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

This is my first post. So, hello to all. :2wave:
As for Mr. Snowden. I would have to say the word "traitor" comes to mind. While the NSA may have been up to some no good, there are options available to a true "whistleblower" other than running off to our two biggest "rivals/enemies" seeking refuge giving up only he knows what information. I believe he should be captured, tried and judged accordingly.
This Hero Worship of him in my mind is not only silly, but downright scary. It worries me that so many citizens find this country so, well, disgusting? Not really sure what word to use there.

Do you realise that as a direct result of Snowden's disclosures, there has been a national debate which did bear good fruit. Not only are Americans now aware of the NSA's abuses, lectures on the topic by law professors, articles in many of our magazines and news papers, books, discussions on morning tv shows, discussions on talk radio shows and much more, all which educated and informed the American people and brought to bear a bi-partisan bill to reform the NSA's domestic intel gathering. Most Americans value the constitution and the people's Bill of Rights, and see it as the chief apparatus that stands between them and the government. Because, as the framers noted, men are not angels. Nobody denies that Snowden broke a law, its just that so many of us think that it trumps the larger law that has been violated by the National Spy Agency. It's scary to some of us that there are Americans willing to sacrifice hard fought and won liberties for perceived security, despite the fact it was pointed out two centuries ago, would rob you of both. And welcome to DP.
 
That is incorrect. Since the claim that the FISA court ruling allowing the collection of metadata in the form of point-to-point transmission records is a violation of the 4th Amendment, it's adherents have to deal with the fact that SCOTUS already dealt with that exact same data base, and ruled that it did not fall under 4th Amendment protection. The FISA court derived its' ruling from SCOTUS direction.

I'm sure that you'll be able to provide that ruling then won't you?
 
Snowden releases information damaging US-European relationships when doing so makes it harder for them to respond in a coordinated manner to major moves on the part of Russia. Given that he is effectively being run at this point by Putin's administration, that is not a coincidence.

That's just on the OSINT side. On the high-side, I'm sure that the FBS and GRU are loving the data he brought them.

To believe that, you have to ignore that he's still in Russia because we made it impossible for him to leave. He spent a month in the Russian airport. We rescinded his passport. The U.S. went so far as to ask our allies to ground and search a plane because we thought the plane might be carrying him OUT OF RUSSIA and Putin's grasp. So if he's cooperating with Putin, and there is no evidence he is, then it's the intelligence community's fault in large part by giving him no other option to avoid what could be a lifetime in solitary confinement in a SuperMax prison. He saw what happened to Manning - he could expect worse treatment.
 
That is incorrect. Since the claim that the FISA court ruling allowing the collection of metadata in the form of point-to-point transmission records is a violation of the 4th Amendment, it's adherents have to deal with the fact that SCOTUS already dealt with that exact same data base, and ruled that it did not fall under 4th Amendment protection. The FISA court derived its' ruling from SCOTUS direction.

I don't think that's true, and the major point is we should be made aware when the secret court issues a secret ruling saying all our data can be vacuumed up under the legal theory that once we hand it over to a private party, our 'expectation' of privacy from then on is ZERO. My "expectation" of privacy wasn't zero. I didn't expect Google or Yahoo to hand over my emails to NSA or for Verizon to let NSA know who and when and where of all my calls.

Now that we KNOW that, we can have a national debate about the privacy of our data. Federal laws make disclosing medical information illegal in most cases. Well, maybe we need federal laws about when it's OK to funnel all the email traffic into an NSA server in Utah. That would be nice.....

:shrug: you can call it whatever epithet you like. Announcing to Mullah Omar McJihad that we intend to watch your gmail account from now on because we know that is where you are planning your CONUS-based attacks is amazingly stupid CT practice, which is why no administration of either party no matter what their personal inclinations or backgrounds will do it.

That's not the choice. The FISA court granted warrants for that kind of thing, same way courts have granted warrants for other surveillance for hundreds of years. The question is whether the NSA can vacuum up ALL gmail and then use all kinds of means to search through your email and mine for evidence of wrongdoing.
 
Really? So you can prove that those millions of people, each and every single one of them, is guilty?

No. That's not what's required to state, correctly, that what you posted isn't true.
 
