Edward Snowden

This is a bit of a political rant. I hope you all don't mind.

Seems lately that I am becoming more and more embarrassed to admit that I'm a US Citizen. Our current political membership at the highest levels are about as trustworthy as a pirate standing in front of a big ol pot o gold.

The Germans just did an interview with Edward Snowden about 3 weeks ago. I just found out about it. The reason I just found out about it is the main stream media outlets in my country no longer present the news in an unbiased manner and have made every effort to not bring the story into the public eye.

Edward Snowden is a very young man. He is also very smart. I applaud his efforts to uncover all the crap my country does on a daily basis, especially with the current issues with the NSA that he is directly responsible for exposing.

I watched the entire video. It is very compelling.....

Earlier today I embedded the entire liveleak video on my site. It was up for several hours, then all of a sudden, the entire LiveLeak site went down. I could not access the site or the video. Mysteriously, the site has reappeared. It could have been natural causes or even some sort of DDoS attack. It troubles me because It's very likely that my government, in some fashion, was involved....

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_1390833151

Thing is in some cases (more cases than we will ever know) when smart people uncover too much they get assassinated and governments do all they can to rid of all tracks / evidence ...

Plus governments have the tech and knowhow to get into any site they wish and do anything they like undetected I suspect ...

Not so long ago I was reading how kids was able to hack through HIGH multi level security systems and gain access to censored weapons documents and into actual military weapons systems,  sooo if kids can do this then imagine what the real pros have power to do!

Snowden is a treasonist... end of story.

Now why am I not surprise that you would make that statement.  I suggest you go and read the USA law on treason.  Of course HoustonLively is not alone in his views; a slim majority of the US citizens; under an Associated Press poll, said they were perfectly happy giving up their Constitutional rights in order to be safe; I am thinking they would be perfectly happy then living under Hitler's rule in Nazi Germany. 

gmafb gg.  There have always been things the government does, that the average citizen does not, and should not know.  If you swear an oath  and sign a vow of secrecy, then break that, it's treason plain and simple. You don't get to cherry-pick what secrets you want to keep. 

I'm not even going to dignify your moronic Hitler comment with a response.

---- disclaimer: this is a political discussion, which is bound to be controversial, so let's all agree to disagree/to a degree/etc without personal attacks, mkay? ----

IMHO... Snowden technically is indeed a treasonist. Sworn not to tell anyone and told everyone. This, however, doesn't necessarily make him a bad person. There has to be a line when treason is morally justified and he made his personal choice of where the line is. Surely, anyone here would become a treasonist if they had to cover up, say, child rape or mass murder, or genocide, to something horrible like that, right!? There're things that no oath can overpower. 

Now, whether Snoweden was right about the balance of public benefits and security implications is obviously a subject of opinion. In fact, it's not even that important, because it would be a pondering about just one person's viewpoints. We can talk about Britney Spears in about the same context. It just doesn't matter much.

What does matter, however, is the actual information that has become known (again, there's little use in talking about HOW it has become known). And what we've found out is that US and many other governments, including ours (Australian) have been bullshitting their people, spying on them and conspiring in ways that are clearly unconstitutional. Surely, we always knew that something like that was happening, but now that there's a clear evidence, we'd at least expect some sort of apology and change of policies. Instead we get excuses and media blackouts.

The case with the German interview is a good example. Why US and Australian mainstream media has chosen not to cover it? Is it not newsworthy? Obviously it had something many people would be interested to hear, their opinions notwithstanding. Media is supposed to be independent and objective, delivering news as they are, without siding with someone's agenda.

The whole thing is just sad. It shows that no matter how blatantly we're betrayed, we're still putting up with it, and they know it. I'd wager that if tomorrow it becomes known that our governments conspired to bomb all domestic kindergartens to make up an excuse for blowing up weaponry budget, we would still let it slide. At best, we'd be "liking" opposition info-pics on Facebook and rambling online about how whisteblowers are full of shit. 

To say government surveillance of internet traffic, telephone conversations, and other communications affects the average citizens privacy in any significant way, is ludicrous.  It's like saying Google is watching us with their satellites.  Sure, we are all in that google map somewhere, but is it even remotely logical to say Google is spying on us from above?  How many billions of emails are sent and received by US citizens every day.   Does it seem logical that someone at the NSA or CIA is constantly reading through all our emails?  Are they also listening to billions of telephone conversation?  The government is watching every move of 300 million people... that's quite a feat.

Doesn't it seem more viable, that the now not-so-secret systems, were highly focused on detecting criminal activities?  Anyone ever wonder how Homeland Security comes up with those threat assessments?  So cameras everywhere are "watching us" at airports and other places.  Is the government making sure we don't steal a pack of gum from the store at the airport, or could they just be looking to match the face of a known terrorist.  Things like mass surveillance need to be kept in context. It's a tool the government uses for very targeted purposes.... not to keep tabs on 300 million people.

