No, you idiot. The problem is Snowden releasing **** to the Chinese and Russians, for which there is a fair amount of circumstantial proof as of this point. This goes into what Snowden was charged with, precisely, which is theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence. Furthermore, since that stupid quote has been spammed all over my FB feed this morning...I would actually like to know if Dr. Paul actually spammed this quote or if this is another "Hey let's take something FREEDOM and LIBERTY sounding and attribute it to Jefferson" moment.
Interesting. So you believe freedom of speech is absolute? If a Chase employee releases everyone's credit card spending habits, that should be legal? If your doctor releases your medical history, that should be legal? If an employee of a company publishes internal R&D documents, that should be legal? If the head of the CIA releases a list of all US assets around the world, that should be legal? You believe there should be zero right to privacy and zero state secrets? None of these people should be arrested?
Sadly, he did. It's funny that he's made all espionage legal in his mind - instead of handing over secrets directly to the enemy, just publish them for both Americans and the enemy to read and you're OK, apparently.
Kojirou, why do you think Snowden released anything to the Chinese and Russians? What is this "circumstantial proof" you speak of? What do you think Snowden is getting in exchange for what you're accusing him of? Would someone risk 10 years locked away just to be an attention-w****?
Link? (Not trying to be annoying, just wondering if there's more to read) Edit: nvm, just realized I can google any part of it and find it.
Yeah but my bad. I should have included it. That was all there was to it. It was just a brief blog post.
How would we know? We know the NSA lied to Congress. I imagine it's much easier to lie to the American people. The capability is there in any case, and it certainly doesn't seem like the NSA cares much for American privacy from what we have gleaned so far. And as a foreign citizen myself, I do not appriciate the fact that the NSA can willy-nilly supersede my jurisdictions' expectations of privacy just because I am a "foreign person". This applies doubly to Europe, which values consumer privacy almost sancrosantily. This is an administration that, as its' priority before the election, was scrambling to write out elaborative rules limiting future administrations from the overreach they themselves started on matters such as killing American citizens. Don't even think about what the Obama Admin. has done. Think about it as a legacy issue, and one hell of a slippery slope.
All good and well as a theory, except the warrent was issued June 14th in a secret court in Virginia, so we'll never really know will we? unless circumstantial evidence of Russia-leaking occured in a Hong Kong coffee meet of the Cold War alliance. As it is, I don't think you're on point for calling someone an idiot for speculating, unless you want to be persecuted for the same "crimes" as Snowdon and reveal that you're part of the DoJ. As it is, you too are speculating about the evidence and details behind the charges. So are we all. Hooray secret warrents, hooray secret laws, hooray secret courts.
Thanks for posting it. He makes a good point, but one which is common - patriots need to define middle of the pack nationalists as morons and non-patriots (in typical prejudicial fashion for any ideology) as traitors because it is self-aggrandizing. Here's what I was pondering: Earlier rocketsjudoka mentioned that the government = the people. That's not exactly correct. The people are 100% responsible for the government, but that doesn't make them indistinguishable from the government (and if I've said anything to the contrary before, my bad). An agent is a distinct entity from its principal, even though one is entirely responsible for the actions of the other. The confusion causes a warped understanding whereby nationalists see an elected representative like the president as the leader (when he is in fact the head servant) and the people as the servants (when in fact they are co-leaders together). Why does that matter here? Because in any leader-servant relationship, the servant would be on the line for exercising discretion in a questionable way (like US "leadership" is doing right now). The co-leaders would not be sought after this viciously by servant(s) for exercising discretion of rules that are entirely the creation of the co-leaders. I'm sure I could have said that in a much simpler way so I'll try again: Basically, because a warped understanding of the servant-leader relationship, Snowden is suffering what should be the fate of the President, and the President is abusing the advantage of being illegitimately treated as though he is indistinguishable from the entire American population. That's a particularly crazy notion, especially when non-votes and protest-votes are not taken into any sort of consideration in selecting the president.
