Edward Snowden

[Hudson Jones]

You disappeared from July 29 to a few days ago. And some people have lives.

She was posting in another thread at the same time, jpg.

[jbg]

She was posting in another thread at the same time, jpg.

You didn't answer about your disappearance.

[GostHacked]

[Shady]

You didn't answer about your disappearance.

It'll be a cold day in hell if when I get busy, or go on vacation I have report my absence to the like of Hudson Jones, or anyone else for that matter.

[dre]

Complete nonsense. The threat is absolutely real. But that doesn't mean the government should be given the latitude to encroach on civil liberties. Yes, there needs to be a FISA court. It just needs to be made accountable. No, not all NSA requests, especially pertaining to foreign phone calls etc, fall under regular court. You're misinformed.

Oh I never said the threat isnt real. Just that its trumped up.

As for FISA the FISA court its a complete joke, and was created merely to make an end run around the courts and remove accountability.

Since its been created... It has issued 33,949 warrants, and has only ever denied 11. Its a complete and total rubber stamp, meant to provide the illusion of due process when there really isnt any at all. It was designed to handle warrants on foreign operatives working inside the US, but as we now know they have required telecom providers to provide the NSA with call detail reports of domestic calls between Americans.

TOTALS

33,949

11 ^[f]

33,942

It should be shut down.

Edited August 16, 2013 by dre

[Hudson Jones]

You didn't answer about your disappearance.

Oh I was camping in the beautiful wilderness of British Columbia. It was amazing. Thanks for asking.

Edited August 16, 2013 by Hudson Jones

[Hudson Jones]

It'll be a cold day in hell if when I get busy, or go on vacation I have report my absence to the like of Hudson Jones, or anyone else for that matter.

You need to have a better attention span. Because in the same post that jbg responded to, I mentioned that she was posting in another thread at the same time. Meaning that it is obvious, from repeated occurrences, that 'American Woman', is not responding to the post because 'she' is absent. 'She' is purposely not responding to the posts because this is exactly what happens when someone finds the patience to dissect 'her' comments and posting style to reveal 'her' dishonest tactics. 'She' has done this several times, where after such a post has been made, 'she' waits until the post is buried, then shows up and goes back to the same tricks.

Oh and I say 'her' name in quotes, because I don't believe she is really a she - not that it matters much, but it's a personal feeling that 'she' wants to win credibility points by claiming to be a woman. Since woman are thought to be more moral and honest. At least this is what people think and what some research indicate.

[PIK]

So Snowden deserves to be killed for that, but the Wall Street executives that engage in rents and usury, those who produce nothing and destroyed the economy, they're cool?

You need to lighten up. lol Putin's policy on gays and he went out of his way for snowden and if it turned out snowden was gay, do you get the joke now, or did it still go over your head. But what he did was wrong no matter what the thinking was and he will pay a price for it, that how this world works.

[GostHacked]

You need to lighten up. lol Putin's policy on gays and he went out of his way for snowden and if it turned out snowden was gay, do you get the joke now, or did it still go over your head. But what he did was wrong no matter what the thinking was and he will pay a price for it, that how this world works.

When Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Obama, and Biden are put behind bars, then you may have something to throw on Snowden.

[cybercoma]

Some posters keep saying everything is legal, while CBC news posts the following on their Facebook feed:

The U.S. National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad powers in 2008, the Washington Post reports. http://cbc.sh/KV8Pzma
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order.

They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. emails and telephone calls, the Post reported Thursday, citing an internal audit and other top-secret documents provided it earlier this summer from NSA leaker Edward Snowden, a former systems analyst with the agency.

Everything's legal? Does the Washington Post have it all wrong.

Edit: Formatting

Edited August 17, 2013 by cybercoma

[Shady]

Some posters keep saying everything is legal, while CBC news posts the following on their Facebook feed:

Everything's legal? Does the Washington Post have it all wrong.

Edit: Formatting

You're talking about two different things now.

[Shady]

Oh I never said the threat isnt real. Just that its trumped up.

As for FISA the FISA court its a complete joke, and was created merely to make an end run around the courts and remove accountability.

Since its been created... It has issued 33,949 warrants, and has only ever denied 11. Its a complete and total rubber stamp, meant to provide the illusion of due process when there really isnt any at all. It was designed to handle warrants on foreign operatives working inside the US, but as we now know they have required telecom providers to provide the NSA with call detail reports of domestic calls between Americans.

TOTALS

33,949

11 ^[f]

33,942

It should be shut down.

