terror suspects) is legal." But there are several proscriptions of such an action in superior legal documents, and those proscriptions need to be examined against currently defined groups and practices, such as "who/what is a terrorist?", and "can US citizens be declared terrorists and voided of their due process in spite of the lack of open rebellion and/or invasion?" So in order to actually rule whether or not indefinite detention is actually legal, and considered so right now, it must be tested and subjected to judicial review (which it is currently undergoing). So please understand that when you spike the "WELL, IT'S LEGAL!" football, I am not being inconsistent or judgmental or acting like a superior legal authority than the entire Judicial System when I say it's current status of legality has not been tested and would not have had a chance to have been tested without Snowden. As of right now, how YOU see the law (and, in fact, how one small sliver of the judiciary has commented on it) is completely irrelevant, because the secret actions of the NSA and FISC were beyond the scope of review.

Even a passing study of the Constitution reveals a document that is charged with protecting the American people from unjust governance. Any junior high school civics student knows this. The federal government is only allowed to do what the Constitution specifically says it can do, with some minor wiggle room left for case law provided by contemporaneous judicial review. Congress has made fantastic sweeping legislative pushes beyond it's original boundaries (as has the office of the Executive) which then effectively allows the Judiciary to affect broader changes through review, but no matter how this process might conspire to undo the original intent of the Constitution, it is a process that has been wholly skipped so far as relates to the topic we are discussing. THAT is why I am so charged about the whole thing in the first place. Yeah, it's Big Brother, and there is a very slippery slope there, but the fact that Congress has legislated it's way from under the Constitution with the help of the courts is what really grinds my gears. That is exactly how you boil the frog.

When you continue to harp on the words "legal" and "irrelevant", I can't help but hear "Befehl ist Befehl". When you whine, "BUT IT'S LEGAL!", that doesn't mean it's right, and if it's not right, society will eventually call that illegal. Like slavery. Slavery was legal, and slavery was wrong; society eventually caught up and made it illegal. So if we were 19th century plantation owners, and you were screaming at me that "IT'S LEGAL!!!", I would similarly tell you that's irrelevant, because it's still wrong.
Click to expand...
That's the entire point: if you want to argue right and wrong then go for it! Stop trying to shoehorn legality in there if all you have is your own interpretation that it SHOULD be. Exactly as we saw Henry David do it in this thread just a few posts ago. It's declared "illegal" and "criminal" in a completely arbitrary nature, ignoring the fact that it's, ya know, not have been found to be at all.

That's...kinda important, no?

Or is it irrelevant unless it supports your stance?

Now if you want to talk about right and wrong, go ahead. Let's hash that out. Because declaring something illegal- something that has not been found be at all- simply because you think it should be is a complete nonstarter.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
That's the entire point: if you want to argue right and wrong then go for it! Stop trying to shoehorn legality in there if all you have is your own interpretation that it SHOULD be. Exactly as we saw Henry David do it in this thread just a few posts ago. It's declared "illegal" and "criminal" in a completely arbitrary nature, ignoring the fact that it's, ya know, not have been found to be at all.

That's...kinda important, no?

Or is it irrelevant unless it supports your stance?

Now if you want to talk about right and wrong, go ahead. Let's hash that out. Because declaring something illegal- something that has not been found be at all- simply because you think it should be is a complete nonstarter.
Click to expand...

Let me ask you a question:

Do you think it's even possible for a Court, any Court, to perform an illegal action? I mean, is it definitionally possible, or is that a logical contradiction like a square circle?
 
Gonzo Rodeo said:
Let me ask you a question:

Do you think it's even possible for a Court, any Court, to perform an illegal action? I mean, is it definitionally possible, or is that a logical contradiction like a square circle?
Click to expand...

Sure. Wouldn't it have to be found as such? Or do we just call things illegal because we think they should be?

Right now, this is like people saying abortion is illegal. Because they think it should be.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
Right now, this is like people saying abortion is illegal. Because they think it should be.
Click to expand...

