Pardon Snowden
pardonsnowden.org
pardonsnowden.org
God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
Otherwise it's hilarious, especially in this context.
Otherwise you are implying that the humor value of a comment is determined not solely by you, but partly from the intentions of the author.
I guess the ethical answer is that, the more people will sign this (think a million?), the less likely it is to be used as some kind of filter. Even though what's one million names in a database? Sigh... Awful.
If you start to do more, however... Consider yourself warned. ^^
In this case, I can reassure you though:
Online petition clicktivism has been shown to be very ineffective, so it's only considered a minor-impact dissident action. You are allowed five of those per week. ;)
"As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be a party to this crime!
The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime. As a result, the right to life, liberty, and security, and in particular the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment protected by the constitution and international conventions have been violated.
This deliberate and planned massacre is in serious violation of Turkey’s own laws and international treaties to which Turkey is a party. These actions are in serious violation of international law.
We demand the state to abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region. We also demand the state to lift the curfew, punish those who are responsible for human rights violations, and compensate those citizens who have experienced material and psychological damage. For this purpose we demand that independent national and international observers to be given access to the region and that they be allowed to monitor and report on the incidents.
We demand the government to prepare the conditions for negotiations and create a road map that would lead to a lasting peace which includes the demands of the Kurdish political movement. We demand inclusion of independent observers from broad sections of society in these negotiations. We also declare our willingness to volunteer as observers. We oppose suppression of any kind of the opposition.
We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state. We will continue advocacy with political parties, the parliament, and international public opinion until our demands are met."
I used to travel twice a year to Istanbul. Now I don't see myself landing foot there for a very, very long time.
It's like a broken, rotten implementation of IDemocracy. It satisfies all the API but throws a lot of exceptions, and people in jail. Internals has been spilled all over, and you don't know who has access to what and with what kind of execution level.
Go to Istanbul as a tourist and you will see absolutely no problems whatsoever (Well, a different story if you speak Turkish and can understand people when they're complaining). OTOH, being a citizen who has even once touched the surface of "wrong" politics is a game of waiting in fear.
Would be hilarious to find out, to be honest.
The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things (though still to a lesser degree, and secretly). A big difference is that China often doesn't have a sense of tact when it comes to not sounding dystopian, and happiliy uses phrases like "citizen score", "criminal elements" and "reeducation". Also Big-Character posters are still a thing [1], though slightly modernized.
Although, we are getting there. At O'Hare airport in Chicago I remember seeing a poster urging me to "be vigilant", which has a nice ring to it...
[1] http://justinmccandless.com/files/beijingSpirit.jpg "The Beijing Spirit: Patriotism Innovation Inclusiveness Virtue"
Having a Citizen Score would send me into a fit of rage, but I probably have some kind of other score I don't know about. Or I'm on a List. Those Lists. Must take much money to maintain them.
North Korea actually did it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songbun
Clintons "basket of deplorables" is a reminder that this sense of tact could change after the election.
Candidate B says that half the supporters of Candidate A are "deplorable".
If anything, Clinton was going out of her way to be excessively tactful.
It's not a binary choice, after all.
Who gives a shit anyway? "Offending" Trump supporters isn't going to change anything. Not like they were on the fence.
I love the double standard being applied here. It's like what Trump says is just "expected", but Clinton says one thing you find offensive (oh no, political correctness!) and you're all up in arms. Woe is the deplorable Trump supporter.
I recall a story recently about ML detecting risk for post-op inpatients. Human nurses know not to send people with Asthma home after an operation due to their high risk profile. Because the ML system was always ignoring Asthma patients as they were never queried, it assumed it was safe to send them home.
I would argue that that racially biased policing in ML is just an extension of racially biased data scientists in Ft Meade, or Silicon Valley or Wall St or where ever.
perhaps in capital driven liberal countries it's called Credit Ratings - rather than your worth being judged through your loyalty, it's judged through your willingness to spend and accrue debt.
not trying to sound bleak and cynical, but just a thought.
i can't get a phone contract, a mortgage is out of the question. i automatically fall to the bottom of the list when trying to rent an apartment. don't know what went on at the places i applied to for employment that requested a credit score waiver, but can't imagine it was to my benefit.
now i can't even get on the credit train and start maintaining a card because i'm apparently such a poor risk.
its clearly not the same set of concerns as a patriotism score. but there's clearly some kind of profiling and clustering going on.
Your credit score will slowly increase. And at no cost to you (other than the time to setup this, which can be minimal if you can get approvals online).
You can (and should) live within your means and that's fine. What creditors want to see is that you have access to credit and you use it responsibly (eg, paying on time). You don't actually need to use any of your available credit.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0155-free-credit-repor...
and yeah, it's fucking awful and i detest the whole thing.
No, they're provably doing similar things. A "citizen score" only has cosmetic differences to the data crunching done by machine learning predictive policing.
The differences are just as large enough to avoid fitting into any of the identifiers for bad governance that the American collective conscience is already keyed into.
Look at today's Turkey for what it would be if this were true in western democracies (of which Turkey withdrew itself recently).
There are two different aspects.
The difference you're focusing on seems to be setting what positions are acceptable, and what gets done to people who hold them them.
The similarity I was focusing on was that they're being tracked at all. And in the cases that they're not not immediately actionable, I don't draw much distinction between a bureaucrat with actuarial tables and machine learning.
Jailed, no. Fired and ostracized? Certainly, except for narrow definitions of "views" and "dissidence" (largely calibrated by region and type of employment).
I'm unaware of dragnets and massive house to house searches in order to discover and punish people who went out for a brief protest against against a corrupt government office.
They may be doing it to an even higher degree (given they are far more sophisticated than CCP) but the key feature is that they do it like criminals that they are and in "secret".
The Chinese are stuck with the CCP and a techno-Scientific ruling elite unless they manage to have another rovolution. The generation that survived Mao is, imo, probably psychologically shorn of any will to express robust dissent given the state terrorism that they had to endure. The new generation is fed hyper-nationalism and has front row seat on the gloabally televised hypocrisy of American governing elite. (Isn't it so fine that in 21st century USA has become the enabler of autocrats the world over?)
We have a constitution that if ever resurrected would deal with all this. We need to focus on that.
http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/wp-content/up...
Instead you have to guess "is this going to put me on a list? What does being on the list mean? Does the list exist?" Well, aside from the obvious list of the petition itself. You know what I mean.
The goal is to find events going on in your area and you can join and be a part of the change. Sometimes just being able to find the events going on about certain topics is the hardest part.
We're launching on October 1st, so I'm hoping we can make a small, meaningful impact in fixing this.
you know what's even scarier? I'm scared to to even write about what those situations were for the same reason they arose in the first place. Now some friends tell me there is a threat to the legality of tor in the US, I'm actually starting to become a bit panicked by it.
What is freedom anyway? Any attachment to external systems threatens it in my opinion. You work through the systems you're attached to and they limit you - for example - me posting my thoughts on HN or reddit is nearly pointless yet a lot of us a spend significant amounts of time chatting back and forth, thinking we're accomplishing something significant - so we're content with that and less likely to spread our message in ways that might have more impact.
I start to laugh at myself when I blame big corporations and shady nations for the mess we're in - but this is a system we ALL buy into. Blaming a corporation is like yelling at an inanimate object when you stub your toe on it. I gave up my smartphone - that's a tiny first step towards taking your privacy back - yet who here would actually do that?
just a thought though.
And even as a non-U.S. national I worry if it would land me in trouble if I wanted simply to visit the U.S. on holiday again.
US immigrations stands out for the least pleasant experiences I've had on entering a country, and that includes entering places like China, despite most of the time being perfectly fine (I used to fly in/out of SFO every 6-8 weeks for a period of about two years, so I got to compare them a lot).
For business, I will still go if necessary, but I'm finding that I'd take the same precautions for the US as I did for China: Make extra sure to have a full, recent backup, and move "everything" off my laptop onto online storage, just in case they decide to seize it.
Always reminds me of the line in casino "Look... why take a chance? At least, that's the way I feel about it."
It was actually administratively much easier to cross the iron curtain in the form of the berlin wall back then than it is now to get into the US (me being german).
(This is a bit unfair because there were special regulations for germans inside berlin, and US visas weren't that easy back then either.)
(The GP's point can be true in the absence of explicit statements from the USG that it doesn't want Germans.)
"Pete Seeger on being Black Listed in America, 1965: CBC Archives | CBC" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0_IME9WsHQ
I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously say that Pete Seeger should be on the list of people that should be feared for their "un-American" leanings today, but in the past apparently several people thought he was worthy of that label.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
USA is moving rapidly towards socialism though it is much behind than say UK or France. This sort of government overreach is inevitable.
UK surveillance is part of the permanent state and is imperialist in nature.
In some ways, the UK is less authoritarian than in the past - the Human Rights Act has had a real effect, along with the Good Friday Agreement. There are no longer troops deployed in the streets with live ammunition nor elected MPs who are forbidden to speak on television.
I love Thatcher's description of Attlee:
"He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show."
The Labour party failed to develop any effective way of saying "no" to naked self-interest in unions (In Place Of Strife passim). Intrinsic problem in 'socialism'? Possibly.
That is a great quote on Attlee.
Being in Australia, I'm at best, someone that kowtows to a surveillance superpower. Sucks to be me, I can't even vote to not be surveilled.
I remember reading the article via twitter and after a while watching a tweet from the politician in question appear in timeline.
I didn't even recall following her, but at some point in time I did. I froze and panicked, my twitter account is eponymous.
What will happen to me when I cross the US border? Hopefully/Probably nothing, but the thought lies in the back of my mind.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093796/Emily-Buntin...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/28/us-custom...
I repeat: you're not going to get dragged off to US prison for following Birgitta Jónsdóttir on Twitter.
I strongly agree that Ed should be pardoned and that the US government has a lot of problems (like any country), but let's not go completely overboard here and write off the entire country as North Korea meets McCarthyism with a heaping side of Turkey. You can't and won't be prosecuted here for having a political opinion or for following people that do on Twitter.
I was referring to a possible detention in the borders, stripping, electronic devices control and so forth.
I'm honestly not the slightest bit afraid of retaliation, and if I was targeted it would be evidence in favor of Snowden's cause.
I don't understand how an American citizen could be afraid of exercising their free speech rights -- if they are violated, then one can vocally draw attention to their situation. I'm really not afraid of repercussions as a random American.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130923/11543424624/borde...
Because some random American has no practical recourse in such an event.
You worry about the risk of being registered as a Snowden sympathizer if you voice your support and the discomfort that might bring with it.
Democracy and rule of law doesn't come for free.
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
-Earnest Hemingway
FBI opened their file on Hemingway in 1942: https://vault.fbi.gov/ernest-miller-hemingway
Nobody in the US will "die like a dog" for supporting a presidential pardon of Snowden and Hemingway did not suggest that one should stay out of politics.
If the NSA really does maintain these macabre "lists", it's kind of hard to believe they'd be so unsophisticated as to put you on one for visiting a website called "Hacker News" that has nothing to do with the definition of "hacking" that they care about.
(Whether "signing an online petition" is "doing the right thing" is outside the scope of this comment.)
I think it's only right that we all put our neck out for him, the same as he did for us - if only to say thank you for having our backs. I'm signing it.
Edit: I have signed it
It's ironic that given all the valid concerns in your post, you also fell for the oldest piece of propaganda in the book by the very government you're concerned about and that you think that socialism has something to do with dictatorships, rather than it being just an idea that itself has nothing to do with dictatorships in itself, but was in the past implemented by dictators, same as capitalism was in Latin America and elsewhere.
Nazi ideology is much more inherently tied to strongmen and dictatorships than socialist ideology is.
You also seem to be talking about communism, rather than socialism as such and fail to see the distinction between these two, or indeed between communism and Stalinism, but that's for a longer discussion...
Hitler essentially wanted the superior Germans to do nothing and be provided for by lesser races and I presume that's why you think he was a "socialist", but in reality he was much closer to early U.S. history than to socialist ideology.
> Centralized education, centralized health care, strict gun control laws
More like common sense laws than "socialist" ones if you ask me...
This is what upsets me about the right, they're so easily scammed by random screams of "Big government", "centralised health care", "strict gun control", "centralised education" etc. and the counter is simply "FREEDOM, LOW TAXES, PRIVATE HEALTHCARE, "THE BEST PROVIDER WINS" etc. and I get the appeal, these things sound awesome, but the problem is in the details; the "low taxes" are not for you, they're for Apple, Google, Shell etc. "private healthcare" is not excluded under socialism if you want it and can afford it, it's just that it's not the only option and every citizen has some form of healthcare provided, regardless of their socioeconomic status, just by the virtue of the fact that they're...you know...human.
The people who say it's too expensive ignore how much is spent on the military, (i.e. US military has 800+ overseas military bases, do you really think you need (all) of them?), the fact that US already spends more on healthcare than virtually any other modern nation and despite this it still has the worst quality healthcare of all of them.
"Centralised education" means that creationists in Iowa can't not teach evolution, which I would argue it's a good thing, but again, it's a base, so that everybody gets at least "some" consistent quality of education, it doesn't mean it can't be expanded upon...
> strict gun control laws
Again, more like common sense, than ideology driven, look up gun deaths in the US vs Europe. If you have a gun in the US you don't actually have an advantage, because everybody else is armed as well, i.e. it's basically as if you didn't have one, but with greater risks of getting shot.
The only thing that socialism and naziism had in common was the idea of an economy that will make a group of people better off, (which is pretty much the idea behind every economic model in history), but naziism is based on the idea of a "superior race", which is inherently better than the rest of the population and thus is entitled to the slave labour of the other, lesser races.
Socialism is pretty much the exact opposite, it's about people having equal access to basic set of utilities and services and about large enterprises sharing a proportional amount of its profits with its workers, it has nothing to do with race, in fact it makes things like race, sex etc. not be a factor in entitlement to these things.
Hitler hated the idea of socialism, (as well as communism) and actively prosecuted socialists in Germany, a chunk of which then escaped to Czechoslovakia, which was part of his reason for invading it, same for the Soviet Union.
It's not actually believed, though. It's just an attack point to try and associate "liberals" with Hitler in Internet comments and what not. Pretty standard troll tactic.
It's called branding.
Not "and", but "because". Hitler also talked about peace a lot. Here's a hint: go by what they did. Talk was as cheap back then as it is today.
The latter meaning is mostly used when referring to the former. But this is only kind of interesting if you're not American. :)
[0] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman...
As others have (snarkily) pointed out, this is a pretty mild form of resistance, so I'd imagine the consequences would be pretty mild.