When Snowden disclosed top secret information about surveillance systems, he committed treason, and espionage,  He deserves to be in prison for a long, long time.  He committed a serious crime, and we may never know the full consequence of his actions.

 Like I said. You're technically right, yet it depends on whether you accept the formal law as the highest righteousness authority. Some don't. Matter of opinion.

As for the mass surveillance...  the same idea of law being equally authoritative for both the government and citizens was conjured long time ago by "democratic" idealists because only then we can expect justice in case someone breaks it. One of the presumptions is that laws can not be made up without people's knowing. Otherwise they may not be fair, right? And now we have a group of people who made up a law allowing themselves to do something to many other people without their knowledge. We may assume that they do it in good faith. So, should we assert then, that it is oK to break the law if it's done in good faith? They're people after all, and may have wrong judgement. Snowden revealed the docs in good faith, too... so is not a treasoner then? 

More precisely... Tracking and catching criminals is cool. Mass surveillance is not. Why? Say, for example (hypothetically), I watch internet porn on occasion... and say (hopefully), BoonEx in time becomes popular and powerful enough to be able to, say, demand Australian government to step coal-seam-gas mining in exchange for continued tax repayments. And, say, government looks up at what they have harvested about me so far and start blackmailing me to badge. Well... the story is improbable, but not impossible. Even my not watching porn doesn't really ease my mind. Corrupt ideals birth corrupt ideas. They could make things up just as easily. 

Or, here's a real example - Australian version of NSA (member of alliance) was fought tapping talks of Indonesian Prime Minister, including business conversations about export of shrimps. Why? This is a lucrative business, see. 

We will see more embarrassing revelations. This is not a reason to lose patriotism or argue whether whistleblowers are bad guys. It is, however, a reason to reconsider our choices and actions, speak up and demand due regard of our constitutional rights and freedoms.

I have a question HL> How do you feel about Obama putting 'Overseers' from the FCC into each one of our major News Organizations under the guise of 'determining how and when a news story gets aired'?? Before you answer that question, think about how the US population expected it's government to perform say, 30 years ago?

I remember when it took an act of congress to include hubcaps in the purchase of police vehicles. Now they have vehicles that are designed specifically as 'military assault' tools....

One more point, more to the point of this thread. In this interview, Snowden talks about how each government plays this game of using all it's tools to spy on everyone else, but telling everyone they don't use them to spy on their own populations.Then he explains how they get around that. They do it by data trading. The Brits say "We can't spy on our citizens, but you can. We'll make a deal with you US, we give you the data we have on your citizens and you give us ours".

I been around a long time. The old saying really holds true here. Where there's smoke (and there's a LOT of smoke lately) there's assuredly a little fire....

Police states are never a good thing for a democracy, even if that democracy is a representative republic.  Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  While the US may not be in the same category of police state as Nazi Germany, you don't want to open the door to any form of police state as it will only grow.  Look at the National Security Letters where one is forbidden from speaking about the fact that one has received an NSL under penalty of law; that is moving towards a police state.  Massive spying on the population when they are not the target of any wrongdoing is moving towards a police state.  Passing laws making it illegal to gather in public places (this one came about to break the Occupy moment) is moving towards a police state.  I could continue to quote examples but one should get the idea from the ones I have quoted.

 RE:

 First of all, I despise the guy with a passion.  I can't stand him, or anything he does whether I agree with it or not. Merely the fact that something was his idea is enough for me to despise it.  I can't wait for him to go away.  I stopped paying any sort of attention to things he does, because it would just keep me in a perpetual irate mood.

Hope that answers your question.

 RE:

 Like I said, to say that the government is spying on over 300,000,000 people, is just plain ludicrous, and just plain stupid for that matter.  I don't know how else to say it.

I'm sure the UK government has tech in place that allow them to tap into and observe phone calls / mobile devices etc at any given time from trigger keywords that grab their attention / alert systems ... One of the ways they are able identify potential terrorist and threats.

The UK is very much BIG BROTHER IMO ...

Some have fought the National Security Letters.  However, think about what they have set in place here.  They issue an NSL to you and by law you can not discuss it with ANYONE.  What that means is that it is illegal for you to seek counsel from an attorney on the contents of the NSL or even attempt to fight it in a court of law.  This is a serious matter and is definitely moving towards a police state.

Another serious matter in the USA is the lack of search warrants that have turned up numerous times.  The search warrant is "on its way".  Do a search on the internet about the Mayor of a town in the USA that had a swat team invade his home, shoot both of this dogs dead, bound him and his mother and later his wife.  Completely trashed his home and when it was asked about the search warrant was told "it is on its way"; the search warrant never appeared and there is no record that any search warrant was applied for.

Uncle Sam does not give a sh&$ about us one way or the other lol

 RE:

 Precisely what I was saying.  Of the 314 million US citizens, the spying mechanism likely considers over 313.999 million of them irrelevant.  I suppose it makes some people feel more important if they believe the government is spying on them personally.