Unrestricted abortion is illegal almost everywhere. Roe v. Wade allows states to place restrictions against certain practices and timelines allowable for abortions. Yet people will still declare the USSC judged in favor of the medical right to privacy, when in fact the court judged in the public interests of the government as pertains to a woman's right to choose vs the state's right to regulate such a choice. So, there's that. It is just as irrelevant to declare "BUT ABORTION IS LEGAL" if someone wanted a late term abortion in a state that places restrictions on post-viability abortions. It's a misunderstanding of the law that causes people to interpret the legality of things they want to do, which is another reason why we have a judicial review process!

But I digress. Let's look at the rest of your answer, which I find very interesting:

Sure. Wouldn't it have to be found as such? Or do we just call things illegal because we think they should be?
Click to expand...

And by what process is any court subject to examination? Specifically, what process is a secret, closed court subject to?
 
No one said unrestricted, so that was...interesting of you.

And I don't know...hmm...I wonder if there's been any circuit court rulings...hmmm......
 
OldWorldOrder said:
No one said unrestricted, so that was...interesting of you.
Click to expand...

Well, some abortion is illegal. And most people will fight that notion because they have a simplistic and uninformed view of why any abortion is legal in the first place. Ask any female progressive feminist and she'll likely tell you she has the right to obtain an abortion in any state she wants, under any circumstances, and that state regulation of such decisions are illegal and unconstitutional... and she'd be wrong.

The thing is, though, these matters have been discussed in the courts for a very long time now. That's how judicial review works. This is why the actions of a secret court can't be labeled "legal" necessarily, which is why the presupposed legality of any such actions this court might make is largely irrelevant.

And I don't know...hmm...I wonder if there's been any circuit court rulings...hmmm......
Click to expand...

The Circuit just heard arguments last week. It could be a while before we know.

But isn't it fantastic that the conversation is being had finally? And this is also only over metadata. The full scope of the programs being utilized against US citizens that aren't suspected of a crime, however, is going to be a much bigger deal if/when that ever comes down the pike. It took Verizon fighting the FISC for this to be an issue, and only after Snowden blew the whistle.
 
Last edited:
Without bothering to read through all of the previous posts, let me summarize my feelings as follows:

Screw Snowden. He took America's secrets to Russia and he can rot there as far as I'm concerned.
 
TeleKat said:
Patriotism isn't about obeying the law or loyalty to the government. It's about being loyal to the country and the ideals it was founded on. Arguably, Snowden showed that more than any other scumbag in the NSA. At least he didn't feel the need to boldface lie to the American public about the government's surveillance habits.
Click to expand...

And he took all of America's secrets to Russia with him so that he could share them with that reknowned humanitarian Vladamir Putin. The most disappointing thing about this is the number of people who so hate their own government that they celebrate this traitor.
 
Wiggen said:
And he took all of America's secrets to Russia with him so that he could share them with that reknowned humanitarian Vladamir Putin. The most disappointing thing about this is the number of people who so hate their own government that they celebrate this traitor.
Click to expand...

Wiggen said:
Without bothering to read through all of the previous posts, let me summarize my feelings as follows:

Screw Snowden. He took America's secrets to Russia and he can rot there as far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...




You are being fed administraton propaganda. Where would you have him flee too? and if you say he should stay and stand trial, if he believes the game to be rigged wouldn't that be a poor choice?
 
ReverendHellh0und said:
You are being fed administraton propaganda. Where would you have him flee too? and if you say he should stay and stand trial, if he believes the game to be rigged wouldn't that be a poor choice?
Click to expand...

Administration propaqanda? He took American secrets and he fled to Russia, a country currently run by a former KGB Colonel. Those are simply facts.

You are incredibly naïve or simply prone to not liking your country very much if you don't believe he took military secrets with him and that the Russians now have those secrets.
 
cpwill said:
National Defense Budget Estimates for 2015.

Do you see how the funds allocated to the agencies within DOD are not "infinite"?
Click to expand...

When did I make the claim that the DOD, who I work for, had infinite funds?

cpwill said:
Really. It amazes me how libertarians...
Click to expand...

:roll:

cpwill said:
can be so quick to grasp the fundamentals of public choice theory, of the institutional and deep reasons behind government failure, of how the incentives and structures of government keep it from ever being effective and efficient, but somehow maintain the ability to just turn off that part of their brain when discussing the parts of the government responsible for intelligence collection. THEN apparently government runs every bit as perfectly, omnisciently, and omnicompetently as the most radical marxist would insist it does. :roll:
Click to expand...