The United States government has done an excellent bit of propaganda to convince the bulk of the public that they are the most free people on earth. We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents' pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant "USA" at political rallies.
But the government of the United States has perpetrated terrible violence and destruction of liberty against its own citizens and many more abroad. Through endless military engagement abroad to harassment, detainment, and imprisonment at home, the government serves its own interests first, and enhancing and preserving your liberty is not among them.
I should be very concerned about coming to the attention of anyone within government -- at any level. Even the local code enforcement board can extract time, energy, and money from you should you come under scrutiny.
But as others have said, you're already on the lists. No need to be paranoid. Go ahead and sign the Snowden petition. It's just one more data point on your dossier. The government already has enough on you to put you away for life if you become inconvenient to the state. Three Felonies a Day[1] and all that.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
And no, I am not being facetious. People like to think of freedom as a scalar, but it's actually a vector with complex interactions among its various dimensions, one of which is the government.
That said, I am absolutely signing the petition. Ed Snowden put a lot more on the line by blowing the whistle than I am by signing.
In Somalia you do have a lot of government interference - you just have many smaller (wannebe) ones there, fighting against each other for power, vs. one big.
And that is precisely my point: people think of freedom as a scalar, as the absence of constraints on their personal decision-making. But this is wrong. Your decisions are always constrained, if not by "government" (however you choose to define it) then by your fellow humans. And if not by your fellow humans (e.g. if you go live in the middle of Nunavut) then by the laws of physics.
It's an incentive for other actors to try to imitate the role of government through other means.
Actually, not just Somalia - Africa is ripe with examples of these.
Also, I've never met a "true" (in the sense that they tell you about it as soon as you talk to them) libertarian who isn't also a raging asshole.
But there are assholes on all points of the spectrum, so I'm not sure what that proves. :D
And you're wrong about Somalia btw: they do have a government, which collects taxes, introduces regulations and does all good government supposed to do, including corruption. [1][2][3]
> Ed Snowden put a lot more on the line by blowing the whistle than I am by signing.
Well, yeah, by signing you are putting absolutely nothing on the line so that's true :)
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5176102.stm
[2] http://www.hiiraan.com/news4/2011/jan/17383/somalia_s_govern...
Take a look for yourself and see if their rankings make sense.
I'm not: I'm all for government health care, government supported time off work for sickness or children, and other such things. These push up government spending, but yet can mean freedom from financial burden. When I consider what I paid for health care in the US, the tax rate isn't a big deal at all. For my personal economy, i'm actually more free because I don't have to plan for being sick and going broke from it - I gained some economic stability.
Also interesting is the "labor freedom" metric - basically, laws making it more difficult to fire folks and things of that nature. While there are occasionally downsides to this, it also means there is a sense of job security. If your personal beliefs are such that this is a hinderance, it might be a bad thing, but I suspect most folks would find this to mean more actual economic freedom because there aren't so many surprises to plan for.
I wound up in Norway, and find a certain freedom here. I don't mind the taxes and such, and I rather enjoy the general equality in opportunity sort of thing. I'm no longer worried that blue hair makes me un-hireable (though it might make it harder to find work). But other Americans here simply hate it and can't wait to wind up going back to the states.
The best bet is if you have some choices in the matter - and know it - join some groups with other americans living there and talk to them about their experiences there.
This is also absolutely true in US. Of course, that differs whether you're trying to be a graphic designer or a banker or a trial lawyer. Blue-haired trial lawyer probably would raise more eyebrows.
Don't get me wrong, there are still some quirks with it here, but it isn't the same sort of hindrance as it was in the states.
Homogeny in this case would actually be a bad thing.
"The Legatum Prosperity Index" (1), states that: "Canada is now the freest (sic) country in the world, having risen five places to 1st in the Personal Freedom sub-index." (2)
see this also. "Freedom in the World 2015" (3)
2. http://www.prosperity.com/#!/headline-findings
3. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-...
Hard to move to as a non-native speaker though.
It works well, and the people of the United States are heavily controlled by the elite, who in this case are the corporations and the media companies they control.
people of the United States are heavily controlled by the elite is too simplistic and some "elites" make the world better.
I completely agree that the debate on income inequality and the resulting sorting of people is irrelevant. Income inequality itself is irrelevant, it's just an ideological misdirection. But, since you proclaim to be libertarian, I suppose you wouldn't agree with me on why it's irrelevant: it's being pushed to actually preserve overall capitalist relations. Sacrificing low taxes of a billionaire or two is a small price to pay to help the ruling class keep ruling. This is practically the central theme of Keynesian economics, and thus of a great deal of 20th century. The strategy is still extremely effective, and so in this election cycle we had good old Bernie Sanders act as an acceptable vent for social and economic discontent of working people by ranting about “the billionaire class”. To anyone not horribly politically illiterate (sadly American culture is generally grotesquely politically illiterate) it was painfully clear from the moment he entered the primaries how his “revolution” will end. So income inequality discourse not only does not help alleviate the problem, it maintains it.
Democrat-style liberalism is so effective because it's an ideological Escher drawing. To even start to explain why it's wrong (or even better: why it's not even wrong!) and even in many cases harmful, you have to rewind the arguments aaaall the way to first principles (let's ignore the likely case that then you end up with the problem of getting people to universally agree on a coherent set of first principles) while constantly being under the threat of being, 1930s Pravda style, denounced as pro bigger evil. As a friend of mine recently semi-jokingly said: “There are no bad guys, just a liberal hell in which all is mixed, a hell in which evil people do good things and good people live in a fantasy.”
As for mobility, there really isn't any significant mobility, this is empirical. Unless you count moving from lower middle to upper middle class (I'm not sure even that is a significant case, I just assume it is, but even then it's likely plastered with all kinds of demographic qualifiers). But still, income inequality in and of itself is not a cause of this, it's one of the symptoms, and not a particularly onerous one.
Thus, if an elite makes the world worse in my opinion by reducing diversity of competing opinions in mass media, they could use that platform to propagandize and publicize any philanthropic efforts they may also involve themselves with, such that your opinion of them is neutral or positive.
Do you derive from first principles what things would make the world better and then check to see who might be doing any of them, or do you hear about what certain people are doing, and then make value judgments on their public activity?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20080414095646/http://www.polioe...
Of course, having the state of affairs as we currently have it, B&MGF's efforts are certainly to be saluted, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't contemplate and work towards a world where you don't need to depend on the good will of a billionaire to have a chance of people not dying of various preventable diseases; Or, indeed, even to recognize that such a state of affairs is unacceptable.
It isn't clear to me that establishing yet another donor-advised trust is making the world a better place, and it seems to me as though the foundation funded by the trust is not taking action on its own initiative, but instead just giving money to those people and organizations who are already actually expending the effort in making the world a better place.
Yes, it is a good thing, but don't go overestimating the wattage of that halo on Bill Gates's head. I give most of the credit to the people who actually uproot their lives, go to Pakistan and similar environments, and try to administer vaccines to people who deeply mistrust their motives.
Who is too blame for advertising to children directly? Is it a few people? Probably not, in fact it brings in a lot of talented people, of whom each may in fact have a negative opinion of advertising to children when asked.
If you are talking about giant corps that can influence rule(s), then ok, but these are not individuals but are the stakeholders and can be large swaths of people.
Does he also say that these people may be powerful because they are persuasive?
I was suggesting the other way is true too.
It's worthwhile thinking of advertising as a persuasion technology ( because that's what it is by definition ) and adjusting your expectations accordingly. A wise man once told me "If yer at a poker game and you don't know who the sucker is, you're it." Or, if you prefer, "Learn or be sold to."
Or as Gene Belcher put it, "Everything is randomness and chaos."
Could you elaborate on what this is?
With human consciousness, this analogy would be applied to a "higher level" of consciousness forming around/on top of the human's interaction with that particular "thing" that allows the thing to take action on given metrics and share it among other consciousnesses which are in communication with it and assist with sustaining it's existence. In a business, for example, the game theory/model would govern the way the business makes money and the processes in which the company provides product or services to a customer which best ensure the future success of the company as an entity.
If the founders/influencers in the company approach building the model with the assumption the customer facing processes are mutable (which itself is dissonant in nature without customer approval), the resulting "consciousness" of the business might focus on building value by marketing means and acquisition (both viral based growth methods). This "intent" is then translated into the day to day processes required for raising additional awareness of the company's product in the market, again at the customer's cost. In extreme examples where such entities can survive long term, such as with the government, these intents may extend well beyond any intent by the individual's involved. I don't think anyone working for the government really wants to violate your privacy, but they are heavily influenced in their need to rationalize it given they wouldn't want the same thing happening to themselves, nor would they want fail at stopping a terrorist blowing up something on American soil. So, they make it "OK" to deal with personally, and the government entity is able to survive symbiotically with the host which is currently being kept in "stable" condition.
Richard Dawkins calls them memes, but they are likely capable of more complexity than we realize, given the somewhat substantiated claims in the video titled This Video Will Make You Angry on YouTube. It would also make a lot of sense if they worked toward escaping attention, given the awareness of them by the host is akin to inoculation.
I was disgusted in the 2000's when being against the Iraq war was not only being flaunted unpatriotic but not supporting our troops. That's BS. I support our troops and would rather not have seen them deployed to conduct Cheney's bidding.
I will sign the petition and if some asshole gives me trouble at the border for it, so what? I'm a US citizen and entitled to re-enter my country. F them.
"If patriotism is 'the last refuge of a scoundrel,' it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether” ~ Ralph B. Perry
they think otherwise. they rightfully own you and can do whatever they please with you. feel free to try to prove me wrong and not to sound like minuteman.
I posted this reply earlier too, but figured I'd respond here also. The US government has, in the past, refused entry to US citizens. They do this not at the border, but at the foreign airport. Say you fly to Germany, and then try to come back. They'll tell the airline to refuse to board you, and then you're stuck there. Sure, if you managed to somehow reach a US land border, they would have to allow you in (after a lengthy interrogation, I imagine). But that's not very practical or economical.
But the worst cases are those like Long's: when the person is suddenly barred from flying when they are outside of the US, often on the other side of the world. As a practical matter, that government act effectively exiles them from their own country. "Obviously, I can't get to Oklahoma from Qatar if I can't fly," said Long. "Trying to take a boat would take weeks away from work just for the travel alone, and it's not affordable. If I can't fly, then I can't go back home."
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/05/muslim...
I'm not sure though why he couldn't fly to Mexico instead - is DHS no-fly list mandatory for other countries?
The fact that you can do this and face no consequences says something about our freedoms though. At the very least we have a foundation that is worth taking the effort to improve.
That does sound very authoritarian, honestly. Maybe that's why there are so many libertarians in the US - it's a reaction to the authoritarianism in American culture.
IMO libertarianism that gives corporation more freedom than people, just make it easier for them to push through any legislation and "cultural propaganda"and they want, not so much solving this problem.
Nationalism is more insidious than authoritarianism. When you have an authoritarian government, you have an enemy you can clearly identify and the resistance feels morally justified. Resisting nationalism often elicits negative reactions, such as branding you as "unpatriotic" and such.
(those are both real examples from the book...whether there was a great deal of intent in the lobster tail case is disputed, but it was a pattern of shipments involving thousands and thousands of pounds of tails)
E.g. evidence rules mean you can be committing a felony just by deleting an email that some prosecutor may consider important - even if you haven't been under investigation at the time. And you can be investigated for things as simple as depositing sums under $10000 in the bank on routing course of business - just because it looks like "structuring". And you can also be prosecuted if you make any false statement to a government employee, no matter if it relates to any crime.
There were a couple of times where I actually called the public contact numbers for NSA & GCHQ regarding particular stories about which I was especially upset, identifying myself by name and politely but firmly expressing my views. NSA told me to go away, but surprisingly the woman at GCHQ heard me out for several minutes and let me finish my rant. That's the British establishment for you I guess - they can be assholes, but polite assholes.
Snowden risked everything to inform us all of the crimes of the FVEY governments and the least we can all do is take inspiration from his actions and stand up and publicly make our views known, whatever they may be. The day people stop being willing to express their political views publicly is the day we lose something very important.
NSA - my name and XKEYSCORE selectors are in my profile. Feel free to add me to whatever lists I'm not already on.
Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance. It's not even a breach of privacy in any sense, because that's exactly what petitions are for.
No. The goal of a petition is to show support for a course of action, and in this context, exercising freedom of speech in a democracy.
Taking the list of people who signed a petition, assigning a "risk score" to them because of their activism, storing it in a database for the future, and using that as a means to make decisions that affect those individuals freedoms is exactly the purpose of mass surveillance. In isolation, for one petition or one activity, it is a sensible thing. As a general practice it promotes the notion of thought-crime or pre-crime in which an individuals freedoms are curtailed because the individuals exercise of their freedoms is unpalatable to either the elected officials, or the entrenched bureaucracy.
On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way. You just had to look harder for this information.
Well, you could say that about the Nazis and Charles Manson, too. Couldn't you basically call anything just a "physical process" and get it over with? The rights of people are being violated by those sworn to protect them, and they feel helpless to change that. That is a problem, to put it mildly.
> On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way.
Yeah, it always was that way with too many people, and left unchecked, it will lead to the destruction of humanity. So I propose a new and much better way: when "researching" people, do not trust anyone who didn't give you positive confirmation of having spine, attention span and responsibility. I'm not saying signing a petition does that, but generally: go the other way. Do not waste your personal and professional time and energy on people who after all may remain on the wrong side of history. If the ground you stand on is not liberated ground at all times, reconsider your life. Don't be that guy obedient to what ultimately amounts to a bunch of deranged folk from a Stephen King novel or something. Realize that it would not be more than that, and that they too shall pass. The only open question is, whether they will take humanity with them, but there is no question in my mind about "their" (our) self-destructiveness. It's just not worth it to give in, in the really long run.
> "Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
-- from the movie "All the Presidents Men" (1976)
Taking the list, and merging it with the myriad of other sets of metadata, reports, and other resources at the government's disposal is what makes it a contribution to surveillance.
Taking all of those lists and resources, and performing that activity as a blanket activity across an entire population is what makes it mass.
Your argument is entirely unhelpful because you are arguing one specific activity, which on it's own, against a single person or group of people, might be sensible, but across the general population, without any reasonable suspicion of ill intent, leads to exactly the kinds of problems that we all piss and moan about when we get on an airplane (security theatre, screening for brown people, not terrorists, etc, etc, etc).
Also, unless that petition is material to their ability to do their job, what the hell does it matter?