No, the FISA process needs to be reformed. But the threat isn't trumped up. It's very real. And there's people working 24 hours a day, every day to prevent terrorist attacks. But again, that shouldn't give the government the right to go as far as they want to encroach civil liberties. It's not an either or.

[Guest Derek L]

Some posters keep saying everything is legal, while CBC news posts the following on their Facebook feed:

Everything's legal? Does the Washington Post have it all wrong.

Edit: Formatting

I posted the WP story a few days ago.........if you read it, you'll find that the Obama administration and the NSA have apparently broken the FISA law and superseded the FISA court………which doesn’t mean the law itself is illegal.

[kimmy]

You're talking about two different things now.

It's clear that laws have been violated.

And when people call these programs themselves illegal, I think it should be obvious that they're questioning their constitutionality.

No, the FISA process needs to be reformed. But the threat isn't trumped up. It's very real. And there's people working 24 hours a day, every day to prevent terrorist attacks.

The threat is real, but it's also miniscule. The amount of money spent and the scale of these surveillance programs is completely out of proportion to the actual danger posed.

As I proposed before, the "safety and security" of Americans would be helped more by installing active warnings at railroad crossings than by these massive surveillance programs.

But again, that shouldn't give the government the right to go as far as they want to encroach civil liberties. It's not an either or.

Well this much I can agree with, at least.

I'd like to point out, however, that it's not just critics who try to make it either-or. The defenders of the surveillance programs are just as guilty of that, if not more so.

They've used successes of the international surveillance to justify mass domestic data collection, but those two are not the same thing, and one could continue the international surveillance without the mass storage of domestic data.

-k

[Guest Derek L]

The threat is real, but it's also miniscule. The amount of money spent and the scale of these surveillance programs is completely out of proportion to the actual danger posed.

As I proposed before, the "safety and security" of Americans would be helped more by installing active warnings at railroad crossings than by these massive surveillance programs.

Not to sound condescending, but what do you actually base that on? I know several other posters posted statistics on the number of Americans that have died or been injured by terrorist attacks (or something to that effect) and yes, the likelihood of dying in one is somewhere up there with deaths by lightning, pythons and AR-15s…….But that doesn’t demonstrate the potential actual threat……

Simply put, the detonation of a single radiological weapon in a crowded city or the release of a biological agent into a major city’s water supply in North America would lead to devastating repercussions…..both events may not kill or injure many in the great scheme of things, but would most certainly have a net negative effect on North American society and the economy…..many magnitudes larger then what those in Wall Street had done……….

In other words, the chances of being killed by terror might be slim, but there is a reason why North America doesn’t resemble Israel or Ulster (in the 70s and 80s).

[kimmy]

When they're asked for concrete examples of terror plots they've foiled, they can demonstrate several relating to the foreign surveillance, but the only example specific to the metadata collection they can provide is some dude who transferred $8k to a terrorist in Somalia... which is something they didn't actually need domestic data collection to accomplish anyway.

-k

[dre]

Not to sound condescending, but what do you actually base that on? I know several other posters posted statistics on the number of Americans that have died or been injured by terrorist attacks (or something to that effect) and yes, the likelihood of dying in one is somewhere up there with deaths by lightning, pythons and AR-15s…….But that doesn’t demonstrate the potential actual threat……

Simply put, the detonation of a single radiological weapon in a crowded city or the release of a biological agent into a major city’s water supply in North America would lead to devastating repercussions…..both events may not kill or injure many in the great scheme of things, but would most certainly have a net negative effect on North American society and the economy…..many magnitudes larger then what those in Wall Street had done……….

In other words, the chances of being killed by terror might be slim, but there is a reason why North America doesn’t resemble Israel or Ulster (in the 70s and 80s).

Nobody is saying that terrorism isnt a threat. But the war on terror itself is a much larger threat to Americans than terrorism itself. And that is exactly the point of terrorism. Alqeada knows they can never defeat America militarily... the point of guerilla warfare is to bait the superior power into damaging itself.

Consider the response to 911...

4-6 Trillion dollars spent on the war on terror making it by far the largest project in the history of the human race. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, including thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands more maimed.The creation of the largest new beurocracy in modern history... the 40 billion dollar per year DHS.The adoption of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that has given the US a global reputation for torture.The errosion of due process and civil liberties.

And according to the Defense intelligence agency all this stuff has not really reduced the threat. Invading afghanistan did not wipe out Alqeada, they just went to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.

