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Is Snowden a traitor?

Read article ... Do you agree he is a traitor or disagree?


  • Total voters
    81
Hyperbole. Why even bother?

Strawman.

She are the one here arguing that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, policemen, firefighters, schoolteachers, and postal workers who work for our federal government are the Enemy. If you want to decry the statement, fine, but it means you can no longer claim that nothing Snowden released has harmed the security of the American people.

Until then, she is in the precisely the same position as the Westboro folks. F--- dead soldiers because they are the Enemy.

lol yes..right. Diplomats who only desire peace- give me a break.

Annoyingly so, in fact. It is a common error on their part, for example, to confuse a lack of fighting with peace, go native, and perceive talks as an objective in and of themselves.

Your conclusions in this thread indicate indoctrination.

Actually what they indicate is experience and education. Hers indicate paranoia, an inability to see the world in anything other than binary and a distinct lack of having thought this issue out. Her paranoid delusions that somehow the federal government is your enemy (which she cowardly refuses to actually fight, indicating that it isnt' her enemy because she has already lost and accepted servitude) has led her to adopt an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend approach, even when that results in her supporting people like Snowden who objectively help to get your fellow citizens killed in the name of brutal tyranny. What a glorious freedom fighter she is, so brave here in DP, and yet so unable to match even a portion of the sacrifice she demands for others.
 
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You have to have loyalty to be a traitor. Benedict Arnold was one... we don't know if Snowden was though. Just being from a country doesn't buy loyalty.

If you are loyal, you aren't a traitor. Being from a country may not buy loyalty, but it does buy an accusation of treason if you betray that country's secrets. That's not my opinion, that's the law.
 
Because our judicial system is so honest and fair. :roll: If the gov. willingly breaks constitutional law whats to stop them from silencing whistleblowers through the federal court? How can you blindly follow our idiotic leaders? Its hilarious. Dumb leading dumber.

Yes, far better take the Snowden approach. Turn everything over to Vladamir Putin, because God knows he's trustworthy.:lamo
 
Manning spent years in solitary confinement before he was put on trial. USA citizens and others have been held in Guantanamo and killed without any legitimate due process.

Do you have names of U.S. citizens killed in Guantanamo? Or is this more Far Left/Right paranoia?
 
Those who support Big Government without question may not be disenfranchised, but they are being lied to. Behind every truth is a dollar sign. Patriotism is a state funded religion. If flag waving didn't release endorphins, no one would do it.



ah yes-- the over used, and non creative "you must be young" response. I was born just before Iran-Contra, thanks very much. :roll:

Pity the only thing you apparently have learned in the intervening years is to hate your own country. A country that has provided you with an education, a reasonable life style, and enough time on your hands to go on the Internet and attack it.

Unless, of course, you aren't an American.
 
I won't deny that. I feel as if only special interests are being represented by this government.

Maybe you'd be happier somewhere else? Somewhere where the 'government' represents people like you?
 
I know this may seem old news yet more is being released and a recent conversation with a friend does not view him this way.

I followed this story lightly and would like to dig more and hear your thoughts.

Here is an article that sums up my perspective so far. What do you think?

Yes, Edward Snowden Is a Traitor | The Diplomat



Yeah, he's a traitor for sure...

The whole article is based on this:

I always felt that Snowden was a traitor.

What's the point in reading any further...anyone with a closed mind will surf the net until they find evidence to support their uninformed opinion.

I did read further, clearly this writer doesn't spend a lot of time thinking things through.

For a nation that has been at war pretty much all of fifty years killing to preserve rights, you people sure are quick to surrender them in the face on trouble, real or perceived.
 
And again, the misuse of the "our" pronoun.

We the people are sovereign and own this government, and at the very least it represents us. It is ours. If it is not yours, then you belong to a different nation-state, and are here illegally. You don't get a choice whether or not it is your government unless you choose to emigrate to another country.

Nope, it's pure logic. To associate the People w/the govt. means that the govt. works for the people, which is false.

Incorrect. To associate the government as belonging to the people is to accurately identify the flow of sovereignty. Simply because the government doesn't behave does not mean that it does not belong to us.

The US govt., like most other plutocratic regimes, works against the People's interests in favor of their private/corporate sponsors. Therefore the govt. is not the people, but rather its adversary.

Incorrect. For example, I do not work in your interests, but rather my own. This does not make us enemies.