One is personal accountability for the views that you express, where people around you might dislike you for it. That's pretty unavoidable, but you can also choose who you associate with.
The other is the government threatening or implying a threat to its citizens for thinking or believing a certain thing. This is very bad in the long run for minorities in race, opinion, or otherwise. Changing which government you live under is potentially quite difficult, certainly harder than choosing who you hang out with.
There have been cases in the past where American citizens have been refused entry into the US: they've been denied boarding in a foreign airport, leaving them stuck there. I know, it is hard to believe, but it is true.
What recourse one has to proove wrong some top-secret algorithm once said flag has been raised ?
Paranoia is extremely contagious and often countered with more paranoia.
In short, if Snowden gets pardoned, it will encourage further people to leak confidential documents and violate the Espionage act since they will be emboldened by the thought they might get pardoned down the road.
Spending three years in exile is not great, but it's a far cry from a long prison sentence for leaking classified documents.
Sure, you could try to go "underground" but you'd then become a top assassination target for the worlds most powerful security service. No one would ever know of your assassination either - you'd just disappear.
Obama may be one things, but lying on a political spectrum neatly is not one of them. In fact, it's pretty damn hard finding a president who HAS been straightforwardly liberal or progressive, much less one that played well with the constitution. I'm not sure why you expect those two things to align.
Those potential leakers might be emboldened, but I doubt many would get away with it. There is also a great deal to be said for Snowden being right.
If the President pardoned him while denouncing other named leakers (Manning, et al), and highlighting that Snowden was the only one protecting the constitution. Then perhaps only the leakers strongly backed by the constitution would be emboldened.
What about that kind of problem?
Is it another strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital? How about a school or a wedding?
What about some jarheads in a chopper gunning down unarmed civilians?
If the public interest and the principles of freedom were served by the leak, then that should be treated very different than a purely self-serving (or dangerous) leak.
Even the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it clear that soldiers have a duty to not obey an unlawful order. The idea is that we are all answerable to the principles in the constitution (and, if you believe, to a higher power or to the idea that some rights are considered inalienable).
So, no, I don't agree with your implicit assertion that all of this is arbitrary and depends only on the whims of the individual.
Snowden didn't just blow the whistle on some shady activities, he dumped hundreds of confidential documents that put at risk the lives of hundreds of operatives working for your freedom and others'.
So: Why did you use the word "dumped" and can you explain explicitly what he did wrong?
So, like Manning, he definitely leaked stuff he didn't need to leak that harmed NSA's foreign operations that Americans were OK with. The kind the NSA was created for. That's not whistleblowing like his domestic stuff that Alexander and Clapper lied about. That makes him a whistleblower on domestic leaks and traitor on most, foreign ones. I put in for pardon given benefit of the whistleblowing but he's certainly guilty of damaging leaks.
I just don't see a reason to charge him if lots of scumbags on top are still walking free despite clear potential for Contempt of Congress or perjury charges. A little unjust, yeah?
If the answer to that is "well, they'll never agree to that", then leaking will happen regardless of whether Snowden is pardoned or not.
We have demolished the middle class. Our infrastructure is shit. Education is so expensive it often makes economic sense not to get educated. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on "defense" instead of investing it in fixing all of the broken shit we have going on.
Worse, our election system is so broken that we have to pick between two pieces of shit that don't represent anyone's interests. There is no nuance, it's one tantrum after another.
Who do we hate now? Who's personal life do we need to pry onto? Can we talk about how hot Kurdish freedom fighters are? Hillary is not a criminal, she's like grandma. Can you believe Tump has small hands? Look at his skin! Jobs?! You want jobs? Talk to the Mexicans who took your jobs. TPP? What TPP? NAFTA? What is? You want healthcare? Welcome to indentured servitude. National healthcare is for freedom-hating communist muslims. Public education? Too expensive. Of course, we have to spend $1.5 trillion on fighter jets, but that's basic common sense.
I am honestly disgusted by what we've become. We should change our slogan to "fuck the world, kill them all". Then, at least, we'd be honest.
I don't think you have any idea what a police state is.
Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)
(In the interest of keeping topicality, one could argue the above are examples of chilling effects in a community)
people who care to take part and comment here might be more sensitive to social approval than the median - the quest for approval might ba a motive to participate. Therefore the loss of a few points might be more of a loss for them. In the long run that is not so good for the diversity of opinions, but so it goes...
Please consider sharing!
To be more specific, this (let's say) metaphorical file could have entries in it as a result of you signing a petition to pardon Snowden. While such entries could be myriad and varied in detail, I'll pick two hypothetical variations.
1) "Subject exercised right to free speech online."
2) At 1820Z, Subject did willfully and intentionally announce their position against the protection of national security, the lives of US Armed Forces soldiers, the lives of US Intelligence operatives, and the lawmaking authority of the legislative branch of the US Government by supporting an individual charged with espionage. Furthermore, by doing so, Subject did willfully and intentionally foment rebellion within the US general population by the "social proof" of his anti-authoritarian position.
Not knowing if, or which, entry might be made by the mass surveillance of even public forums, where there is no expectation of privacy, is the concern. Not that the speech is public, but that the speech isn't expected to be used in unknowable ways against the speaker.
The organisation was well respected and had before I got there forced Britain's Security Services to admit and release to holding files on all the workers there - people who later became cabinet ministers under Blair / brown.
I have always assumed I also have a very thin file.
I am not ashamed of having that file or have having taken democratic action to change my society. What I am ashamed of is having done it so badly - the campaign did not really use web or email (This was the when of Internet cafes), I had no suit when I went to the Lords and got flustered on radio interviews.
So in answer to you, sign the petition. Be proud of your dissent and mostly do your best to make an effective protester. there is plenty of time to turn the ship around before western democracies become irredeemable. But we do need to Start. Why not here?
i appreciate the parent's frank concern regarding signing this Petition "God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US..."
your response is the body punch that reminds us who is the person at the heart of this petition and that whatever the risks referred to in the parent, they are minuscule by comparison
as you said "the least we can do"
What is your definition of "socialist" ? A lot of European countries are "socialists" in a way (always a nuance) but they don't have an aggressive kind of local NSA (even if some have a local NSA).
You could end up in prison. It's not likely, but it's possible. Signing this petition could get your name on a secret list of people who are likely terrorist sympathizers, and that in turn could lead to your arrest on trumped-up charges, or perhaps even non-trumped-up charges based on coincidental circumstances that would never have been noticed had you not signed. There are also a whole host of other less serious possible consequences. You could end up on the no-fly list. You could be denied a government job. Who knows?
And that is exactly why you must sign. Ed Snowden put a lot on the line so that we can know for sure that we are facing risks like this, and possibly even do something about it. The least we can do IMHO is to take a small risk to help him come home. That's why I signed (and made a modest donation).
Second, it's entirely possible that your fears will come true - obviously the government will receive your information and they can use it how they see fit. Not only that, but they appear to be running a co-registration campaign with the ACLU, and you don't know exactly who else will get your name, email, and physical address, or who those people will sell it to. I would be also curious to see what kind of remarketing cookies they are using. You can easily be put in the bucket of "HN users that visited the support Snowden page" and be stalked accordingly by advertisers across millions of Adsense-supported sites, Google search, Facebook, and the general web with just two or three remarketing cookies.
The creators of this site undoubtedly know that their stated goal will never be accomplished. So this looks more like an attempt to build a marketing database of people with a specific viewpoint than anything else.
Be thankful that you can exercise your right to sign this petition in the US, and the only thing you might need to worry about is increased scrutiny from the IRS.
That being said, I could see the government trotting it out if there were ever a separate case against you. "captainmuon is already known to harbor sympathies for known traitor Edward Snowden."
I'm not American, but the issue cuts across all countries and Snowden is a representative.
I just signed and donated $50.
It is really unnerving truth be told.
I would be hugely surprised to learn that anybody would spend any time or attention to whoever votes how on a petition. There are thousands of those and only so many border agents, and making trouble to an US citizen carries a non-zero risk. Your profile is too low for that.
> Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble?
Possible, but other things should be like donating to known ISIS front or frequenting a Hezbollah darksite, or something like that. Otherwise it's just noise.
> Increased scrutiny from the IRS
Unlikely, IRS is interested in money, not online petitions. You'd need to do something more spectacular to deserve special scrutiny, that puts you out of the crowd. Voting on online petition puts you in the crowd.
> but "they" might say hell why not?
Customized treatment on these scales is rather expensive. If voting on online petition had triggered customized treatment, they'd have to do a lot of useless "increased scrutiny". If they did, you won't be different from millions of people, but most probably they don't.
> Inability to get security clearances in future?
Security clearance is one area where such scrutiny could be warranted. But given who gets clearances, at least at low levels (like terror operatives working at airports and security companies, etc.) not likely unless we're talking about very high clearance levels.
> Being targeted for more intense data collection by the NSA?
Unlikely, again, you'd have to get out of the noise level for that and voting on a petition does not do that. If you'd be a close personal friend of Snowden then it'd be a different thing...
If Snowden revealed something is that the NSA and accompanied services are very smart, very powerful and very resourceful in achieving their goals. Nothing suggests they are so stupid as being unable to distinguish between signal and noise. They may be collecting a lot, but it all would be useless if they couldn't distinguish between interesting things and noise. Signing an online petition is noise.
It is same as asking, "Will the mafia kill me if I speak the truth about the murder as an eyewitness?" Government is not supposed to operate like a mafia. (But sure they can violate Human Rights and the Constitution, and public will not even care.)
However, I am afraid by asking that very question we are already talking from within the context of a regime that is "totalitarian". The various degrees to which an average US citizen believes that they are not in a totalitarian country unlike those "other" "socialist" or whatever countries out there, is irrelevant:
Surveillance is Totalitarianism.
It is no surprise for people get paranoid in a country with large-scale surveillance technology. And that's the point. Because it has never been merely about the "terrorists" who are "out there"...
For people who are concerned about getting a "high score" in whatever threat inventory, we are all a threat already. That's the very basic rationale behind mass-surveillance. For the record, a majority of HN members would hypothetically get pretty "high scores"...
Back to the topic of the thread, Obama will not pardon Snowden.
what does socialism have to do with this? maybe you meant to say "a mode of thought I would expect in totalitarian police states..."
it's true that some totalitarian police states have, nominally if not really in practice, also been socialist. however, there have been just as many fascist, capitalist, monarchist, and theocratic totalitarian police states as well.
so I ask again...what does socialism have to do with this?
Surely, right. If history has taught us anything. I mean, we know some of the things the CIA has gotten up in the past.
I've had occasion in recent years to speculate how many lists that has put me on. And to explain to a few friends "three degrees of separation" and what that might imply for them, as well.
I don't particularly like being listed. But I really don't like and fear the utter lack of transparency and accountability, and how such information can and apparently is "weaponized" against individuals for personal, political, and financial objectives.
Not only is it scary. It is, ultimately, a wasteful mis-use of resources. All this dirt digging and slinging and lawyering up takes away from more useful activity. Like fixing blight and illness before it engenders disfunction.
Call me an optimist. I believe -- or at least hope -- that we can do better.
I'm tired of living in perpetual fear.
I hate this notion. I stay in India -- a socialist nation, which has its own problems but "lack of freedom" compared to any other nation in the world is not one of them.
You are now concerned about getting on the no-fly list.
Think about being concerned doing a Google Search, Buying this item, Putting much money into this and this.
Just like privacy doesn't exist without others, signing this will at least help by giving strength, and privacy, in numbers.
Leaving this resistance alone, as if they were some heroes you respect but won't stand by, is really a cowardly way of being anti society and skipping your citizen duty.
First they came for them, etc... You know how it ends.
But seriously, nobody at the NSA is going to place* you on a watch list because you are part of a small vocal minority that raised support online for Snowden, a wanted traitor and saboteur of the USA.
*There is however a good chance that the money grubbing bastards at one of the third party contractors the NSA eats up reports and analytics from will profile you into something you are not (or lets face it, you are) and that will be ingested into our intelligence pipeline.
The most obvious application in this case is that you would be automatically disqualified for a security rating in the future. You'd never get to know the reason of course, you'd just be rejected.
EDIT: I still think people should sign of course. Let's not let them win by default by letting our fear control us. Do you really want that security rating if these are the requirements?
In the end though, if they want you to work for them, security clearance will be granted.
I agree. They will not place you on a watch list because you support Snowden.
They will place you on a watch list because they can.
If you believe he acted ethically, then sign the thing with me.
And since there's very real possibility of having a lunatic at the helm of government at some point, yes, one had better speak up now.
Let's be like the founders and stand up to our government [1].
[1] List of quotes:
- The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." --Patrick Henry
- "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington
- "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." --William Pitt in the House of Commons November 18, 1783
Both ACLU and AI have their own petition forms with different letters.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/get-involved/take-action/edward-s...
https://action.aclu.org/secure/grant_snowden_immunity
Wondering if ACLU and AI are a little late to confirm, or if this is an elaborate attempt to get qualified contacts info.
> Front features artist Shepard Fairey's iconic portrait of Edward Snowden
> Back includes ACLU logo and pardonsnowden.org URL
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/09/13/us-obama-should-pardon-e...
The top comment in this thread is paranoia about whether this site is a hostile name collection honeypot (I think if it is, so is commenting on this thread, hello nsa).
One way of combatting such paranoia is to establish trust. This site accepts donations, but nowhere does it say WHO is running it. It has neat ACLU, Amnesty International, and HRW logos at the bottom, but anyone can put graphics on a page. It has a whole list of supporters, but all without any citation of their support (you would expect the Chomskys, Lessigs, and Greenwalds, but the Soros are a bit more surprising).
This is at best a rushed, uncoordinated release. At worst, it IS a name collection honeypot.
If this group does in fact have support of ACLU, AI, and HRW, it should link to those organizations' press releases of this particular domain. If it has the endorsements of popular figures, at the very least link to a tweet of theirs.
Snowden should be pardoned because he revealed that in the land of the free, we should always be looking over our shoulder asking if this is an NSA sting job. A good way of fighting that paranoia lifestyle is with credibility. These guys are failing that fight.
I'm starting to think they just got a list of people they believed might support this petition drive, and then added them to the site as "supporters".
Saying they are "supporters" of this drive is misleading. They should change the copy to say "these are some people that also support pardoning Ed Snowden".
At this point I would be extremely hesitant to donate money to this group until its foundational structure gets clarified.
So, we're good?
Also, the FAQ page https://www.pardonsnowden.org/faq mentions, "We've partnered with the nonprofit Center For International Policy (CIP) so that we can offer tax deductibility to donors. Your donation goes to the CIP, they enable tax deductibility, and it is then transferred to us to be used for the campaign."