Not only is this grossly out of proportion to the threat (which is seven times less likely to kill an American as a lightening strike) its not an intelligent approach and it hasnt worked. Same goes with the wholesale collection of domestic phone records. It hasnt prevented a single attack.

And terrorism is not an enemy its a strategy and a set of tactics. The gwot is permanent, and it will never end just like the war on drugs.

[kimmy]

Regarding the question of whether Snowden would receive a "fair trial", I think the answer is that it's irrelevant.

Prosecutors have an almost limitless ability to lay charges for computer-related crimes. A prime example would be the way in which Aaron Swartz was prosecuted. The prosecutors went out and made a list of charges and said "plead guilty and we'll go easy on you, but if don't plead guilty, we're going to put you away for 10 years." When Swartz didn't plead guilty, they went back to their office, and parsed the list of things Swartz did to find ways of laying even more charges against Swartz. "If you plead guilty, we'll go easy on you, but if you fight it we can put you away for 37 years. Changed your mind yet?" And later on they increased the threat again. "How about 50 years and a million dollars in fines. Feel like pleading guilty yet?" This ability to invent charges almost out of thin air is a result of outdated technology laws and overlap between new-fangled "hacking laws" and old-fashioned property crime laws, and overlap between property crime laws and copyright laws and intellectual property laws.

The prosecutors in the Aaron Swartz case could have put him away for an arbitrarily long time. A hacker who participated in the campaign that exposed the Steubenville football team rapists will face far harsher punishment than the actual rapists themselves. And Snowden will no doubt face the same. Even if his leaks are found to be whistleblowing in the service of American liberty rather than treasonous traitorous backstabbery, they can still put him away for as long as they want on incidental charges.

It would be like acquitting George Zimmerman of murder, but throwing him in jail for 50 years anyway for jaywalking and loitering and causing a disturbance.

-k

[Guest Derek L]

When they're asked for concrete examples of terror plots they've foiled, they can demonstrate several relating to the foreign surveillance, but the only example specific to the metadata collection they can provide is some dude who transferred $8k to a terrorist in Somalia... which is something they didn't actually need domestic data collection to accomplish anyway.

-k

I think you’re underscoring the number, none the less, what are the alternatives? Do nothing? That might be viable until the first attack….No, I think one only has to look at the approach both Israel has/is taking or what the United Kingdom implemented in response to “the Troubles”…..I for one would prefer the current proactive approach as opposed to reactionary responses undertaken by other Western Democracies under the guise of combating terrorism………

Do we will really want to partition segments of our society within our boarders, fore in Israel racial profiling makes sense as opposed to being a social faux-pas as it is here…Do we want the militaries special forces conducting search & destroy missions out in suburbia, fore that is exactly what the British did to the IRA and sympathizers with the cavalier use of The Regiment….

In both these examples, a level of success was achieved in curtailing, and in the case of the British, ending domestic terrorism…….I’d much prefer the current coarse as opposed to the alternatives.

[Guest Derek L]

Nobody is saying that terrorism isnt a threat. But the war on terror itself is a much larger threat to Americans than terrorism itself. And that is exactly the point of terrorism. Alqeada knows they can never defeat America militarily... the point of guerilla warfare is to bait the superior power into damaging itself.

As I said above, what are the alternatives?

Consider the response to 911...

4-6 Trillion dollars spent on the war on terror making it by far the largest project in the history of the human race. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, including thousands of Americans, and tens of thousands more maimed.The creation of the largest new beurocracy in modern history... the 40 billion dollar per year DHS.The adoption of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that has given the US a global reputation for torture.The errosion of due process and civil liberties.

And according to the Defense intelligence agency all this stuff has not really reduced the threat. Invading afghanistan did not wipe out Alqeada, they just went to Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.

I have and did........In a imperfect world, I’d rather the folks that don’t like us try and kill us “over there” as opposed to “over here” in our coffee shops, shopping malls, schools and places of work….

Simple put, our society & culture is built around a foundation of confidence, of what, even the threat of terrorism is able to shake……I’d rather us shake their foundations.

Not only is this grossly out of proportion to the threat (which is seven times less likely to kill an American as a lightening strike) its not an intelligent approach and it hasnt worked. Same goes with the wholesale collection of domestic phone records. It hasnt prevented a single attack.

If 9/11 is the benchmark, I’d say we’re doing alright (in terms of radical Islamic terrorism on our shores)

And terrorism is not an enemy its a strategy and a set of tactics. The gwot is permanent, and it will never end just like the war on drugs.

You're goddamned right it won't ever end......We can live with it or combat it the best we can, ignoring it won’t supersede it.