Trusting the FISA has prudent oversight is comical.

How Three Decades Of Conservative Chief Justices Turned The FISA Court Into A Rubber Stamp
from the FISC:-both-the-wheels-AND-the-grease dept
The FISA court has been deemed a "rubber stamp" and with good reason. Not a single request was rejected over the last two years and over the last twelve years, the court has only rejected 10 out of 20,909 requests.

FISA Court Has Rejected .03 Percent Of All Government Surveillance Requests

Now who thinks our scandal ridden cumbersome government has gotten it right 99.7% of the time.

FISA Court Has Approved Majority Of Surveillance Warrants : NPR

FISA Court Has Rejected .03 Percent Of All Government Surveillance Requests | Mother Jones

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ces-turned-fisa-court-into-rubber-stamp.shtml

I have to agree, as much as that pains me to do.:doh

This problem isn't a right/left thing. It is a govt. problem. It was created by govt on both sides.

Without Snowden we wouldn't know about abuses of the NSA and DHS, among other agencies. I think the govt is way out of control when it comes to civil liberties.

Cassius Clay didn't believe in fighting in a war. He refused to report to the draft board. He did this and willingly went to jail and paid the price. That is sacrifice.

Snowden did what he thought was right. I think there are more avenues he could have pursued but they would have been very dangerous. He still would have had to break the law and would have exposed himself to jail or execution. The difference between Snowden and Clay are that Clay went to jail for what he thought was right. Snowden hasn't.

I think what Snowden did was positive over all BUT, if he ever comes back to this country he needs to go to jail for charges that apply. The govt doesn't want that anymore than Snowden does. It would be even more embarrassing to the govt than the current situation.

To those that say he ran to Russia. He was trapped there. The govt was waiting for him in several different countries and issued warnings to all countries. That argument doesn't work.

To those that think he should have worked through the system. The system doesn't work. He tried several avenues. He did not try enough avenues but he was in a dangerous situation. I know from personal experience that you have to be real careful when you have information that could end careers and put people in jail. One day I was getting ready to go to a going away party. The next Monday I was sitting in a room with a bunch of agents from the FBI, CID and OSI. If you make one slip up you can wind up in deep doodoo. It could end the career of the person trying to expose the corruption. They could wind up in jail. In my situation I could have lost all the time that I had worked towards my retirement and my job. I retired about 8 years later. It caused a lot of hard feelings with some of the people I worked with. It resulted in being refused any promotions for the rest of the time I was in that facility. At one point the FBI tried to implicate me in the situation. We had FBI, CID, OSI and the Dept of the Army IG up our skirts every day for two years. The whistle blower has very few resources to protect them. The agency has a ton of people ready to try to cover up the situation and smear the whistle blower. I was real careful in both situations that I was in. I had a lot of dirt about a lot of people so there were people in the agency that backed off. They didn't know what information I had or what I would do with it so I was covered. People went to jail and people got fired.

That whistle blower law is a bunch of crap and offers hardly any protection, unless you have half a million sitting in the bank that you want to flush. Just look at the IRS situation, or the VA. Name any govt agency.

For all you arm chair quarter backs that sit on your butt and say, "he could have done this" or , "he could have done that", you don't know squat about how govt agencies work.
 
Okay, well apparently midday intelligence professionals and most federal judges disagree. Sorry? Call in to a talk show about it?

1: Its the "intelligence" "professionals" that this is all about. They're the ones wanting to violate our Right to Privacy. Why the hell should I listen to them?

2: I have yet to see SCOTUS rule on this. Mind providing the case?
 
I don't think that's true, and the major point is we should be made aware when the secret court issues a secret ruling saying all our data can be vacuumed up under the legal theory that once we hand it over to a private party, our 'expectation' of privacy from then on is ZERO. My "expectation" of privacy wasn't zero. I didn't expect Google or Yahoo to hand over my emails to NSA or for Verizon to let NSA know who and when and where of all my calls.

Now that we KNOW that, we can have a national debate about the privacy of our data. Federal laws make disclosing medical information illegal in most cases. Well, maybe we need federal laws about when it's OK to funnel all the email traffic into an NSA server in Utah. That would be nice.....