Edit: I normally don't do these edits, but seriously, why am I getting downvoted for this? Obviously this is bad, that does not make it any less true. You must be the ones downvoting sad YouTube videos and the reason why Facebook had to introduce multiple like variants.
The reality is, I think you're right. Sadly, for the majority of people, this is not an issue they care about.
I wish people would stop donating money to twitch gamers and instead support journalists who investigate, setup tor-relays/seed-boxes and reduce the dependence on centralization.
Until another terrorist attack happens on a favored Western city, Westerners will be ambivalent about ISIL.
Until a newspaper prints another photo of a child dead in the sand, Westerners will be ambivalent about refugees.
Hard to imagine how this could be fixed. I guess you would have to restrict the amount of money to be used, but who would shoot himself in the foot? You would need shitloads of money from a source, who does not care - rare combination. Also the topic is not as sexy as "curing X".
After that the even bigger problem would be to find a way to get the media to actually report on things and/or the people to actually pay attention to such reports. A glimmer of hope to me is Jon Stewart (and the group around him, especially Last Week Tonight).
Hence, at the moment I'm voting Gary Johnson, who I actually think is the most qualified, but also made it clear he wants to downsize the NSA
[0]: https://www.johnsonweld.com/education [1]: https://twitter.com/govgaryjohnson/status/113419678730301440
As long as it does not harm me, I don't think I should disallow someone to do it. That is to say, I don't think I should, or society should pressure our beliefs on others. I would vaccinate my own children because it makes sense to, but I wouldn't force my neighbor to at gun point because that isn't going to help anyone. Which is the whole premise of the libertarian party.
Libertarianism has attractions, but idealism only goes so far. I believe the Libertarian world would collapse in flames (or disease, or hunger, or congestion).
(I know we're supposed to avoid comments like mine, but this one needed it.)
In the case of children I agree for like polio, but perhaps not flu. Either way it's hard to judge and the major point of libertarians is that the state should decide. For example, a west Nile vaccine makes sense for almost everywhere. Besides the bay area which has no mosquitos.
I'm sure Gary Johnson would agree to some extent, and he has already changed his mind when presented with evidence.
I think it should be illegal, but junkies should not be prosecuted. So I have a similar stance. The US seems to be goldmine for political activists. It is already very rich and successful and many of its social problems can be changed just through policies (e.g. prison population).
It is interesting how different (neo-)liberalism is seen in Europe vs. the US. When conservatives in the US speak about liberals they mean ordoliberalism and leftism, meaning increasing rights for people and decreasing rights for corporations, while Europe's left means the exact opposite, when it speaks about neoliberalism.
Both are wrong. (Neo-)liberalism includes both social liberalism and market liberalism. Maybe "individualism" is an easier term to describe the general idea. It should be seen as a second dimension on top of the left-right spectrum. You can introduce liberal policies that harm or help the poor or the rich.
I do not know the Libertarian party in the US, but what you are describing as libertarian here does not seem libertarian to me at all. Just careful and sensible liberalism. Libertarianism has some anarchist vibes to it. I would say the Tea party has libertarian policies.
The libertarian party in the U.S. is branding itself as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" meaning government should be lean and allow for as much social liberty as possible. They kinda tried to take the "common sense" approach. At least, that's what they say their stance is. Based on both of the governors terms in office I'd agree.
I always like to call myself a liberal, it totally throws off my friends who are Democrats and Republicans though.
Therefore by your logic, you should be for mandatory vaccinations. This is a valid and consistent opinion for a libertarian to hold.
Oh, so you don't understand the most fundamental bits of science at play in the vaccination debate. Why am I not surprised. I recommend you Google "vaccines herd immunity".
Children have already fallen gravely ill in some places in CA because of the stupidity enabled by this "libertarian" mindset.
Libertarians are interesting. Them wanting a small gov always has something anyone would agree with.
Yeah, no. Not Gary Johnson.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gary-johnson...
On the other hand in northern New Mexico, there was a Molycorp mine. There was metals contamination in the Red River. It had gone on for decades. And for decades politically it was being protected because of the jobs that were involved. I took office and I said, you’ve got to clean this up. You have to come to the table and you have to clean this up. They refused to come to the table. So my biggest club in the bag was, I am going to declare you a Superfund site. I’m going to hand you over to federal EPA unless you come to the table in 30 days and come up with a plan for fixing your metals contamination.
And they claimed that it was natural! It was ludicrous. It was a slap in the face. And they refused to come to the table. My phone is ringing off the hook, politically. It’s ringing off the hook. There were all these jobs. And my response was: “These people are bad actors and they have to be brought to the table.” Thirty days went by and they became a Superfund site. So there’s an example of the EPA and why the EPA should exist. And why government should exist to protect us against those who would do us harm. And in this case the Libertarian argument would be, as individuals we could have brought suit against polluters. We can bring suit individually. Well, in the case of Molycorp, you know what, they would have been able to withstand any individuals trying to bring that suit against them.
I am not an American and I don't have a motivation to defend NSA or whoever, I just think that what Snowden did was partially wrong. Of course, caching the Internet like NSA and others are doing has human rights consequences, and those should be discussed publicly. But question the very existence of such practices is unreasonable in the situation the world is in nowadays. There are LOT of people in the world today who would want to wipe off the whole Western civilization, if they could... there must be a protection from them.
Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That's exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.
Terrorists are a few hundred, spread through the billions of people. Or, on the same kind of numbers, around 0.0000001% of the people the NSA spies on.
The bulk approach leads to a saturation of data. That doesn't make things easier, it complicates them.
Except you know, it doesn't prevent terrorist attacks. At all.
All it does is make the pile of hay with the needle in itthat much bigger. And a hell of a lot more expensive to the tax payer that is paying for the privilege of being spied on by their own government.
The usual justification for invading becomes ridiculous in that context: We need to restrict the people's freedom by spying on them, because we tried to bring freedom to another country.
"Big attacks" are vanishingly rare. But, just for the sake of argument, they haven't had an attack until they do.
The point of this is the US is actually harvesting way more data than the U.K., and we have so-called "lone wolf" attacks every couple of months.
Mass surveillance doesn't keep you safe.
Keep in mind that while we're trying to prevent terrorist attacks against us, we're actively and have actually used those same terrorists to further our goals in other countries.
If government is a tool, it's a rare politician that votes to make the tool less reliable. Note that this is distinct from changing the scope of what the tool can affect: this is about the reliability of the tool. Even politicians that were in favour of what Snowden did, who thought he contributed positively, and voted against surveillance, would still likely baulk at making life too easy for more people like him. That's because government is supposed to flow from the top down, and policy change is not supposed to emanate from the machinery. The machinery is supposed to execute the orders of government.
In the intelligence world, it's common to be very cautions about leaks since foreign actors like Russia can really benefit politically from such scandal.
It can be difficult to really know all the details since it's covered in secrecy, and Snowden himself will knowingly avoid to say too much to reduce the damage.
In my view, digital surveillance is a complex issue because people don't really understand how it's done, the west is still waging a war against terror to avoid attacks in land, and agencies will often want to screw the due process to catch terrorists however they can.
It's odd to me. They don't mind digital surveillance at all. They think it's good if it makes everyone safer.
Throwing in my two cents, what interests me on the Snowden topic, is his character. While I'm glad Snowden took the initiative and risk, I don't believe he did it for altruistic reasons: sacrificing himself for the greater good. My opinion is based on seeing and hearing Edward Snowden talk in the documentary "Citizen 4" and other interviews. Many people say, "Look at what he did. He gave up his life in America. He sacrificed everything for no financial reward. He's a hero." It's true he took a big risk; he could still spend a lot of his life in prison. But he has gained huge from this risk. He is famous and respected by many; they're making a fucking movie about him. It reminds me of the line at the end of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford": "You know what I expected [after I killed Jesse James]? Applause."
1. "patriotic" but don't respect those who stand up for ideals in the Constitution
2. "anti-government" or "anti-authority" but don't respect those who stand up to challenge the blind power grabs by the government and say things like "fix it from within" (when they would never, ever say the same thing about the IRS, for example)
3. "libertarian" but again, don't actually seem to care about liberties other than the Second Amendmend and finding ways to defund public services so they can pay less taxes.
Just seems like a lot of cognitive dissonance at play among the libertarians who don't support Snowden.
Perhaps we think that we are standing up for those ideals? Perhaps we believe that the Constitution actually does set up a government and grant it certain powers, and that it's perfectly constitutional for that government to use those powers?
> 2. "anti-government" or "anti-authority" but don't respect those who stand up to challenge the blind power grabs by the government and say things like "fix it from within" (when they would never, ever say the same thing about the IRS, for example)
Because national security is an issue. You simply don't reveal your military strengths and weaknesses to potential adversaries; that's like going into a dodgy bar and announcing, 'BTW, in case of a fight, I have a bruised right rib.'
> 3. "libertarian" but again, don't actually seem to care about liberties other than the Second Amendmend and finding ways to defund public services so they can pay less taxes.
I care deeply about my liberties. I just don't believe that anything Snowden alleges constitutes an infringement upon those liberties.
The government is granted those powers by democratic mandate.
When a mass surveillance system can be set up without any democratic debate, these powers were never granted to the government, it grabbed them without permission.
When the director of the NSA lies to Congress under oath, there is no democratic oversight over these powers.
I just can't take this comment as being in good faith. The NSA has countless times violated the Constitution that binds our "government" and separation of powers that you hint at.
If this is true, I find your theory implausible.
Also, from hearing him talk, I'm quite convinced he thought long and hard about the moral implications of what he's doing. To the point where it would surprise me very much if "the greater good" weren't his primary motivation.
The machinery wants to crucify him and make a huge example. The machinery needs to be fixed and Snowden's actions need to be better examined by a group not so invested the massive machine.
Maybe at the very start, but that eventually changed. For example, I'm not sure how you can justify leaking 9 years of NSA internal newsletters as whistleblowing. [1]
Public leaks can be incredibly damaging to our operational advantages against various adversaries, and it's often non-obvious which data will be most helpful to them.
The main reason I stand behind him is the matter of the director of the NSA lying to congress under oath. We don't even have the illusion of a democracy if we can't have effective congressional oversight of intelligence agencies with as broad a reach as the NSA.
Did he? Everything I've read is that he used true words, but didn't explain what those true words actually meant.
His first explanation for this answer post Snowden was that the program was too secret to reveal publicly, so he had to give the "least untruthful answer" that wouldn't reveal the existence of the program.
Later his lawyer said that he had forgotten about the program in question.
Either way he did not use true words, but he may have merely forgotten rather than lied.
"No, honey, I technically told you the truth when I said I didn't have sex with her, because my buddies and I had secretly decided that 'sex' means gardening."
The fact that your name and address is known to the entity receiving the petition shows that you really mean it. Also, for some entities it might be illegal to be moved by petitions signed by non-citizen. Unfortunately, those petitions systems only ask for your address, not for your citizenship. But we can assume citizenship from the address for the first order.
Yes, that's how any petition works. People really need to learn the basics of citizenship at school.
A petition only works if each vote is tied to a real individual.
Do you stand idly by while the hostile ones (whatever that might mean) use it to their advantage, or do you get your government with their huge funds to help in this regard?
The latter, of course. Trouble is when that agency becomes rogue, which it certainly seems like the NSA have, with rubber stamping.
But we still need some form of accountable defense I think. It's just gone horribly wrong.
There might not be a single person in the world who understands all the moving parts well enough to say what's right.
It doesn't excuse all action to improve security, but we do have to occasionally align our security with modern standards. What would happen if we left all cybersecurity (including banks, power systems, etc) to the private sector?
And then, where do we draw the line? Is it okay for the FBI to target people who visit a child pornography site? Most would say yes... People who download The Anarchist's Cookbook? Probably another yes. But what about collecting info on the people who supported that whole ordeal with Clive Bundy? Or people who belong to a non-state sponsored militia? That's where the line starts to gray for many. The point being, it's never cut and dry.
Starts out using racism by claiming we need to restrict privacy (drugs) to prevent muslims (hispanics) from terrorizing us. Next it's associated with sexual deviants (reefer madness), and anyone who opposes it must be one of them. Then people start to realize that privacy isn't just an ideal, but it's a physical feeling of freedom - a feeling that they have never felt before, the freedom to be the captain of your life (damn hippies!) - people have tasted freedom and they want more of it. To fight against it, governments spends trillions of dollars hunting out anyone who provides privacy services (drug smuggling).
Eventually there is reform,etc etc... so, it took like a century for cannabis.. 20 years for privacy?
Not even close.
For one, many non-crackpots (IT/infosec professionals and academics) strongly suspected NSA possessed capabilities similar to these and were probably exploiting them for many years before Snowden. Most details weren't known, but many people were not remotely surprised by the revelations.
Actual conspiracy theorists tend to believe far more ridiculous scandals. Most of them believe mass homicides are orchestrated by governments to achieve political goals (Bush destroyed WTC to invade Afghanistan and Iraq; Obama murdered Sandy Hook children to pass stricter gun control legislation). If any conspiracy like that were ever proven in the same way NSA surveillance was, the shitstorm would (justifiably) be 1000x worse.
But it is true that history almost definitely will not treat NSA's current actions kindly. It's only a matter of how far away we are from that time.
The power of the NSA, et al. was probably overstated up until a few years ago - for example, if you're so powerful and omnipotent, why trust your top stuff to booz allen contractors? Also, Natanz was amateur hour - inside sources have essentially admitted that - it's not the sign of a robust or mature operation that had been in place for a decade. Also, only a small amount of the software/tools that the papers mention has actually been verified (if any at all, I have not been following it recently).
But that's unlikely and I do support a pardon if the accepted version of the events is true. Even if it did end up being psy ops, they might have jut been showing nefarious material to enough contractors until one inevitably leaked it. Honestly the way they are written is kind of odd, not like technical manuals an engineer would use. edit* - and yeah they're not even billed as manuals, just as a catalog. They kind of strike me as realistic ideas or concepts, maybe even with some prototypes - thrown in with a couple of things that do exist. There's nothing technically amazing about any of the things it describes though - if you watch old def con videos you could probably figure out how to do a lot of that stuff anyway (which you alluded to)
The way I currently see it:
- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
- The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.
- Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.
- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
- Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.
- Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.
- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing. As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.
I have a lot of respect for whistleblowers, and also for Snowden. What he did is nothing short of heroic. But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia. What's missing for me?
He did attempt to use internal channels.