Yeah, it has nothing to do with our right to privacy, its just that we turn our brains off. Sorry about that, you've convinced me, ANYTHING for the sake of intelligence collection is the new game, our rights be damned!

I couldn't roll me eyes at the likes of you enough.
 
Wiggen said:
Administration propaqanda? He took American secrets and he fled to Russia, a country currently run by a former KGB Colonel. Those are simply facts.

You are incredibly naïve or simply prone to not liking your country very much if you don't believe he took military secrets with him and that the Russians now have those secrets.
Click to expand...

Fled to Russia? :lol: Someone clearly doesn't have the facts...

And you have the balls to call anyone else naive?
 
OldWorldOrder said:
A source for something that isn't happening?

Do you have a source for your ignorant post, though? Did it actually just come from your brain or what?
Click to expand...

I need a source to ask someone for a source for THEIR claims? :roll:

Negative proof - RationalWiki
Click to expand...

I'm not the one claiming to know a negative, perhaps you should read your own link before you bother to prattle about logic to your superiors.
 
ReverendHellh0und said:
You are being fed administraton propaganda. Where would you have him flee too? and if you say he should stay and stand trial, if he believes the game to be rigged wouldn't that be a poor choice?
Click to expand...

This is what cracks me up about these apologists for the government spying on the people. Why would anyone in their right mind who exposed government wrong doing trust that they would get a fair trial and why would they want to be punished for doing the right thing? It would be stupid to stay in that country and would be stupid to flee to a country that will either extradite to that country you just fled or not stop that country from snatching you up.
 
JasperL said:
I must be missing something with Snowden, because there are a lot of people on the left and right who are normally civil liberties advocates who despise the guy. We know the head of NSA has no problem looking into a camera and lying to the Congress and the public about what the agency is doing. We now know the CIA spies on Senators investigating past wrongdoing and is more than happy to delete/disappear documents that reveal wrongdoing. We know that going through the chain of command is futile. The Obama administration is brutally cracking down on leakers, and is as we speak threatening to jail journalists for failing to reveal their sources, in their prosecution of leakers who revealed illegal activity by the intelligence agencies.

So in a broad sense, without endorsing everything Snowden has done, I'm not sure what someone wanting to expose the extent of the police state in the U.S. is supposed to do? The NSA was simply operating without meaningful restraints, including gathering near blanket coverage of all electronic communications in the U.S., of everyone. And every check on their ability to sift through the data from non-terrorists (aka innocent Americans charged and suspected of no crimes) has been shown to be window dressing, ineffective.

I guess I don't understand how a person can complain about the near total police state we live under, with our government having nearly unrestricted access to ALL our communications, then demonize a person who took a huge risk to expose it all. Sure, he's imperfect, and undoubtedly has made mistakes, but the venom directed against him by civil liberties advocates is really puzzling to me. I don't like that he's hiding out in Russia, and before that China, but the U.S. makes it impossible for him to seek refuge in any other country, so we can't exactly complain that he's not traveling because the U.S. has made that impossible. And I don't expect him to be arrested and voluntarily go to solitary, never to be heard from again, which is what the U.S. did to Manning, for far LESS.
Click to expand...

I don't know of any consistent civil liberties advocate on the left who wants Snowden in prison/Guantanamo, just some centrists who are wrongly labeled as being on the left by the far right.
 
Lachean said:
Fled to Russia? :lol: Someone clearly doesn't have the facts...

And you have the balls to call anyone else naive?
Click to expand...

He didn't flee to Russia? Oh wait a minute, you're right. He first fled to Hong Kong, and then went from Hong Kong to Russia. Where Vlad met him with open arms. What is it about you Libertarians and your love for Vlad and your hatred for you own country?
 
jamesrage said:
This is what cracks me up about these apologists for the government spying on the people. Why would anyone in their right mind who exposed government wrong doing trust that they would get a fair trial and why would they want to be punished for doing the right thing? It would be stupid to stay in that country and would be stupid to flee to a country that will either extradite to that country you just fled or not stop that country from snatching you up.
Click to expand...

Another lover of the freedoms enjoyed in Russia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom