Scotty

While Harper obviously is a micromanager, and probably gave the final okay for the settlement, it's disingenuous to state it as if Harper himself gave any money or wanted to give any money to Arar. The Justice Department lawyers would have negotiated the settlement based upon their most educated guess about the costs and downside of going to court. I have little doubt if Harper had his druthers, and thought he could have gotten away with it Arar would have gotten nothing. The courts, however, rarely agree with him.

There are so many cabinet ministers and they do so little that most of them are nobodies. Harper removed a few nobodies, replaced them with more nobodies, and shuffled a few nobodies around. Nobody cares. Even if there weren't so many of them none of them have any independence to make decisions or statements on their own anyway. The US gets by with 15 cabinet secretaries. The UK has 22, plus a handful of ministers of state. Why do we need 39 ministers and 27 parliamentary secretaries? What do all these bloody people do to justify their salaries and allowances?

I'm not interested on how the drama queen spun things. We know that prism required warrants. We know it because Verizon had to cooperate and turn over information due to a warrant signed by a federal judge. We also know it's overseen by all three branches of government and that both parties have been adamant that it is both necessary and legal. We also know it is all aimed at foreigners and terrorists. Could it be abused? Of course! But any such system could be abused. The police could be abused. The military could be abused. That's why you have oversight.

How so? Someone said the terrorists were changing how they communicated. Ie, they were able to watch the terrorists, and then the terrorists changed how they communicated, and now they can't. It's not like they revealed whatever new way the terrorists were using, or even suggested they knew how they were now communicating. Personally, absent any information from anyone, it seems to me that the US and other western governments put a ton of effort into this monitoring for a reason, and that the terrorists, with all these revelations, would have obviously decided they were now going to have to find some other ways of communicating that the NSA and other agencies couldn't watch as easily. I don't see how this is not an entirely predictable effect of Snowden releasing the information to the public.

Freaking hilarious! :lol:

I would suggest that what is more likely here is that a lot of jobs have been over classified. To put it into context, everyone hired by the Canadian government has to undergo varying levels of security checks. Every single one, no matter what they do, has to be screened. Normally, they are screened only for 'enhanced confidentiality' I think it's called. I know a person whose job involved creating forms, though, who requires "Top Secret" clearance. Why? I have no idea. Nor does she. Nothing she does involves classified information at all. Nor does she work for DND or CSIS or anything like that. Given the level of paranoia down south what has most likely happened is tons of people require Top Secret clearance even though they aren't doing anything particularly secret.. But merely having a Top Secret clearance does not give you any right to see, handle, or even know about information beyond the purvey of your particular job.

Snowden was a junior contractor who would not have had access to anything beyond the immediate scope of his own work. He seems to know quite a bit about this prism thing, but mere confirmation of its existence is almost certainly the biggest 'bombshell' he has in his possession.

The program, as described by him, through the media, grabbed metadata only. When this provided interesting data, they had to get a warrant to actually listen in on conversations, at least, if those conversations were of Americans.

Draft lists of potential guests. Okay. But how many were invited?

Nor are they doing it now. This program is not tapping people's phone calls or listening to what they say.

What I said was 'as far as I know' it hasn't happened. So I'm hardly claiming to be the expert you claim to be. Anyway, so good, there are lawsuits. So the courts can now decide. So stop worrying. Except, of course, you've said you don't really care what the courts decide. YOU have decided it's unconstitutional regardless...

Do you have any idea how unintentionally funny that statement is?

So that's a no?

So basically there is no amount of evidence or instances which could convince you that there is any issue?

I like how all you people are suddenly experts in US constitutional law, able to instantly decide what is and is not constitutional regardless of what American judges, the US Justice department, congress, and the legions of lawyers there think...

Kim Philby? Guy Burgess? Anthony Blunt?

Well, for one thing, you're presupposing that this law runs afoul of the US constitution. Oddly, the judges who take part in it don't seem to feel that way, but then, what do THEY know... You ARE a scholar of American constitutional law, right? You and Cyber?

Sure, and if anyone thought the US government was violating its constitution, well, two thirds of the world's lawyers are in that country and I'm sure by now they would have filed all kinds of legal challenges. Which, as far as I know, has not happened. That in turn suggests that, despite Snowden's indisputable mastery of American constitutional law, none of that country's lawyers agree with his analyses.

Nonsense. He is a criminal fleeing prosecution and it has every right to pursue him in concert with his allies.

Fixed that for ya.

That's a legal concept but in the real world there is no question he's guilty. He's acknowledged his guilt, bragged about it, in fact.

Refusing to get out of a bus seat is many orders of magnitude different from stealing classified information and presenting it to your country's enemies.

That would be the United States Congress and Senate and the President of the United States in concert with the federal judiciary.

Laws are changed in congress by elected representatives. If anyone had an issue with those laws they were certainly passed through a democratic and public process and people certainly could have protested at the time.

So? He wasn't willing to risk that? He wasn't willing to stand up to his bosses and risk being fired? He wasn't willing to send passionate notes to the government overseers telling them this was wrong? Apparently. All he was willing to do was steal a pile of data and bring it to China and then Russia.