His original intent was not to go to russia, it was a last resort.
But isn't that the crux of the problem?
Let us assume the best about Snowden: that he did do this for noble reasons, that he was acting on his own initiative, that he did attempt to restrict the documents he took to those dealing with unethical or unconstitutional espionage that a fair and impartial Inspector General or similar authorized party should have reviewed.
What happened if something completely unrelated (but classified) was also in the dump (say, information about Russian nuclear forces or Pakistani cooperation with a terrorist group) that ended up being vetted not by him (in an authorized facility prior to his flight) but by Greenwald or another journalist (out in the wild)?
At that point, regardless of his intentions, he has disclosed classified information to a non-authorized party and has broken the law.
At that point, whistleblowing has nothing to do with it.
Note, I'm not arguing against a pardon for Snowden-as-whistleblower. I simply think that such a vetting argument doesn't hold water.
It's a form of vetting, yes, but useful? Hard to say. It's also trusting a lot of information that could get people killed in someone's hands. Who's to say someone didn't pay Greenwald $10 million for a copy of all of it? You'd never be able to prove this happened unless they were really stupid about it.
> He did attempt to use internal channels.
The only thing I found regarding this was that he emailed a few "district heads" which, last time I did work in the area, don't really do anything. There is an actual, official channel to go through to reporting stuff like this (there are actually multiple; one for the NSA and one for the DoD in general). There are also more appropriate people he could have emailed.
Now I'm not saying internal channels would have worked but I haven't seen anything that showed me Snowden really tried hard to go through those channels in the first place.
> His original intent was not to go to russia, it was a last resort.
China is also not the greatest place to go. Honestly anywhere outside of a SCIF and you could get picked up by interested parties. But since he did go to China and Russia we have no way of knowing if both of those countries have a full copy of his data or not.
See Binney, eg:
"William Binney HOPE 9 KEYNOTE": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI
The "internal channels" have been broken for years, and do not work. Snowden was aware of this, and AFAIR has commented on that on several occasions.
> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
What? Incompetent? They managed to do their job, in the face of GCHQ and the NSA. Just because they made some mistakes, that doesn't make them "incompetent". If they were, we wouldn't have heard anything at all!
> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
So, being competent is a strike against Snowden, but being incompetent is a strike against Greenwald (who presumably doesn't have any training from GCHQ)?
> - The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.
Everyone who was paying attention knew a lot about the clearly illegal stuff that NSA have been doing, from previous leaks - that doesn't mean the leaks didn't have value.
> I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.
The first part was in my eyes a prerequisite for having a sizable useful set of documents to leak. The second part is really two parts: he fled - he didn't submit himself to capture, torture and/or assassination in the US. He did this by fleeing to Hong Kong.
Then he went to Russia, the only port within reach that offered sanctuary. I'm ashamed that Norway didn't - for example. But of course we're NATO allies, and with the not too distant history of Mossad carrying out a botched assassination (successful kill, wrong person) on Norwegian soil, and Norway being complicit in extralegal detention and torture by allowing CIA's "white planes" to transit through - it would probably have been hopelessly naive for Snowden to try to flee here, even if offered "safe passage".
I think you laid bare my mental split on this issue and for that I thank you. I will concede the point on Snowden being competent.
I said it because it felt (and still slightly feels) wrong to me: Like a kung-fu student hitting his master with a punch he was taught by that same master. Snowden used the trade craft he picked up at the NSA and CIA against these same organizations.
But he would have been foolish to ignore his own skills and I can't expect him to forget these and put his life in danger (more than he already has).
> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
is simply false.
> - Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
Nice innuendo. Please state your concerns in a concrete fashion. If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. If it is that he was stranded in a regime unfriendly to the U.S. regime, what do you expect him to choose? England? Canada? It is also good to remember that U.S. actions are responsible for him being in Russia.
> - Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.
> - Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.
1) Assuming "damage" is defined as spending money and time to evaluate the breach and implement corrective measures, sure. I've yet to see anyone point to anything beyond "I can't tell you, but be very afraid". Remember how the release was going to lead to imminent terrorists attacks in Missouri?
> - Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.
Proof, please.
> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
"Secret agent skills?" Isn't that normally spelled with a "z" on the end?
> - Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.
"High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots. I except that sort of low-rent smearing from Slashdot and gov-contractor flacks, not Hacker News. And which is it - is Snowden a mad-1337 super agent super hacker, or and uneducated outsider? Character assassination works much better when you're a bit more consistent.
Anyway, shorn of the non-sequitur schoolyard taunting, what is the complaint? Intelligence operatives, shown to have expanded surveillance far beyond the imaginations of the voters in the democracy that supposedly as a voice in what they do, had their feelings hurt when they were exposed?
This is the same argument made by police apologists: if you keep taking pictures of us illegally killing people, we'll stop doing our jobs.
> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.
> But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.
Please describe the conditions under which whistleblowing is acceptable to you. If Snowden had received the documents from someone else (thus hadn't "misuse[d] hist admin privileges"), would that make it OK for him, but not for the hypothetical other person? Of it he hadn't been stranded by the U.S. in Russia (he didn't choose to stay)?
Based on your litany above, it sounds like intelligence whistleblowing is only acceptable to you when the documents involved are officially released, the release doesn't damage any existing power structures, no intelligence operatives have their fee-fees hurt, and the leaker is better educated and collaborates with journalists you personally like more.
>> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
> is simply false.
As far as I was ever able to find Snowden emailed "district heads". That was the only internal channel he went through that I could find. Considering the NSA and the DoD in general each have channels to go through along with far, far more appropriate people to email / call about it (district heads is something you basically never hear about in the intel space; they're not useful at getting anything done) I would also say he did not go through internal channels.
If you have proof outside of this I'd love to read it.
> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where.
Why does it not? He had a very, very large corpus of classified intelligence that any enemy of the United States would love to get their hands on. Granted he had little choice once he got to China but I don't understand the claim that it doesn't matter where he went considering the payload he was carrying.
> You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.
I'm not sure I would consider that vetting. Regardless a large corpus of classified and likely damaging data was taken, carried and given to multiple parties. A vetting prior to documents being indiscriminately taken would have been far more responsible though the considerable time that would have taken would have made leaking impossible in the first place.
I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.
I have no opinion on the "district heads" thing. I've never worked in the non-private intel world. Most of what I know on the topic is here:
https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-...
This has been spun exceptionally hard in multiple versions of their story, and as best I can tell, "proper channels" as used by NSA flacks at this point means "people who could shut him up." This is based on the FIOA'd discussions found in the above-linked documents. Snowden's account hasn't changed and has matched details the NSA story only included in later versions (apparently because there were releases they didn't expect with contrary facts after their first version). Everyone, of course, will form their own opinions about this.
But let's say that Snowden never attempted to tell anyone inside, at all. Do you think the general population of the U.S. would have learned what is being done in their name? Do you think a single program would have changed, even the cosmetic renaming and budget-shuffling that allows spokesmuppets tell highly deceptive technical-truths in congressional hearings?
>> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. >Why does it not?
You misread. I am not arguing that it doesn't matter; I'm parsing the GP's argument.
> I'm not sure I would consider that vetting.
Many people have differences of opinion. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear of a vetting scheme that would both satisfy critics and have informed the general public to the same degree.
My personal belief is that the damage done by an out-of-control intelligence regime is far greater than burning necessarily transient sources and methods. Even if it weren't, I'd grade the disclosure on a curve, because the spin coming out of any intelligence agency about this sort of thing is inherently untrustworthy, and intelligence has to be kept on a short leash. Add to that the incredible scale of the NSA/Five Eyes networks and the fact that the NSA is demonstrably harming (at least) civilian security by emphasizing offense over defense, and we have something incredibly frightening with intrusive capabilities the Stasi could only have dreamed of. You can have that, or you can have democracy, but I don't believe you can have both. And that's only looking at "official" uses; we know NSA employees also have used the data for, ah, call it personal reasons. Both anti-democratic uses are inevitable.
> I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.
You're clearly not. Oh, you're trying to politely advise me? I don't side with Snowden (or Greenwald, or Wheeler, or...) on everything (or even "a lot"), but I probably am a zealot by your definition, because I believe the "moderate" approach here is a vastly (as in arguing over orders of magnitude) scaled-back, retooled NSA/FBI/CIA.
As someone with only a high-school diploma myself, I do not like others with only a high-school diploma, who blow the chances they've been given.
Should Snowden only have been glad someone took a chance on him and shut up? No. He did a brave thing.
Will it be harder in the future for someone with only a high-school diploma to get admin access at the NSA, as a result of Snowden's actions? Yes. NSA will start focussing on Ivy League students and family members of NSA employees.
> So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.
I think Greenwald is an ok journalist. I think it is grave incompetence to use your romantic interest as a document mule. Journalists may be able to handle sensitive documents. The partners of those journalists... not so much. They are basically civilians.
The bad result is that his partner was caught by customs and detained. A bad result may have been that other agencies got to his partner before the UK did. Everyone around Greenwald became a target the moment he was in possession of the cache. That he actually gave the documents to his partner, shows that he was a valid target at that.
Do you honestly think Snowden thought it was a good idea that Greenwald let his partner handle these documents?
facts. you mis-stated several things about the story. I don't have time to do your research for you. there's a lot about it on the internet already. begin by educating yourself about the facts and then make your judgments.
> high-school diploma Snowden.
vicious cheap shot and ad hominem. why did you say that? do you only respect people with piece of paper signed by a university dean?
Without volunteering too much entropy: I myself have a high-school diploma and my sister is gay.
You are perfectly fine to read "partner" there, though that may not convey the fact that they were not married (which would arguably have made it slightly better).
if you want to just admit that you're not well informed on the issue and move on, that's fine. but you're coming in here with a strongly held and deeply controversial opinion, which you have expressed with language that is filled to the brim with weasel words, assumptions, and ad hominem attacks. expect to be challenged when you express yourself like that.
I also think that my request for views opposing my current view shows my flexibility on this matter. If someone can show convincing arguments against my view, I am perfectly willing to adapt and concede.
You did not. You told me to go research the "facts", while you took your "facts" the same as I did mine: By researching sources on the internet. It is weak to say that someone with an opposing view must have this view because he/she is ill-informed.
The so-called 'ad hominem attacks' are likely the result of my poor mastery of the english language, combined with an assumption of bad faith on your part.
>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
That's why he gave them to a small group of well respected journalists, so they could use their professional discretion to vet them.
>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
I highly doubt that, but even if it that were true those documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists, only the ones showing the NSA doing illegal things are.
>- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
Yes he did.
>- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent. He just copied files, fled to China and shared them with a small group of people, none of which required "secret agent skills"
>- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
So? You can't blame Snowden for that, blame the Justice department. If Snowden could have been even remotely safe anywhere but Russia, he wouldn't be there now. You can't chase after somebody then blame them for hiding somewhere safe.
>- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
No he didn't, he gave them to perfectly competent journalists. Greenwald is very competent and well respected as a journalists. Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain the important thing is that he did without them getting leaked earlier than he wanted.
>If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing.
He tried that and nobody took him seriously.
>As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.
Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.
You can not vet encrypted documents. These documents were unencrypted and handled by journalists who could never stand the full attention of the world's intelligence agencies.
Laura Poitras was very qualified. Greenwald... not so much. He had to receive a crash-course on computer safety. He left unidentified USB-sticks in the laptop with the documents. He gave the documents to his non-journalist partner in an attempt to smuggle them through customs. Greenwald is a professional. He just did not get the gravity or technicalities of most of the documents he saw.
> those [standard-operating-procedure] documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists
They are not being leaked to the general public (with a few exceptions). But one has to assume they made it to the competitors of the US. And it points to indiscriminate leaking -- maybe Snowden did not even fully realize what he all had, as he took everything he could get his hands on: mailing lists, internal collaborative wiki's, technical details on ongoing missions.
> Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
I do not think Snowden went through the official internal channels. He may have tried to ring the alarm bell with some people internally. If you have anything to challenge this, I'd be interested.
> Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent.
He was a former CIA operative. He took his job at BAH with the full intention of leaking everything he could get his hands on. His flight, undercover operation, and handling of the documents, was all very deliberate and possible due to his trade craft.
> [Snowden fled to Russia] So? You can't blame Snowden for that
Why not? Proponents almost make it sound he was chased to Russia, or that Wikileaks kidnapped him and released him there. He ended up in Russia. I think both destinations were chosen very deliberately, to avoid rendition, prosecution (or worse: assassination or torture).
> Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain
I think it does. From journalists we can expect them to maybe handle very sensitive documents. The partners of these journalists? Not so much... That is as close to civilian as you can get.
> He tried that and nobody took him seriously.
So he downloaded everything else, filled 4 laptops, and now we do take him seriously? Maybe I have missed something here? Did Snowden try to leak these important documents before he went to Poitras and Greenwald?
> Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.
Sure, Russia and China won't come out and say that:
- we have the documents
- Snowden was one of our own
But to think these documents are not in the possession of every competent intelligence agency in the world may be a bit naive. I'd reckon these intelligence agencies knew of these documents the moment news agencies around the world starting working on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_Ulfkotte#The_book_.22Bough...
He was essentially forced to flee to Russia-- no other country could protect him. I don't think it's where he wanted to end up.
I don't think he should be pardoned. He committed crimes, and possibly could have found a better way to get this information out there. I do think he should be offered a generous plea-bargain in return for coming home and debriefing the NSA/CIA and congress about what exactly he took, how he took it and the status of all of those secrets.
My actual experience, though, is that emigrants are viewed with some disdain by a good portion of US citizens. Then again, viewpoints like that are one part of why I'm an emigrant...
We need your address to process your credit card payment. This lets our payment processor (Stripe) verify your identity and process your payment. We don't ask for information beyond what's required by Stripe. The people at the pardon campaign will be able to see your name, email address and physical address, but we will never see your financial data. Here is Stripe's privacy policy; here is our privacy policy."
That's a straight up lie. Stripe does not require physical address, it's entirely optional. Know what you're signing yourself up for.
With no citation. I can make a site say anything I want it. Credibility comes when you can point to other sites saying the same thing.
hughperkins was using a "security mindset", and was implying that the site, due to lack of authentication, was being tricked into showing "George Soros" as a supporter because it just let anybody type in "George Soros".
This is not the case. The page of supporters is a page they designed, with no user input. The site is making the explicit claim that George Soros, that George Soros, is a supporter.
If you believe the site is lying, no amount of authentication on the site's side is going to fix that!
The important thing would be wistleblower protection laws changes that would protect a future Snowden from this situation.
That is only true if you are operating under the assumption that liberty, human welfare, and strength of America as a nation is a good thing for the future.
To me, it's not at all obvious that our ruling class really gives a shit about those.
So, no, yours isn't the only reason to support pardoning Snowden.
It's also, distantly, possible that the act of allowing for the potential good of his actions might lead more to question an unwavering support of present American principles, values, and policies.
But who'd want one's security apparatus to be incentivised to follow the rules, right?
A society needs layers of checks and balances, and whistleblowing is one such layer. When whistleblowing is penalized so harshly you create an environment of unchecked power. Citizens can't do anything because even when they know they're being lied to, they need to know the specifics of what's going on in order to protest effectively. Because as we've now learned even the elected representatives get sidelined, so they're pretty much useless.
Realistically speaking, how much damage can one whistleblower really do when they have no malicious intent? Not much. What are the negative consequences of unchecked power? Effectively unlimited.
No whistleblowers in this area does not mean no oversight or no checks and balances. It's just that as an audit mechanism, it presents a lot of risk since it leaves what can ultimately effect national security to the discretion of the whistleblower.
Contrary, I can see exactly zero potential for jeopardising national security by any mooderately sane law on whistleblower protection in this area.
All whistleblowing is taking things into one's own hands at the risk of persecution, and here its only more so, given the seriousness of the charges one will face if one's defense on the basis of whistleblower protection ie arguing one acted in the public interest and revealed gross abuse of power fails.
Whatever is at the discretion for the potential leaker to decide, is at that discretion regardless of legal defense opportunities a leaker may have after the fact.
It is simply ludicrous that revealing rampant abuse of power by precisely those tasked with protection of the constitutional order, and precisely at the point where such control is most needed can be a punishable offense in any democracy.
But naturally any such leak needs to be able to stand up in court and satisfy some reasonable criteria of public interest and of having revealed serious violations - nobody is suggesting blatant espionage be legalized ffs.
In this case there was clearly a public good. There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
Which effects national security more in the long run strikes me as a difficult thing to speculate about. However in the short term I'd imagine every organisation of interest to the US in the world promptly switched keys, hardware, routine, whatever after the story broke...
> There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
but, but that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it; the curtailment of mass surveillance? I mean, we're talking about a public agency; it needs to act within a clear public mandate when striving to reach its goals. It is not an end in itself, so when it oversteps its mandate, its not in fact providing any public good, but diminishing it, and so hindering it in further action on this course is in the public interest.
So sure, having the public aware that it engages in mass surveilence and bulk collection on both its citizens and non-targeted citizens of the world more generally -- is inconvenient to the agency, but is a win for the public. And consequently so are any actions third parties then take to make its life more difficult -- because really it is the rouge party here!
Something seems upside down to me in this logic where obscuring the price you pay for a public service can be permissable simply because people expect some reasonable level of that service. And hence the scandal of realizing the true cost of that service, and the public finding it too expensive can be seen as a story that has two sides, merely because any limits that public may decide to put on the price naturally cause the quality of the service to degrade. But,but if the public isn't the one that decides on the quid pro quo here, who the hell is being served here anyhow??
Surely if its the public that's served by a public agency, then a person who uncovers that the agency is costing us way way more than is known and than it claims - even under oath to the congress for christ's sake - is a desirable correction, for no decision could even be made under false information.
It's still clearly a moral imperative to help Snowden.
What has been done to Snowden that is atrocious and repugnant? He is the one who stole information; he is the one who absconded to adversary states. Nothing has been done to him.
> It's still clearly a moral imperative to help Snowden.
The moral imperative is to see that he gets a fair trial, and then upon conviction to ensure that he is humanely executed.
As the Berlin University puts it, he can thus be credited with "extraordinary achievements in defense of transparency, justice and freedom".
Yet despite this, his country of origin has no laws needed to protect him and any future cases of the kind. And what the hell are advesary states? Last I heard the cold war was over...
There is of course no possibility that he'd get a trial, so your morbid fantasy is just that... Again, I'm simply astonished that there are people in the US who could see this act as anything other than utter heroism.
Law is built on precedent. This is how a two-hundred year old law about papers in one's house was used to try and pry open an iPhone. It is also why people get rightly indignant about seemingly small things.
In the specific context of the data Snowden exfiltrated, you are correct - a pardon changes little. But for the next Snowden? Or the political climate surrounding his "treason" versus "whistleblowing"? Totally different.
How can a pardon set a precedent? Its an act of an executive, not a court? It would be up to whoever is the president when the next Snowden occurs to grant clemence or no at their total executive discretion, no? So how's that a precedent? And how comforting it would be to the next Snowden that his life is at the whim of the current president to grant or take should he go through with a leak.
Or am I misunderstanding how the US legal system works?
I have to grant you're completely right about the political climate though. No legislative change will happen w/o a wide perception that the party at fault is the NSA here, and Snowden's action heroic and justified and hence worthy of legal protection. And a pardon would help in establishing that.
I'm really amazed how negatively he's percieved in the US apparently.
However, as a social precedent, it may give the next Snowden a more favorable outlook with the public, which in turn would make sympathy from lawmakers less risky.
Or maybe nothing at all. But you are right, legally probably wouldn't do much
But I was wondering: Isn't Obama at risk if he pardons him? Wouldn't he be interrupted if he started a speech about Snowden? That's been the #1 interest of his most powerful agencies during his mandate, of course they've thought about the risk that Obama pardons him. He could try to secure the pardon beforehand, by sending the pardon papers to Snowden, but in which kind of letterbox would he post it given NSA's and FBI's reach on communications? He could try to communicate with journalists, but do we still have journalists left after Hillary's body count? etc.
Isn't Obama on his way out of office soon anyway? Pardoning Snowden might at least be something (even if after the fact) to justify his Nobel prize
(I consider that highly unlikely, though.)
As ineffective as the outrage has been, the NSA and US government definitely would have preferred that the issue never came up to begin with.
It would certainly not be symmetrical, since Snowden committed a crime while NSA has not (despite the rather theatrical claims of some).
Please consider finding something else to do with your time and/or career. You're helping bad people do bad things, the full scope of which won't become apparent until it's far too late.
One could take the position (not mine) that the NSA's "business as usual" was appropriate, that Snowden was mistaken in his adjudging it something that needed leaking, but that he was operating in good faith, honestly - mistakenly - believed it needed disclosure, and honestly believed internal channels would be ineffective at best. If we're going to have a massive secret surveillance apparatus, of course we need to encourage people in-the-know to blow the whistle if they suspect it is being misused.
Seems there are numerous examples of people going through proper channels and then getting retaliation[1]. Also, Snowden was a contractor, so was not covered under the whistleblower protection act as government employees are, so could not talk to members of Congress.
Thomas Drake complained internally to the designated authorities: to his bosses, the NSA Inspector General, the Defense Department Inspector General, and both the House and Senate Congressional intelligence committees, was labeled a troublemaker and then charged with (of all things): willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.
> Do you really think all 600+ members of Congress would have turned him away? Being the Senator or Representative that brought that info forward would have guaranteed re-election...
What about all the members of Congress that already knew about it? Why doesn't the same logic apply to them? that's 20+ members from both sides of aisle. At the end of the day, the proper channels have no obligation to do anything, it can go up the chain and decided things are better left unchanged, public non-the-wiser.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake
Unveiling a trove of illegal projects being undertaken by our government against our wishes would fall into this category in my mind.
I don't think Snowden was right. He was, in fact, wrong as a matter of the law and the Constitution. His concerns were misplaced. Okay, that's fine. But then, rather than doing the honourable thing and resigning — and keeping his oath — he betrayed his oath, he betrayed the trust placed in him, stole information he had no right to access in the first place and fled, first to Communist China and then to Neostalinist Russia (rather neatly giving the lie to his claims to care about human rights: the one government harvests organs from religious dissidents and the other detonated bombs in apartment buildings in order to solidify political power).
I am thoroughly convinced that a) not all Snowden has alleged is true; b) that which is alleged and true is legal and constitutional; and c) that which is both alleged and true is not something so immoral that despite being legal and constitutional it should be avoided anyway. Moreover, I am convinced that his behaviour meets the standard for treason.
If our laws are ever unjust, or our justice system ever fallible, the argument "it was illegal" cannot be used to justify whether something was moral. US law is a terrible basis for morality and that's a super weak argument.
Treason is the systemic and illegal invasion of the rights hundreds of millions of Americans, corrupt government officials quashing all means of accountability, lying under oath to congress, intentionally misleading congress and the American people, and refusing to enforce any sort of due process of law when it's been discovered that people were doing highly illegal things.
> Treason is the systemic and illegal invasion of the rights hundreds of millions of Americans, corrupt government officials quashing all means of accountability, lying under oath to congress, intentionally misleading congress and the American people, and refusing to enforce any sort of due process of law when it's been discovered that people were doing highly illegal things.
I'm sorry, but really really wanting those things to be treasonous does not make them treason.
Your gut is not the US Code. The US Code has no provisions that cause things to become treason by chaining enough increasingly emphasizing adjectives together.
If you argued this in court, you would lose.
For my part: I don't like that Snowden took incredibly serious (forget illegal) actions that served to cast aspersions on both the one and only meaningful US cybersecurity institution and the legitimacy of the United States government as a whole, and is now being harbored by Putin. Are people not seeing what has happened since? Russia is overtly inserting themselves into our domestic politics, and for the political feasibility of doing so, they should be (and by harboring a fugitive, absolutely are) thanking one Edward Joseph Snowden.
They're leveraging Assange as another mouthpiece, although there they get to hide behind being "Random Joe Public" donating to wikileaks. (And if you provide cover noise by doing so yourself: Stop. You're being played.)
What Snowden's actions predictably precipitated is incredibly ominous. I don't care how much pseudo-"Orwellian" surveillance was going on (that - do people not get this? - was not being abused. There were no mass arrests of people who arranged drug buys on facebook, or via gmail or whatever. Nobody knew it was happening prior to Snowden's actions - which is actually not true at all, anyone paying attention (raises hand) knew since the Room 641a disclosures in, what, 2006? Snowden was merely a far-more willing talking head - but I digress. The point is: if a whistleblower had to tell you they were reading every last email, clearly they weren't exactly doing a lot with that capability!). That does not in any way compare to giving an actual dictator of an an actual authoritarian party and government an unprecedented and dangerous level of leverage and influence and dirt on our democracy. Hell no, go directly to jail, do not collect $200, there doesn't need to be any detente with Moscow until Snowden is extradited.
A pardon? Give me a break. As far as I'm concerned, this petition is an instrument of the Kremlin, meant to further extend their ill intent into our country. No.
Was he? The Constitution provides us right to basic privacy against searches without warrants and due process for executive action. NSA was violating one with surveillance tech and other with parallel construction. Congress is supposed to hold executive branch accountable but was throwing away GAO's reports on abuses. Executive Branch was supposed to tell Americans truth about how they were approaching the surveillance issue and its affectiveness. They lied about both. They also had FBI raid the houses of those who used internal channels to complain about actual corruption like Trailblazer & ignoring Constitution. Finally, the judicial system that's supposed to hold other two in account was (a) provided with disinformation and (b) told in Jewel case that it had no business making rulings on the topic. So, Congress and Executive were corrupt in this case with Judicial powerless.
Only thing left in Constitution is leaks (First Amendment) with a follow-up of jury nullification, Presidential pardon, or selective application of 2nd Amendment. Leaks while in hiding hoping for first two is nicer than number three. I agree with critics that he shouldn't have leaked foreign ops and maybe should get less leniency for that. However, the whole first paragraph of my reply is guilt across the board esp in Congress and Executive branch. He shouldn't be tried unless they are for the crimes he revealed. He should also get leniency for bringing the domestic abuses to our attention. Binney et al, who played it responsibly, should get full immunity plus their paychecks for their service.
"Moreover, I am convinced that his behaviour meets the standard for treason."
Treason is killing 6,000+ Americans, maiming more, and costing us trillions in liabilities by use of disinformation to start a war for political purposes. That's straight-up murdering us. Snowden did a mix of whistleblowing on domestic stuff Alexander/Clapper lied about under oath, whistleblowing on key foreign stuff that could've damaged us due to stupidity of politicians, and a traitor on foreign, operational stuff that's the whole point of NSA's existence (as in: legitimate). So, he's a mixed bag with worst result being they get less automated spying on some groups. (shrugs)
Note: I also don't fully trust him as his statements changed a few times, he's a trained spy, and he conned his coworkers for their passwords. He's sneaky when he thinks it's justified for his mission. My calculations above are strictly based on statements/actions of corrupt government vs specific things he leaked. He looks like a saint compared to them, esp in terms of innocent blood on hands.
Funnier thing about many of the Snowden opponents on TV is they can't stand that he leaked our capabilities to media for responsible disclosure but are fine with U.S. military leaking similar things to media on daily basis just to brag about what they can do. If revelation denies ability to use tool, then the U.S. military chiefs deserve longer sentences for giving enemies even more details. Especially drone feeds that send stuff unencrypted which terrorists already intercept with cheap equipment. Talk about aiding and abetting the enemy during live operations. ;)
Edit: That being said, if we ever do get evidence that China or Russia did manage to get that data during his trip there, I'd change my tune immediately. That would be high treason, at least if it was intentional.
I guess you'll be changing your tune when you find out China and Russia read the papers containing all the TS/SCI and ECI leaks. They definitely have the information. ;)
Plus, as someone who held a clearance in the DoD (former interrogator), I will say it can be hard (especially for someone like those journalists who never held a clearance) to tell what can directly hurt someone else. Handing off NSA program documents could have potentially put the lives of CIA and NSA agents and sources around the world...but we would never know. Even the families of those people wouldn't know. All they would know is that their family member didn't come home.
Snowden complained loudly about a test answer. That's it.
The point in that riveting doc was simple, those that complained too loudly lost everything, thankfully not their lives.
1. A pile of unredacted, classified, and legitimate operations in the hand of foreigners which included at least two being targeted by them. They should've never had this information. He could have cherry-picked it to whistleblowing stuff during time he organized all of it but didn't. I'd have done the opposite to protect legit ops and sources.
2. He put all that at risk of foreign agencies, esp in Russia or China, getting it given their hackers are badass while reporters' IT groups are... average. After seeing Citizenfour, I was pretty confident his stuff could've been grabbed multiple times if he didn't have the element of surprise. It was also clear his tradecraft was weak vs what I read about in espionage non-fiction. I bet the journalists more so.
