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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance

The guy just shared some top secret information cause he disagreed with it. Not sure that's heroic. If anything, it's bad.
 
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.

Let us hope.
 
The guy just shared some top secret information cause he disagreed with it. Not sure that's heroic. If anything, it's bad.

Yeah, that is what people usually do. Why does that matter, exactly?
 
Yeah, that is what people usually do. Why does that matter, exactly?

If it doesn't matter, why would he be a hero. Is doing what people normally do heroic?
 
Let us hope.
These people aren't heroes, that's for damn sure. It's the new age of espionage, just dump restricted info onto the public domain where it's easily accessible to the enemy and call it "whistleblowing". What a ****ing joke. Hang them, and see how many still think treason is just another jolly pass-time with no consequences, because they obviously don't care about the people leaked intel kills.
 
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.

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.
 
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.
Clinton: I didn't inhale.

Obama: We didn't listen.
 
These people aren't heroes, that's for damn sure. It's the new age of espionage, just dump restricted info onto the public domain where it's easily accessible to the enemy and call it "whistleblowing". What a ****ing joke. Hang them, and see how many still think treason is just another jolly pass-time with no consequences, because they obviously don't care about the people leaked intel kills.

No one will get killed by letting the public know their entire lives are being tracked by the government.

If you believe it is wrong for the American people to know that their privacy has been violated, then I question whether you understand the principles of this nation.

You can move to China if you want the government to know everything you do. That's not what America is about.
 
No one will get killed by letting the public know their entire lives are being tracked by the government.

If you believe it is wrong for the American people to know that their privacy has been violated, then I question whether you understand the principles of this nation.

You can move to China if you want the government to know everything you do. That's not what America is about.

You need to go to a real history class, if you think this is something new.
 
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.

I didn't know that because it isn't true.
 
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Friday that the source who leaked details about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program could face the same fate as Bradley Manning, the Army private on trial for espionage and treason.

“Bradley Manning is facing a capital offense,” Assange said on CBS’s "This Morning." “Prosecutors have said they will only ask for life imprisonment, but that is effectively a living death.
"The big story at the moment is the national security agency leaks," he said. "Let’s ask ourselves whether the whistle-blower who has revealed those, and there’s more to come, is going, in three years time, to be in exactly the position that Bradley Manning is in today.”
Assange: NSA leaker could face same fate as Bradley Manning - The Hill's Video

I certainly hope that Mr. Snowden does not face the same fate as Bradley Manning.
 
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.

Really? Every text, email, and phone call in the world? Trillions of transmissions, thousands of terabytes of information every day? You actually believe that's possible?
 
I see over-reaction from both sides here. Did anyone really not believe that there was an electronic record of every phone call, email, tweet, etc ? C'mon, we all know that the carriers all kept records. The only difference before was that they did not keep them for more than a few months, and there was no coordination one to the next.

What is new is that the government now harvests all those lists, and keeps them for a long time. It is a legitimate civil liberties issue, pro and con. To assume that the bad guys learned anything from this is pretty naïve. They already knew. Anyone with half a brain knew that every digital event had a record somewhere. Look at the efforts Bin Laden went to. He wasn't unique with the knowledge.

The "secret" here, the "revelation", is that Obama was not transparent with us. Bush caught hell for being public about wanting to harvest metadata for calls in and out of the US. The liberals raised hell. Remember ? Now look at those hypocrites. Like Obama. Bush on steroids.

Regardless, its the average innocent Joe Some and his wife who were surprised by this "leak". If Obama hadn't decided to be more corrupt than Nixon, we might trust the useless bastard. But as it is, the mofo has demonstrated over and over that his Admin cannot be trusted. And we are reminded once again that liberals are hypocrite turds.
 
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.



many have warned us and all dismissed them.
they ridiculed them they called them conspiracy theorist. tin foil hat wearing crazies
 
I have been trying to find an authoritative definition of "whistelblowing" but none that I find say it only applied to illegal activities. For example:

"The disclosure by a person, usually an employee in a government agency or private enterprise, to the public or to those in authority, of mismanagement, corruption, illegality, or some other wrongdoing."
Whistleblowing legal definition of Whistleblowing. Whistleblowing synonyms by the Free Online Law Dictionary.

Most the definitions say something like "illegality OR wrongdoing".

Wrongdoing is definitely a moral call.

While I don’t consider Manning a whistleblower since he didn’t even know what he was leaking, I DO consider this man a whistleblower. He made a conscientious decision to leak information on a specific program that he felt was morally wrong. Now, the information was classified so he definitely broke the law, but it is still whistleblowing.
 
I have been trying to find an authoritative definition of "whistelblowing" but none that I find say it only applied to illegal activities. For example:

"The disclosure by a person, usually an employee in a government agency or private enterprise, to the public or to those in authority, of mismanagement, corruption, illegality, or some other wrongdoing."
Whistleblowing legal definition of Whistleblowing. Whistleblowing synonyms by the Free Online Law Dictionary.

Most the definitions say something like "illegality OR wrongdoing".

Wrongdoing is definitely a moral call.

While I don’t consider Manning a whistleblower since he didn’t even know what he was leaking, I DO consider this man a whistleblower. He made a conscientious decision to leak information on a specific program that he felt was morally wrong. Now, the information was classified so he definitely broke the law, but it is still whistleblowing.

Agreed. Manning was an idiot. This guy was apparently very specific and meticulous. He will have huge political support as a whistleblower.

Now WTF are we going to do with that liar Obama ?
 
You need to go to a real history class, if you think this is something new.

Right, people sacrificing privacy for a false promise of security. I do recall reading about that in history books. How did that end again?
 
"Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news."

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk
 
The 4th and 5th Amendments protects Americans from searches & seizures without probably cause and due process.

Collecting cellphone call data without probable cause of terrorist or criminal behavior is a violation of the 4th Amendment.

Looks like this guy did reveal secret and illegal behavior.
 
aren't the companys who took part in the this also responsible for violating the constitution.

Not if they were ordered by law enforcement, in this case the US Justice Dept, to turn it over. Further, that this actually constitutes a violation of the Constitution is yet to be determined.

However, it is a HUGE betrayal of the public trust by Obama. He criticized Bush, while Obama was a candidate, for wanting to collect meta-data even on the limited scale Bush had proposed. Obama also gave his word that he would not collect such data. He assured the American people that there would be no such data harvesting if he were POTUS. I heard his exact words on tape on the radio the other day. He was quite clear in 2008.

So when have you had enough of forked-tongue Obama, eh libs ?
 
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