A people as a leader makes no inherent sense, because a people cannot lead. If there are leaders, there must be followers, and thus if a people are leading, who is following? By the very nature of their position, a leader must be either a singular person or a small group of people, which is otherwise all the more apparent since any government will always have some small group at the top - even the direct democracies of Athens possessed those individuals. If the president is supposedly a servant because he's elected, one could then argue that even absolutist and totalitarian rulers are not "leaders" because they had to answer to their people to some degree as well. After all, many kings were elected, such as in Poland. So the president does not represent the people because there are those who oppose the president's wishes? I guess I might as well ask given our massively different philosophies, Mathloon, but what is a leader? What are the qualities he possesses? Is it merely to uphold the law and implement the correct policies which are the will of the people, to be a servant as you seem to imply?
Just sharing unrefined ideas, not married to these particular viewpoints. If people are leading, the people they elect are the only ones following. Your inclusion of the requirement that a leader must be a singular person of a small group is completely arbitrary. It is a singular entity perhaps, for example: America being the leader of the free world. I wonder if I understood that question correctly. You didn't read my post properly though, I didn't say the government does not represent the people. I said that they are distinguishable (gov and ppl). I'm not sure if you are asking what is a leader or what is a President, since a President is by default a leader in your view I think. A leader is not a position, it's a characteristic - and it describes the ability to influence others views and beliefs, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are leading them to something good/bad. Hitler was a leader. OBL was a leader. Obama is a leader. Chavez was a leader. Leadership, IMO, is the single worst quality a democratically elected president can have, far more dangerous to citizens and non-citizens alike than a lack of intelligence. It's precisely Hitler's leadership qualities that transformed Germany into a fascistic Nazi state and resulted in all those casualties. That's a particularly good example if you don't believe in morality. The President of a democracy - obviously in an ideal democracy - should be the exact opposite of a leader, which is a follower. The Presidency is a voluntarily created administrative position to manage and organize the will of the people. One person is never going to have better ideas than an entire population, EXCEPT when that group of people is unable to communicate their will meaningfully. It is not - as it has become in existing modern democracies - the handing over of responsibility to the President to exercise the entirety of discretion available to the executive branch. I guess it's up to the citizens of a democracy whether they want to give up discretion and how much. But certainly, they can never absolve themselves of their responsibility as long if it is true that they exercise total control over all branches of government.
if a whistleblower comes forward and discloses that chase is releasing everyones credit card spending habits should be be illegal? if a nurse comes forward and reveals that your doctor has been releasing your medial history should that be illegal? if another employee discloses that this is being done should that be illegal? if someone within the CIA reports that they are doing this should that be illegal? i do not think that people who disclose illegal activity should be prosecuted, rather we should go after the people who are engaging in the illegal activity.
As usual, discussions here rapidly devolve into extreme positions from "one side" or "the opposite side." While a few attempt a more nuanced stance not particularly on either extreme, their view isn't "sexy enough," doesn't have enough "juice," and largely gets passed by. Someone can abhor what the Bush Administration did to its own citizens, my chief concern here, since his policies, continued under Obama, included massive domestic surveillance, the details of the methods and extent of such surveillance being withheld from those citizens under the guise of national security, a phrase used far too often by our own government, and others, to cloak actions conducted against the general public. Details those citizens, had they but known, would have likely condemned as far too extreme to justify. Snowden could have released publicly the extent of what is being done, not the details, but the extent of the program itself, with those details held safely by a respected news organization for release to the public if the program's extent is denied, an agreement someone like Snowden could have reached with an actor like the Washington Post, threatening not the wide release of those details, which doesn't require an active imagination to understand could have harmed national security, but rather drips and drabs of details, enough to assuredly make the public aware of the extent of the program, but wouldn't have harmed national security. In my humble opinion. In short, a middle ground. Instead, what does Snowden do? He simply releases massive details of the programs himself, and then instead of staying here to explain and defend his actions, runs to countries that conduct massive programs of far, far more intrusive surveillance of their own citizens, and conduct massive programs of censorship of ALL kinds of media, of both internal media and external sources of news and information. A path Snowden took that immediately makes him look like someone running away from his responsibilities both as a citizen of the United States, and as someone who worked as a civilian contractor for the National Security Agency, signing agreements saying that he would do no such thing, on penalty of arrest and prosecution. That makes him a felon, and quite possibly something far worse. Snowden, a high school dropout inexplicably hired by the NSA, who claims, quoting from Britain's The Guardian, that he "had access to the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community and undercover assets around the world." Think about that for a moment. Think about that in the context of Snowden running to a puppet city-state of the PRC, which (there is no doubt in my mind) promptly got every scrap of what was on the 4 laptops Snowden carried with him. Hong Kong then, under direction of the PRC, sends him off the Russia, an oligarchy with surveillance and censorship programs quite similar to those China's own oligarchy conducts. And he is still there. Something is seriously wrong with this picture. For those who can't see that, I suggest a new pair of glasses. Snowden is not acting like a "hero," he's acting like a traitor and a spy on the run. Whether or not that is in fact what he is becomes irrelevant. His actions condemn him. Not him wanting to make details of the program known, but what he has in fact been doing.