So, definitely parallels to Manning. I expected it from Manning over Snowden given Manning was a stressed-out youth going through an identity crisis in a war zone whereas Snowden was a trained spy claiming moral high ground in general and aiming to protect decent people. I'm not letting him off on dumping the foreign stuff. Especially while many of the targets do the same shit to us with local, legal protections for their own spies doing it. He needs to own up to that.
The truth. You deserve to know what crimes are committed in your name.
Didn't he?
Basically all the arguments (lies) they use to damn Snowden can be fairly applied to Manning.
Vs a reporter should be smart enough to redact the sensitive bits and report in a general enough way as to not endanger any specific person (in the field).
Yes, she was less careful and less precise and made more mistakes. She was younger than Snowden, more scared than Snowden, not thinking as straight as Snowden, perhaps even not as smart as Snowden (who appears to really be a genius of some kind). Snowden also had the benefit of learning from and being inspired by her mistakes. But her motivation was the same and 'crime' was more or less the same. And she's stuck in prison being denied medical care she needs, while Snowden is living a more or less free (compared to military prison!) life in exile.
Manning needs a pardon or commutation, she did what she did for us, same as Snowden.
I have found that the ACLU links from their site to the Pardon Snowden site. Interestingly, Human Rights Watch does not link to the site, but seems to have their own petition (maybe connected?) and that's as far as I went.
Even with that bit of confirmation that this site is legit. I am not that promiscuous with my information.
Either way it's not going to happen till after the election and most likely not till the end of his term in January. I'd expect it to be more likely for him to be pardoned if Trump is elected as otherwise Clinton, by association, would be dogged with "granting quarter to an enemy of the state".
Yep. I'd put it as zero with Clinton, non-zero but statistically insignificant with Trump, and 25% with Obama.
I'm not sure but I can imagine him saying that at some point. Still, I'd put him at non-zero because he doesn't have the same political baggage that Clinton would worry about.
In general, Obama had a bad run because he did a pretty bad job, so his legacy is shot. Clinton is no small part of his failures with the Benghazi incident, Libya in general, Egypt, Ukraine, and the asinine "Russia reset". Clinton's campaign is disintegrating, so I think she'll fade before the election.
Trump is a complete mystery. He could be a totalitarian, using Obama's extra-constitutional maneuvers as a springboard to dominate the people. Or, he could be a populist and flop around whichever way the wind blows - he could pardon Snowden just to placate the mob and get some short-term bump in approval ratings - or just as easily put a hit on the guy to get the same.
When Trump is not adjusting his message for an audience, I get the sense he thinks he can govern like a big city boss does. In the best case scenario, I envision Trump will be unable to govern because capitol hill won't respond to his small ball policies, belligerence, and whining. Congress will just plow forward with their profligate debt spending and toss him a policy bone from time to time.
More recently, the "greatest generation" signed up for WWII in droves, right? Actually over 50% were drafted with another estimated 100,000 Americans injuring themselves or fleeing the country to avoid the draft...
No evidence one way or another that this is true.
If we as a people want to make change, we should use the net to organize people to make change in the real world not the digital world. Make time, get in the streets, protest, actually pick up the phone and call your politicians, write to them, write to the government. Overwhelm them so much that they are forced to say yes.
Presidents and politicians wish to be loved, they are like Emperors, they want to appease the people. If they people make plenty of noise, they cave.
Otherwise, future IT workers will believe mass exporting SharePoint/file servers as leverage is acceptable.
While "rule of least privilege" is a good default access control policy; Gov and corporate IT departments are now over compensating their sharing policies due to the precedence Snowden has set.
That's not true given it's Espionage Act. The ridiculous setup of that Act essentially says he can be hit with highest charges, not provide anything classified for his defense, have released entirely legitimate stuff, and still get convicted due to technicality of the law. Plus, our legal system is an adversarial one not designed to bring out truth: prosecutors aim for convictions while attempting to dismiss anything that undermines it.
Best way to get truth, like him or not, is a pardon where he can say anything with immunity. If he's bad and ego-heavy, he'll slip up eventually. He already does on some things while enjoying the interviews too much. ;)
Presumably Obama could instruct the AG to drop the charges but that wouldn't prevent a future president from pursuing them.
I didnt understand where the money from donations go, but I could donate also for the right cause.
This alone is enough to deter participation. These campaigns need to separate social action from database building.
Happy to sign the petition but not at this site. Is there a way I can send a letter myself to the president?
But after I signed, it presented a donate page. I don't want to give them money since they have my addresses. They would have been more likely to get my money if they provided an anonymous donation portal.
"If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."
It's possible he meant for the purpose of leaking data, but it's wrong to assert it only due to your assumptions.
Quote:
Asked specifically if he felt like he had exhausted all other avenues before deciding to leak classified information to the public, Snowden responded:
Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/07...
Quote:
"After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention."
He says he told people, NSA says he didn't.
The NSA has nothing to gain, and more to lose, if they say that he did follow proper procedures.
I imagine this is the sort of thing that might be settled in a trial, should one ever occur.
It is in fact correct. You have an outdated claim by Snowden which is not supported by any evidence, this year NSA released emails of his 'internal' communications with FOIA and it was discussed (here on HN [0]). As far as documented evidence his only attempt to raise an issue internally was emailing legal counsel regarding a 'test question' - this is laughable.
If you want whistle-blower protections, you need to go through official channels and document document document. I am not saying the US has good protections (obviously it doesn't) - but we have to admit that Snowden isn't the model of someone that tried to go through the proper channels.
Edward Snowden went to the press with revelations because he was aware of the experience of previous whistleblowers.
Drake, Binney, Wiebe, Loomis, Roark followed the official channels and reported their concerns within the system. There was intense retaliation against them. They were arreested, fired and charged with crimes that could put them into jail for the rest of their lives.
It did not stop there. John Crane who worked as assistant inspector general of the DoD was supervising the whistleblower unit as well as handling all whistleblower allegations. He faced retaliation after taking them seriously.
Before Snowden: The Whistleblowers Who Tried To Lift The Veil http://www.npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-w...
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon...
Prosecutors tried hard to build a case to put them into into prison. They received punitive treatment and bullying, their houses were raided.
They raided Drake's house after he anonymously contacted DoD IG. Someone leaked this confidential information to DoJ. He faced 35 years of imprisonment. The judge in the case had some harsh words against government. https://fas.org/sgp/jud/drake/071511-transcript.pdf
So I think my objection to this narrative is clearer if we put it back into context.
What we're really debating is whether someone like Snowden had the means to appropriately handle the issues he discovered through official channels. The narrative on places like HN is that by raising issues and escalating them, perhaps beyond NSA, and NSA's IG, all the way to Senate Intelligence, someone like Snowden would face retaliation.
Here, I think, I have two points to raise:
* First, if by retaliation we mean "termination", it's hard to fit that into the actual Snowden story. Snowden took the Booz job in the first place in order to gain access to this information and route it to the people he thought needed it. His only reason to be there was to do the thing we're saying he'd get fired for. That's not a real deterrent.
* Second, if we look at actual prosecutions --- or even FBI investigations, like what happened to Binney and Roark --- they're tied up with news leaks. It's hard, I think, to find a case of an NSA whistleblower who faced law enforcement retaliation for escalating concerns to the NSA IG or Senate committees. Where you see the DOJ go ape-shit is when NSA secrets wind up on the front page of the New York Times. Indeed, that's what happened to Roark and Binney and Loomis! They got caught up in an investigation into an NYT story that was launched at the (direct!) behest of George Bush.
I agree with this. The natural follow-up is, "Are there any examples of those doing internal whistleblowing on programs endorsed as much as these by Executive and Congressional groups getting results that Snowden leaks have gotten?" It usually business as usual with occasional fine or scathing report that I've seen. I doubt a leak-less version of Snowden would get new bills in, jurisdictions changed for major companies, all kinds of privacy startups, etc.
I'd be interested in example you have where similar things came from internal links. You didn't claim you did but I'm asking just in case.
I think the mass dump was a little ill advised, and he maybe could have thrown his lot in with slightly more responsible journalists who could have arbitrated what would be useful for the public to know a little more judiciously (I like Greenwald, but he can be unreasonable sometimes). However, on the whole I think it was for the good. I think its important to remember that he didn't have a lot of time to act once he started down this road, so I'm sure some hasty decisions were made.
What they should be shooting for is a fair trial. One that isn't being prosecuted under the Espionage act which would allow his lawyers to use the "for the common good" defense. Under the espionage act it severely limits his affirmative defense options.
If he gets back on US soil, he'll suddenly disappear at a convenient time when the entire country is too busy with other stuff (eg. post-election, superbowl, christmas, some war).
That's nutty. Like, Payday-bar-nutty. Greenwald was like, "is this dude serious or just off meds?" Although I do support the elision of the definite article before proper acronyms that signify organizations of questionable ethics.
[0] https://storify.com/AthertonKD/greenwald-and-schindler-fistf...
Also, the big idea that the releases revealed nothing previously unknown directly contradicts the big idea that the releases harmed USA. The spooks can't get their story straight, because they're out of practice. Previously, why would they ever have given a shit what the public thought? They got to pretend they were "inside", and occasionally drafted memos to the effect of "my word, chums, perhaps we might go in for a bit less of the horrible invasions of privacy and horrible wastes of the public purse?", with which memos the real insiders would wipe their asses. Ain't no deception like self-deception.
Are you an American? I think it's is relevant to this conversation. Because if you're not, I couldn't care less what you think about this. From a non-American's perspective, it's an internal matter. You don't like America spying on other nations? I have news for you: your nation does the same thing. Espionage is the second-oldest profession. If you don't like what the NSA does in foreign SIGINT, take the plank out of your own eye first. (And then enjoy the few years your nation has left before its newfound weakness allows it to be destroyed.)
If you are an American, then I implore you to cast off your leftist, anti-American shackles and think for yourself. No nation is perfect, and there are plenty of problems in our government--that's the whole point of America to begin with, to compartmentalize and restrain government so it can't abuse the People! But this idea that America is now the source of evil in the world is a false narrative; plainly, a lie.
It's unacceptable for the DNI to lie to the People and to Congress, and it's unacceptable for any agency of the government to violate the law, of which the Constitution is the highest. However, that does not change the fact that Snowden's actions did harm American interests abroad and endanger the lives of American men and women working in harm's way.
Even if there was a part of Snowden that thought he was whistleblowing on domestic violations (which looks increasingly unlikely, especially given that he didn't even try to use the existing whistleblower apparatus), his actions were not solely that. He has defected to Russia, which is posturing itself as an enemy of the U.S., and he is now cooperating with their intelligence agencies. Even if he did expose illegal domestic activities, he also committed treason.
I mean, good grief, he's not only a former NSA counterintelligence officer, he's a published World War I historian, former Naval Reserve officer, and a professor at the War College. He may be biased (and you certainly are!), but by no means is he a nut. What is nutty is to call him one, and with your having done that, I can't take you seriously.
But they could definitely use a government whistleblower protection mechanism... But good luck with that.
I, too, do not support a pardon. He should stand trial, and if he in fact broke laws should pay the penalty. I wouldn't want to set a legal precedent that it's OK to join one of our intelligence agencies and leak information.
As the entry goes on to state, that was controversial, but it worked. So it should be able to work in a case like this as well.
Everything about this story, its central "hero", and the cast of characters of the show, smells imo.
* NSA spies on foreign governments. Isn't that their job?
* NSA spies on Americans, & has compromised infrastructure. Your first assumption here is that the ruling elite won't want you to know that. Have you ever considered they wanted you to know without official acknowledgement? Go find an oldhand AT&T geek and ask them about the telephony and NSA.
> Regardless of the personalities involved
You would have a point if Snowden had released the material to non-corporate actors (how about UN's human rights commission) and wasn't on the talking head [1] road show pontificating on various matters. If the actor is false then the road show is a cause for concern, don't you agree?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... I want to see a pic of our hero in Moscow, holding today's edition of whatever passes for journalism in Russia, posted to twitter, to start with.
Google won a case a few years ago to the same effect. They were sued for scanning a private business' e-mail traffic and using it to target advertising. That court also ruled that if it was unencrypted communication, moving across "public" lines, then it was fair game for anyone who could intercept it.
Exactly.
https://danielmiessler.com/blog/what-us-should-do-edward-sno...
Would donating to the ACLU be more effective in affecting real pressure?
Just like subscribing to Linux Journal, or running a tor node, if you sign this petition your information will end up on a list of "person to keep tabs on".
Even if the government pardons him, the country is full of armed lunatics on meds, he wouldn't be safe.
Yet among the supporters, no mention of Larry Page, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Cook, and so on.
Absolutely questionable. There's a concept called "human rights" and just because the US has failed to force unaccountable government agencies into acting in a humane and moral manner doesn't mean that what they're doing is justified. Invasions of privacy on foreign people on such a granular level is abhorrent and that fact hat it's not illegal doesn't mean Snowden did anything wrong by disclosing it.
The lack of a law forbidding something is not justification for it being acceptable behavior.
>The US cannot allow people... take matters into their own hands
That we have a (flawed) systemic and protected whistleblower system says that the government itself disagrees with you. And save your breath if you're going to try to argue Snowden should have used that system - it wasn't available to him despite people trying to argue otherwise.
I'm not sure what your point about contempt of court is. Yes, of course you can be held indefinitely until you comply with a court order. Otherwise, a court order wouldn't mean anything.
My point is there is literally no way for you to know and claiming people are wrong and dismissing them with "tin foil" arguments is shitty.
Even without those amendments, what you suggest is not possible because Congress has passed no law establishing a body with the authority to imprison people in such a matter. And even then, only "Article III tribunals" (i.e. federal courts) have the authority to deprive civilians of liberty under federal law. "Article I tribunals" only have limited authority to decide civil matters, and to hear court-martials of servicemen.
You're also making totally false claims like:
>If it's a matter of "national security" all due process flies out the window.
There are multiple recent Supreme Court decisions directly contradicting that. For example, and very relevant to this exact discussion, the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Further, given that Snowden is not a combatant in any armed forces or insurgent group, he is not subject to any military jurisdiction. He can only be tried in US federal courts.
Hence my argument, due process is less relevant than ever these days. It is not at all out of the question for Snowden to be considered an enemy combatant, especially since we apply that same logic to any adult male in the vicinity of a drone target.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The governing legal code: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1805
So:
1. FISA doesn't do criminal convictions.
2. There are no secret courts in the US capable of in absentia trials.[1]
3. Your attacking those who are correcting your factual misapprehensions doesn't play well here. Please don't do that.
________________________________
Notes:
1. If a defendant takes off during the pretrial phase, however, he may be able to elude an in absentia conviction. In the 1993 case Crosby v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that federal law "prohibits the trial in absentia of a defendant who is not present at the beginning of trial."