That's not the choice. The FISA court granted warrants for that kind of thing, same way courts have granted warrants for other surveillance for hundreds of years. The question is whether the NSA can vacuum up ALL gmail and then use all kinds of means to search through your email and mine for evidence of wrongdoing.

What scares me is that we even have a "secret court" with "secret laws" and make "secret rulings" that can't be challenged because nobody knows about them because they are "secret".
 
1: Its the "intelligence" "professionals" that this is all about. They're the ones wanting to violate our Right to Privacy. Why the hell should I listen to them?

Maybe because they actually know about intelligence operations and you have zero clue?

2: I have yet to see SCOTUS rule on this. Mind providing the case?

I said federal judges. Ya know, the FISA courts? The ones that were charged with deciding if it were legal or not and subsequently made their determination?
 
What scares me is that we even have a "secret court" with "secret laws" and make "secret rulings" that can't be challenged because nobody knows about them because they are "secret".

If "secret" only means that there are things that not everyone is allowed to know, I do not really have a problem with it. After all, we did know about the laws and courts, if we were interested.
 
If "secret" only means that there are things that not everyone is allowed to know, I do not really have a problem with it. After all, we did know about the laws and courts, if we were interested.

I agree with that in part. We do know of the existence of the laws and the courts. We do not know what the laws are and what orders have been moved on or what the orders are.
 
I agree with that in part. We do know of the existence of the laws and the courts. We do not know what the laws are and what orders have been moved on or what the orders are.

I did have the impression a while back, when the laws were being passed, that the author of an article in either the Washington Post or NYTimes knew the law concerning the courts and that its wording was public knowledge.
 
Edward Snowden: Pentagon Report on ‘Grave’ Threat Is Gravely Overblown

By Julian Sanchez
This article appeared on The Guardian on May 22, 2014.
For months, defenders of America’s spy agencies have been touting a classified Pentagon report as proof that Edward Snowden’s unprecedented disclosures have grievously harmed intelligence operations and placed American lives at risk. But heavily redacted excerpts of that report, obtained by the Guardian under a Freedom of Information Act request and published on Thursday, suggest that those harms may be largely hypothetical — an attempt to scare spy-loving legislators with the phantoms of lost capability.

The first thing to note is that the Pentagon report does not concern the putative harm of disclosures about the National Security Agency programs that have been the focus of almost all Snowden-inspired stories published to date. Rather, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s damage assessment deals only with the potential impact of “non-NSA Defense material” that the government believes Snowden may have obtained. Any harm resulting from the disclosure of NSA-related material — in other words, almost everything actually made public thus far — is not included in this assessment.


If this be treason, then the bar has fallen awfully low these days.”

Edward Snowden: Pentagon Report on 'Grave' Threat Is Gravely Overblown | Cato Institute

They're going to piss and moan as much as possible and try to make it seem that we're all going to die because of Snowden because they have to protect their power. They are worried about this information and future information on their activities getting out not so much because of national security, but for the security of their own power and pocketbook.

The government doesn't really want The People to know what it does often because we'd probably get pissed off if we knew what they were really up to.
 
Just out of curiosity, how do you think the founding fathers would have reacted to some one who leaked their secret documents? I am going to go out on a limb and suggest they would have not treated him well...

Probably not, but the Founders then should be sure not to do anything that would anger the People too much. If they are scared of the People's reaction should the info get out, likely what they are doing is not good.
 
Which is a seperate issue and one I agree needs to be addressed. That does not change the fact that Snowden broke the law.

Indeed he did, but the sins of State exceed the sins of the individual in this case. And perhaps we should punish Snowden, but not before the government is punished for its tyranny.
 
Maybe because they actually know about intelligence operations and you have zero clue?

They don't care about the privacy. They care about "safety". That is their job.

I said federal judges. Ya know, the FISA courts? The ones that were charged with deciding if it were legal or not and subsequently made their determination?

Oh yeah...the Monkey Court again. :roll:
 
They don't care about the privacy. They care about "safety". That is their job.

And they know it better than you, no?

Oh yeah...the Monkey Court again. :roll:

...okay? It's their job to make that determination, not you. You're just whining because they don't agree with you.
 