The WBC is just a bunch of bigots, much like their populist GOP brethren running around screaming "Muslum" or "spic."

Fascinating. Perhaps you can link me to these GOPers running around screaming muslim or spic. In the meantime, your logic is the same as the WBC folk - because you refuse to admit that there is a difference between policies you do not like and soldiers dying in Afghanistan.
 
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Reasonable suspicion applies to individuals and small groups, not to everyone who happened to be with a few miles of a crime.

I don't want to live in a nation that listens in on my phone calls and I don't think most residents of the USA want that. I would rather take some risk of crime and even terrorism than give up all privacy. Giving more power and access to our personal information to government officials will not make them more accountable.

Since you support data mining, please show that you are not hypocrite by posting your most recent phone bill.

Euro 254.36.

But your reply indicates that you are not interested in the interplay of security, information costs and political system.
 
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If you are loyal, you aren't a traitor. Being from a country may not buy loyalty, but it does buy an accusation of treason if you betray that country's secrets. That's not my opinion, that's the law.

Agreed. I think that traitor laws are ridiculous though...
 
crap like this:

Edward Snowden told a crowd of fans Wednesday that the government's surveillance programs collect more data on Americans than any other country.

"Does the NSA know more about Americans in America than Russians in Russia?" Snowden said, appearing by live video during an awards ceremony in Washington. "We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world."

which is blatantly, almost hilariously obviously false. Now, this should discredit Snowden, even in the eyes of those who oppose the metadata program. China, Egypt, North Korea, and a whole host of other nations all immediately spring to mind as examples of countries who not only collect and observe the content of all communications, but do so obsessively. But the utilization of Ground Truth doesn't seem to be much of a priority for the pro-Snowden folks, and I predict they will either attempt to ignore or defend this kind of hyperbole, just as most of them ignore and a few of them attempt to defend him releasing information which has nothing to do with collection against Americans, but does have to do with collection against the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Taliban.
 
If our nation's freedom is at stake, how many lives is that worth? And how many times have people had to make that same decision through out history? I doubt that any troops died as a result of Snowden's actions. If someone dies, they died because their government is using them as pawns for special interests. Patriotism is a poisonous vapor.
 
If our nation's freedom is at stake, how many lives is that worth? And how many times have people had to make that same decision through out history? I doubt that any troops died as a result of Snowden's actions. If someone dies, they died because their government is using them as pawns for special interests. Patriotism is a poisonous vapor.

So many of these sentences seem to have nothing to do with the one before them.
 
Ya know, part of me says this guy is a traitor. But another part of me says this guy was maybe slightly disgusted at what the NSA was doing and wanted to show the world what was happening. In the end, no matter what happened. It's looking like his fate is set in stone, and we have more information, call him a traitor or not but what he exposed enlightened us quite a bit.
 
Ya know, part of me says this guy is a traitor. But another part of me says this guy was maybe slightly disgusted at what the NSA was doing and wanted to show the world what was happening. In the end, no matter what happened. It's looking like his fate is set in stone, and we have more information, call him a traitor or not but what he exposed enlightened us quite a bit.

Yeah. And if he had only exposed the metadata program, he could claim that. Unfortunately, he also exposed how we collect on the Chinese, the North Koreans the Taliban, the Russians, etc.
 
But another part of me says this guy was maybe slightly disgusted at what the NSA was doing and wanted to show the world what was happening.

But didn't he say that he took the job specifically to "uncover things"? It's not like he was working there in good faith, he was an anonymous-type, internet hero. Didn't even learn what the job was about, why it was happening. Just wanted to uncover some stuff.
 
Yeah, that's why he had to run to Russia like a total bitch. If he was truly standing on principal he's come back and face his charges.

No he wouldnt because the guys in power and obama would kill him, deny him due process, or convict him anyways. I hate russia (the govt and putin) but i dont trust the agencies one bit. He is standing on principle so he wouldnt get done off with covertly. By him living, he can expose and educate us. I think obama and co would kill him if he ever returned or if they ever could illegally or not.
 
crap like this:



which is blatantly, almost hilariously obviously false. Now, this should discredit Snowden, even in the eyes of those who oppose the metadata program. China, Egypt, North Korea, and a whole host of other nations all immediately spring to mind as examples of countries who not only collect and observe the content of all communications, but do so obsessively. But the utilization of Ground Truth doesn't seem to be much of a priority for the pro-Snowden folks, and I predict they will either attempt to ignore or defend this kind of hyperbole, just as most of them ignore and a few of them attempt to defend him releasing information which has nothing to do with collection against Americans, but does have to do with collection against the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Taliban.