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
In a no-contest, no-appeal, rubber-stamp, kangaroo court, yes.
But only surveillance orders.
And, my error, it was whamlastxmas who went full tinfoilhattery on us, not you. The inability to see up/down thread when responding to an HN comment is a bit crippling. I apologise for my third point, that doesn't apply to you.
Your clarification that some other people might think Snowden's already been convicted (by a court which cannot convict, no less) might have legs, though I've seen no particular evidence of it. The strictures against in abstentia convictions make it little more than a myth, and it probably shouldn't be offered without noting that it violates numerous elements of US statutory and case law.
The supporters of the original link: https://www.pardonsnowden.org/supporters obviously think he has: why else ask for a pardon?
On the website, I clicked on the 'TAKE ACTION' button and for about half a second I actually considered writing a "letter to the president"... but then I came to my senses and realized that I don't actually know ANY of these people.
I approve of the idea of Snowden and the idea of Obama pardoning him but this is all very abstract in my mind... Feels like writing a letter to Santa Claus.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130624/17270323599/donal...
For those who have downvoted me!
But the sitting president can issue pardons at any point during the presidency.
Snowden is both a top professional and cares about our rights and freedoms. NSA is still needed (in some form) in the real world, and I would definitely feel safer if Snowden was at its controls.
A crime is a crime even if done for good.
But I like Snowden.
Tough call.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
It is true that the law said it was illegal for Snowden to do what he did. It is also the case that the law allows for a pardon.
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<input type="hidden" id="UserIpAddress" name="UserIpAddress" value="22.40.531.428"> EDIT: I shuffled my valid external IP address...
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<input type="email" data-val="true" data-val-email="The * Email Address field is not a valid e-mail address." data-val-maxlength="The field * Email Address must be a string or array type with a maximum length of '250'." data-val-maxlength-max="250" data-val-required="The * Email Address field is required." id="EmailAddress" name="EmailAddress" value="">
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I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt and presume that my http client information is being saved to prevent automated form submissions?
Socrates is a man.
Conclusion, all philosophers are men.
People keep saying: "This isn't true socialism." Well, then true socialism seems to be nothing but a pipe dream that in reality can't be implemented and hence should either be revised or replaced by a better concept.
The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.
Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.
One describes the methods of organization of the state and its economy; the other describes the goals of the government of the state.
And would view many other countries as socialist, if they have things like national medical insurance and free college tuition. Except China. China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist, despite the pictures of Chairman Mao on the currency and at Tienanmen Square. And except Russia, whose authoritarianism is admired.
Talking perception here, not reality. The perception of people who used to be a marginal group of extremists but now have many people in positions of Governor, house of representatives, etc.
And unfortunately they now have a real shot at the White House in the personage of their tribal Duce (a pathological egomaniac whose politics are unclear and span all ends of the spectrum within any given time period).
For the purposes of western companies with ties to China, they have capitalism - after all, allowing child labor in sweat shops is very capitalistic.
On the other hand the state controls a majority of enterprise assets even though the number of enterprises fully owned by the state is around 30%. And they also impose their will on privately owned companies, with the market not being free.
Also, don't confuse capitalism with democracy ;-)
Consider that Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto spent a whole chapter tearing into other socialist ideologies, ranging from ideologies they saw as reactionary and anti-democratic and even feudal, to utopian systems that were basically anarchist.
Socialist ideologies have historically spanned the spectrum from extreme libertarianism (the term libertarian was first used for a political system by a French anarcho-communist that was so anti-authority he criticised Proudhon - a prominent early anarchist - for not going far enough) to systems that basically argued for technocratic feudal systems with welfare.
Using the term without specifying more is meaningless if you are talking about a specific ideology or system rather than generally about systems with certain shared characteristics.
For the record, though, I agree with you that the definition in the comment you reply to doesn't make sense - it would exclude many prominent socialist ideologies.
France is currently governed by a majority led by the Socialist party.
Many socialist ideologies reject the very idea of public authorities. Talking about them owned by the public would work better, but would exclude many other socialist ideologies.
E.g. Saint Simons original socialism involved a technocratic society where the actual key change was that people would be paid according to merit.
In Marxism too, that is the key defining aspect of socialism: Marxism sees the capitalist as not contributing work, but capital, and hence he's overpaid if measured by the merit of his work. (Marx was very clear on the distinction between socialism and communism as an end stage of a long period of development here: socialism would not involve full redistribution, but a process of redistribution by first levelling thing by paying people by merit, and then evening things out further by changing to pay based on need).
Public ownership in Marxism, is not a requirement per-se, but is seen as a consequence of the intent of giving everyone control over their own work and ensuring everyone is paid on merit.
This is the same in many other socialist ideologies, and hence you will also find distinctly socialist ideologies that accepts full private ownership, but instead e.g. relied on heavily progressive taxation as a means of reducing the difference.
You would be sort-of right that many socialist ideologies do share that characteristic, but it is not sufficient nor necessary in all instances.
> The definition is not complicated:
I probably should have been clearer, but that definition was explicitly the one adopted by the socialist parties who alternatively lead a majority of European countries (the “dozen of the wealthiest country in the world”).
There are other definitions of socialism, but I prefer to see how people practice it.
A whole lot of the people who consider themselves communist do too. In fact, the Bolsheviks murdered a huge number (tens of thousands is a very low end estimate) of communists who opposed them and who supported multi-party democracy.
Including a whole lot of communists who were members of the socialist parties that beat them in the elections to the constituent assembly shortly before their coup, but they also ended up murdering tens of thousands of members of their own party who opposed the authoritarian turn it took.
What actually happened in practice was a bloody civil war made democracy of any kind impossible. And out of the ruins of that civil war "pragmatists" like Stalin rose, purged the former revolutionaries completely, and restored the authoritarianism of the tsarist era.
If you look at the Communist Party of the 1930s there are none of the original Bolshevik (and fellow travellers) cadre left. They were all brutally assassinated. The most prominent being Trotsky but there were dozens of similar cases.
They got about 10% of the votes in the elections for the constituent assembly due to write the new constitution. They responded by overthrowing the Duma and calling off the assembly.
I agree with you that many of their members probably did support democracy - in fact, many of them lost their lives for holding on to that belief and resisting an increasing authoritarian leadership.
I didn't make the distinction mainly for simplicity because even if we draw a clear line and go all black and white and call every Bolshevik anti-democratic, the majority of socialist and communists in Russia were not Bolsheviks.
Part of the problem with the Bolsheviks, to me, stands with Lenins idea of the vanguard party, which was part of the issues surrounding the disagreement between Martov and Lenin that led to the split: With the idea that they made up a revolutionary vanguard, coupled with the fact that they were outlaws for a large part of their existence, they conditioned themselves to believe they "knew better" and that they would have support, and that anything indicating anything else was just another part of government or counter-revolutionary propaganda. Then with the creation of the Soviets following the February revolutons - standing against the Duma as an alternative seat of power -, they surrounded themselves with people who supported them, and this helped them legitimise to themselves the idea that they did actually have support.
When the constituent assembly elections provided evidence that showed they had pretty much no support outside of the big cities, it was easy for them to dismiss it as the result of "counter-revolutionary" activity etc.
The civil war certainly made it worse. It both provided good reason and an excuse to crack down on opposition. When parts of the opposition chose to fight on the other side because they had legitimate reasons to fear a party that had just conducted a coup, it just made it easier to crush them and write them off as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.
There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed "successful", e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century.
And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.
"Socialism" can either be a common name for ALL the ideologies that branched from the original throughout history, or it can be a specific ideology that is closer to what we today would call "Communism". It's not entirely clear which is meant, if someone says "socialism" or that they are "socialists".
What about them? I think it is widely spread that socialism is like, if not the same as communism.
You must always assume that a US citizen does not know that social democracy existed before communism was even invented, and that liberalism has right-wing and left-wing branches.
It is possible to roughly translate between the jargons, though:
US progressive leftists ~ EU democratic socialists
US libertarians ~ EU right wing nutcases, confused anarchists (ardent US libertarians) or slightly confused liberals (moderate US libertarians)
US liberals ~ EU anti-capitalist scum (it's what it means translated, but nobody says that in the EU, of course)
I could go on but prefer to stop here, because there will always be some smartass who thinks he knows better and doesn't realize that words are just words and it's the concepts that count anyway. I'm prepared to get downvoted by butthurt Americans.
What I wanted to say is "realsocialist" a la former Soviet Union or East Germany. I think part of the confusion is that I live in Germany, where socialist always means that kind of one-party authoritarian system. By this definition, e.g. Bernie Sanders would be a (left-wing) social democrat, but not a socialist.
I know for example in France, the middle-left-wing party calls themselves socialist... I believe they are slightly left of what you'd call "liberal" in the US.
No, it doesn't. There are plenty of anti-authoritarian self-styled socialists in Germany.
How is the distinction hard to understand? Socialism is a system characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to capitalism, which is characterised by private ownership of the means of production. Both are ideologies.
You could have compared to Soviet or East Germany directly if you wanted to make a point about totalitarian regimes.
Also, I'm pretty sure Germans don't consider socialism to be an authoritarian ideology. Maybe you're confusing it with national socialism (nationalsozialismus => nazism).
I'm not sure why the opinion of Germans matters here, they have the same capitalist economy that the US and the rest of Europe do.
Historically, every attempt to build a socialistic society has led to tyranny. One can wonder, if this might be an inevitable consequence along the path to attempt socialism.
But we have managed to build several capitalistic societies which did not fall into tyranny (although some did).
http://wrightstories.com/attempts-to-fly-before-the-wrights/
You would never think of signing such a petition in Pinochet's Chile or Stroessner's Paraguay and those weren't socialist.
If not, then I guess we're talking about some form of authoritarianism.
To talk about "socialism" in a sense that doesn't break the non-aggression principle (necessary for non-authoritarianism), you need to think of volunteer communes. IOW, use pooled money (just think of it as a necessary evil) to buy 1,000 acres, build a master-planned community, and offer residency to people who pitched in to buy it, and then use socialism as the guiding ideology within that commune. If it doesn't work and people want to leave, they can leave.
That's a non-authoritarianism version of socialism. If you think there are others that exist in practice, I implore you to look into every true socialist country in history, including the currently failing state of Venezuela, wherefrom there is a mass exodus underway.
The same argument goes for the US. All developed countries have taxes and most people agree that they are necessary. I Besides, I don't feel Sweden is more authoritarian than the US because it has higher tax rates or more public services.
This is the problem with these uninformed, emotionally-driven debates about ideologies; everybody thinks it's "me vs you", rather than trying to understand anything in depth.
The discussion is courteous. You're free to clarify your thoughts if you think you were misunderstood.
In which case every nation on earth is authoritarian, and the word has no more useful meaning when discussing governments than the observation that governments attempt to maintain a monopoly on use of force. Both are universal. Doesn't matter if you're suppressing fraud in a balls-out capital-dominated economy or offering healthcare in more mild social democracies, someone disagrees and the jackboots come out.
So now we've established that capitalism (the real thing, mostly practiced by large cartels), "capitalism" (the U.S. mixed economy), socialism (I'm not stepping in that one) and "socialism" (the mixed economies of western Europe) are all authoritarian. Can we move past this boring, useless debate point, please?
This label isn't strictly accurate, since the checkbox is checked by default.
Just putting this out there for any future endeavors of this kind.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...
I'm pretty sure that alone will ensure he won't get pardoned. It could cause one of the biggest diplomatic incidents in history between the US and UK. Particularly with Theresa May as PM - who has been instrumental for years in building up the security services powers.
If you don't want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know. Go on the streets. Millions of poeple are not happy with what is going on, but literally nothing changed. Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.
When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Criminal_charge...
Personally, I think he should be criminally pardoned but left open to civil proceedings for breach of contract should his former employer seek to bring forward a suit.
The only people that behaved in a treacherous fashion are the one that are spying on you because for them you're just a criminal by default.
Furthermore he didn't commit treason, he didn't spy for a 3rd party country. He revealed to the world the scope of NSA spying and did everybody a big favor. There is nothing democratic with secret laws and spying. Today you cannot say you don't know and deny reality. But you can choose to ignore it... until the system turns against you. Today if you accept PRISM you become a willing participent and a slave to that system.
What you don't understand is one day, an irresponsible administration will come to power and use all this system for its own personal gain. There is nothing stopping that right now. It's funny how people get all worked up by Facebook censoring some insignificant content when they directly collude with the government to hand over data. So does Google, Yahoo and all big tech companies in US.
Whether Snowded committed treason cannot be stated in one sentence or even a paragraph - I made a minor edit. He should be put to trial because he evidently broke laws and employee contracts with government institutions.
I contribute to Mailvelope now and then. I encourage my friends to use encryption. I'm honestly not entirely sure what practical things people are supposed to do? This isn't something where you round up a bunch of volunteers to go do a beach cleanup.
I'm surprised that message signing isn't built in yet, why isn't it? It didn't seem so hard to implement as a default.
I just installed Enigmail and imported my keys and it was done.
Voting politicians into office does not legitimize any and all potentially illegal and/or un-Constitutional activities they or Government agencies carry out.
> If you don't want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know.
Isn't that the point of this petition?
> Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.
Whereas you find it more productive to post brave internet messages about how other people should face off with the National Guard, while simultaneously arguing that "no matter how bad" a state behaves, someone who exposes that badness/illegality should be tried for treason.
So we'll continue with what we have. Some people saying he's completely innocent, others saying he's completely guilty, and he himself will probably spend the foreseeable future right where he is.
So, should we have pardoned Jack Ruby (if he were alive) for killing the guy that killed JFK? No.
Why does Snowden deserve any different treatment. He still release confidential information. It's not like what he did can just excuse that fact. He exposed US spying, internally, externally, around the globe. He didn't just focus on the US... No pardon. Doesn't deserve it.
Just my opinion.
You can't just go about breaking any law and cover your tracks by labeling it with something you paid $4.99 for on vistaprint ... what an absurd position to defend.
Snowden has done a service to the world, revealing the threats they're under (through both the NSA and any other entity which could exploit the weaknesses they use), and promoted a great deal of relevant and useful information into the public discussion. As you've just conceded.
Snowden may have broken regulations, and may have broken laws. But he served both the US Constitution, and the cause of Justice. Regulations, laws, and the NSA, serve the Constitution and justice. A pardon is a means for correcting instances where laws fail to serve justice.
Your comparison makes less than zero sense.