[Argus]

And like I was saying above about the FISA court:

Didn't you say it was a rubber stamp? Yet here, once it inspects this new collection method, it rules it unconstitutional.

So, a clear demonstration of legal malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration via the NSA……As I’ve been harping about, and will continue to do so, Congress “can’t pass an illegal law”, but Americans, including the Obama administration, can choose not to follow it………

Not sure this is really any sort of support for your position. Clearly, the only reason these documents exist is because of self policing by the NSA. They reviewed their intercepts and found a few, probably 0.00001% of the numbers intercepted, were wrongly intercepted due to errors or improper processes. They detailed how these improper intercepts occured, and took steps to see they were reigned in as much as possible. And they did this without any pressure or even knowledge by outsiders. Isn't that what they're supposed to do?

[Guest Derek L]

Didn't you say it was a rubber stamp? Yet here, once it inspects this new collection method, it rules it unconstitutional.

Where did I say it was a "rubber stamp"?

Not sure this is really any sort of support for your position. Clearly, the only reason these documents exist is because of self policing by the NSA. They reviewed their intercepts and found a few, probably 0.00001% of the numbers intercepted, were wrongly intercepted due to errors or improper processes. They detailed how these improper intercepts occured, and took steps to see they were reigned in as much as possible. And they did this without any pressure or even knowledge by outsiders. Isn't that what they're supposed to do?

Clearly you don’t fathom my position, as I’ve been saying over the last several pages, the law that allows the practice is not illegal in and of itself, but as I said (and was confirmed by the Washington Post report), there is no guarantee that one won’t break the law.

And to follow up on the FISA court/rubberstamp meme, a FISA judge, just like a regular judge that sits down at your local courthouse, is not charged with ensuring the law is followed outside his or hers courtroom…….Obviously if a judge is given the mushroom treatment, their abilities are diminished……

As has been reported, in this case surrounding the NSA, if the Obama administration is keeping the FISA Judges in the dark and fed shit, clearly the spirit of the law is not being followed……..If most of these cases of overstepping the laws are clerical & accidental in nature, if fixed, these should be forgivable, if there is any malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration….I’d say to Americans…..don’t vote for him a third time…

[Shady]

It's clear that laws have been violated.

And when people call these programs themselves illegal, I think it should be obvious that they're questioning their constitutionality.

The threat is real, but it's also miniscule. The amount of money spent and the scale of these surveillance programs is completely out of proportion to the actual danger posed.

As I proposed before, the "safety and security" of Americans would be helped more by installing active warnings at railroad crossings than by these massive surveillance programs.

Well this much I can agree with, at least.

I'd like to point out, however, that it's not just critics who try to make it either-or. The defenders of the surveillance programs are just as guilty of that, if not more so.

They've used successes of the international surveillance to justify mass domestic data collection, but those two are not the same thing, and one could continue the international surveillance without the mass storage of domestic data.

-k

You and others really shouldn't be using the terms illegal and unconstitutional interchangeably. They're quite different.

Anyways, it's easy to say that the threat is miniscule when one has a massive security appartus operating on one's behalf to make such threats seem miniscule.

[dre]

I have and did........In a imperfect world, I’d rather the folks that don’t like us try and kill us “over there” as opposed to “over here” in our coffee shops, shopping malls, schools and places of work….

Simple put, our society & culture is built around a foundation of confidence, of what, even the threat of terrorism is able to shake……I’d rather us shake their foundations.

If 9/11 is the benchmark, I’d say we’re doing alright (in terms of radical Islamic terrorism on our shores)

You're goddamned right it won't ever end......We can live with it or combat it the best we can, ignoring it won’t supersede it.

We arent shaking their foundations. We are doing exactly what they hoped we would do, and the only possible thing that can make the terrorists successful. Theyre whole plan is for us to spend ourselves into oblivion.

You're goddamned right it won't ever end......We can live with it or combat it the best we can, ignoring it won’t supersede it.

Im not saying we should ignore it. We need to have common sense security measures. $500 dollar cockpit doors would have prevented 911. And we need to have intelligent foreign policy, that doent create terrorism and arm terrorists. And we should stop blowing the living shit out of thousands of people constantly as well, and propping up despots and dictators.

[dre]

You and others really shouldn't be using the terms illegal and unconstitutional interchangeably. They're quite different.

No they arent.

Illegal simply means...

il·le·gal

against law: contravening a specific law

The constitution is a set of laws that legislators must follow when crafting other laws. If they make laws that violate the constitution those laws are illegal by the literal definition of the word.