How do you know if he cant reveal everything? I think no ome will ever learn the truth, but i suspect that they are everywhere. Only place id say anything is safe is in the woods but even then...
 
How do you know if he cant reveal everything?

Sure. In the same conspiracy vein where Bush pulled off 9/11 and lizard like aliens secretly run Britain, it is possible that the US has entire agencies no one knows about staffed with upwards of a million people doing nothing but spying on their own populace. But it's not realistically plausible. Even the metadata program doesn't come close to collecting the scope or size of the content that nations such as North Korea, Egypt, China, etc. do on their populaces. It's the equivalent of claiming that Belgium actually has the largest military in the world. Sure, if they had that much of a black budget and kept the entire force hidden from the eyes of the world, I guess it's possible. But it's really idiotic hyperbole.
 
Sure. In the same conspiracy vein where Bush pulled off 9/11 and lizard like aliens secretly run Britain, it is possible that the US has entire agencies no one knows about staffed with upwards of a million people doing nothing but spying on their own populace. But it's not realistically plausible. Even the metadata program doesn't come close to collecting the scope or size of the content that nations such as North Korea, Egypt, China, etc. do on their populaces. It's the equivalent of claiming that Belgium actually has the largest military in the world. Sure, if they had that much of a black budget and kept the entire force hidden from the eyes of the world, I guess it's possible. But it's really idiotic hyperbole.

Yes, your post was mostly ridiculous hyperbole. If you have to couch things in such ridiculous extremes that appeal to the emotional rather than the rational, your own point is revealed to have little merit.

On Bush... He couldn't plan his way out of a wet paper bag. Cheney and Team B on the other hand... And consider this, if we have banks too big to fail, we certainly have a military industrial complex too big for peace." Maybe they didn't engineer it, but that level of incompetent response, from the time Cheney/Rumsfeld took office and stonewalled antiterrorism, to the phenomenal, cross agency, nearly total failed response on that day from everyone but the local cops and firefighters.

Sure, if you look at the public faces and news clippings, Cheney/Rumsfeld sell one narrative... But their 40 year history together and what has been done behind the scenes (such as team B) tells a very different story, and just as factual if not more.

Lizards in Britain, I have no idea what that's all about, so to me it seems as ridiculous to mention it as the fringe group you're quoting. Irrelevant.

On dark agencies... GM, for example, employs about 50k people in the US. The IRS, 89k. Millions are not necessary, and indeed counter to the very idea of a dark agency. It's only going to be as big as the number of people that can be trusted. In fact, because none of this data requires manual processing by human hands to be collected, stored, searched, etc.. I would think you could do it with less than 10k people. So, I'm just pointing out that you've made yourself look as silly as though you were trying to... well, make look silly.

On Snowden... It's not an uncommon human trait to want to do the right thing and go overboard in your efforts to do so.

I think what Snowden did was to have a specific data target, domestic surveillance, and tried to pull as much supporting evidence as possible, and likely swept up a lot of stuff that was more sensitive to foreign surveillance than domestic. No one would be able vet that much while on the nail biting edge of being caught and needing to collect as much as possible and get the hell out quick.

As a check and balance, he turned over, as in didn't keep any, to reporters and journalists he thought he could trust with instructions that they vet the info and publish with an eye to safeguarding legitimate state secrets. The goal was to out illegal state secrets.

At this point nothing is in the public domain. No one but the journalists knows anything about it. The responsibility for releasing info on our foreign surveillance lies directly with the journalists who reviewed it.

While, as some have said, these domestic programs had been known about in the public for years, a vigorous public debate about it did not exist. Nor was the depth and scope of the program outside of a handful of congressional committee reviewers. And without that, we are not a republican democracy, we are sheep.

On on a personal note, I find invasion of privacy deeply repugnant.
 
Anytime a low man on the totem pole breaks a law that exposes wrong doing by those at the top of the totem pole, those in position of power, committing crimes against the American population, compromising the constitutionally protected liberties of Americans, in my opinion, his lesser, singular crime trumps the greater crime against the whole. Sorry to the apologists, and those that value security over liberty, but no, he's NO TRAITOR!!!!
 
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