And they know it better than you, no?

"Those that would give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither."

...okay? It's their job to make that determination, not you. You're just whining because they don't agree with you.

Why the hell should anyone trust a FISA court? No accountability. No oversight. Everything is done secretly. Thanks but no thanks. You might trust such a system. I don't. Never will.
 
I have to agree, as much as that pains me to do.:doh

This problem isn't a right/left thing. It is a govt. problem. It was created by govt on both sides.

Without Snowden we wouldn't know about abuses of the NSA and DHS, among other agencies. I think the govt is way out of control when it comes to civil liberties.

Cassius Clay didn't believe in fighting in a war. He refused to report to the draft board. He did this and willingly went to jail and paid the price. That is sacrifice.

Snowden did what he thought was right. I think there are more avenues he could have pursued but they would have been very dangerous. He still would have had to break the law and would have exposed himself to jail or execution. The difference between Snowden and Clay are that Clay went to jail for what he thought was right. Snowden hasn't.

I think what Snowden did was positive over all BUT, if he ever comes back to this country he needs to go to jail for charges that apply. The govt doesn't want that anymore than Snowden does. It would be even more embarrassing to the govt than the current situation.

To those that say he ran to Russia. He was trapped there. The govt was waiting for him in several different countries and issued warnings to all countries. That argument doesn't work.

To those that think he should have worked through the system. The system doesn't work. He tried several avenues. He did not try enough avenues but he was in a dangerous situation. I know from personal experience that you have to be real careful when you have information that could end careers and put people in jail. One day I was getting ready to go to a going away party. The next Monday I was sitting in a room with a bunch of agents from the FBI, CID and OSI. If you make one slip up you can wind up in deep doodoo. It could end the career of the person trying to expose the corruption. They could wind up in jail. In my situation I could have lost all the time that I had worked towards my retirement and my job. I retired about 8 years later. It caused a lot of hard feelings with some of the people I worked with. It resulted in being refused any promotions for the rest of the time I was in that facility. At one point the FBI tried to implicate me in the situation. We had FBI, CID, OSI and the Dept of the Army IG up our skirts every day for two years. The whistle blower has very few resources to protect them. The agency has a ton of people ready to try to cover up the situation and smear the whistle blower. I was real careful in both situations that I was in. I had a lot of dirt about a lot of people so there were people in the agency that backed off. They didn't know what information I had or what I would do with it so I was covered. People went to jail and people got fired.

That whistle blower law is a bunch of crap and offers hardly any protection, unless you have half a million sitting in the bank that you want to flush. Just look at the IRS situation, or the VA. Name any govt agency.

For all you arm chair quarter backs that sit on your butt and say, "he could have done this" or , "he could have done that", you don't know squat about how govt agencies work.

Agreed as I have mentioned before, I'll support Snowden going to jail, SO LONG AS, those responsible for violating the constitution, a higher law, go to prison too, for a longer period.
 
If "secret" only means that there are things that not everyone is allowed to know, I do not really have a problem with it. After all, we did know about the laws and courts, if we were interested.

It's a "RUBBER STAMP" bud, this can't possibly be what you consider oversight. I'll stand for liberty and in the process I may retain my security too! You go ahead and sacrifice one for the other and wind up with nothing.
 
No- it was absolutely not "fine". However, it was the law. The alternative is to overthrow the system of rule of law and replace it with a system of rule of man - which history has demonstrated to be far more likely to lead to abuse. Ask yourself if you want a President Obama or a President Ted Cruz to be the one deciding what is and is not legal on any given day.

So, Rosa Parks: criminal who eroded the rule if law and the very fabric of our democracy, in your eyes.
 
"Those that would give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither."



Why the hell should anyone trust a FISA court? No accountability. No oversight. Everything is done secretly. Thanks but no thanks. You might trust such a system. I don't. Never will.

This runs so counter to all that the framers produced, that not even amidst the disagreements over various things at the time of the construction of our constitution, would any of them have accepted this. And the strangest thing was that its formation came just a few years on the heels of the Church committees stark warning for the potential abuse, such was the power of the NSA, AT THAT TIME, 40 years ago. Imagine were senator Church to write such a report today, with the advancement of technology since?
 
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