Snowden redacted most of the details, and he made clear that he only released documents which he calculated to overwhemingly be in the public interest. The Guardian has been the one media source that has consistently criticized the survaillance state. Effectively, the arrangement you have worked out with the Washington Post is what Snowden has worked out with the Guardian. Since the GCHQ and British intelligence seems highly implicated, that makes a whole lot of sense, even without looking at the Guardian's great track record on the issue. As for high school dropout---I wish people would stop saying that. Conventional education is no longer the end-all be-all of everything when it comes to status. Google hires tons of dropouts, and has recently come out as saying GPA is almost useless for its' hiring desicions. Take a look at high school dropout David Karp, and where he is now. The degree you earned doesn't matter. It's what you're able to do that does. The NSA hired Snowdon because he deserved to be hired. That should tell you something about his intelligence (so should the fact that he has so far evaded capture from the most effective security force in the world).
So how do you think "redacted" worked out for Chinese intelligence? How can you explain Snowden's actions after fleeing this country? Are we to believe that he was naive? That he couldn't see how running to HongKong/the PRC would damage his credibility, and very, very likely damage US national security? That falling into the arms of Putin next looks just as bad? In that context, his background is relevant. I certainly have no bias towards a self-educated person. I've added to my own education over the years by simply being curious. That is not the issue I have with Snowden. His actions after fleeing his own country are the problem I have with Snowden. Unlike some here, I'm not willing to assume that those actions had no serious negative impact on US national security, and maintaining US national security should be an interest of all Americans. And having that interest in mind doesn't mean, at all, that one supports the massive surveillance of US citizens begun by the administration of George W. Bush.
Underneath this all is an assumption that Snowden went to the countries in question to talk with their intelligence figures, which is at this point, pure conjecture. my theory is that Snowden took a little bit too much of the Ron Paul/Mises juice and thought of Hong Kong as freedom paradise---that was the first thing that came to mind when I read up on his background. Now he's just leaning on countries that he knows have the balls to resist American extradition requestions.
it's supposed to be a government by the people for the people, so he should be a hero. but we all know that'$ not how it works. funny, that if this had happen in cuba, dude would have been jailed for a day while cuba waits for their shipments of bullets for their firing squad to come in from china. why is that funny? because in the end.. fascists, communists and 'democratic' countries have more similarities than they'd like to admit. Snowden would be considered a traitor in every country except maybe the kingdom of norway.
You seriously believe that Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow without China getting every bit of information that man had on his laptops? Call it "conjecture" if you like, but I think that's a bit naive, with all due respect. As for Snowden "just leaning on countries that he knows have the balls to resist American extradition requests," do you seriously believe that Snowden is in control of where he's going? He lost that control as soon as his aircraft landed in Hong Kong. If you don't believe that, as Stern recently said, I have a bridge to sell you. ;-)- He may end up in Ecuador. If he does, it will be because Russia allowed it.
