Thank goodness to that, now we can eliminate this abomination of our rights :grin:. Still makes him just as bad of a president as Bush unfortunately. Sounds like the ole' story of the kid who turns himself in yet still gets punished for breaking the rules. As opposed to the other kid who did the same and stayed hush.
So we don't like being spied on by our government. Why don't we just vote in politicians who will outlaw such practices then? What a great system we have.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...pying-programs-drones-and-occupy-wall-street/ Perhaps the highest profile case of trolling in politics I've ever seen lol
slow jam the NSA. <iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SegAoSpHJck" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The propaganda arm starts to build a new narrative. If anyone believes this, I have a Nigerian Prince I would like to introduce you to. I mean, holy ****, isn't this hilarious - 1) "He's the biggest traitor ever, arrest him and hang him!" 2) "Oh, and he was lying!" Un-farking-believable.
One of these statements can't be true: He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actually technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." "He's done tremendous damage to the country where he was born and raised and educated," Ruppersberger said.
A long article from over a year ago about the NSA's MASSIVE data collection facility out in Utah. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/ If you have 20 minutes sit and read it. EVERYTHING is being tracked and they can eavesdrop and record phone conversations without warrants. It's crazy that this article came out over a year ago.
Not sure if this has been posted yet, but Josh Marshall has a great commentary on the traitor vs hero debate. Here's just the middle snippet: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/06/like_the_oj_simpson_trial.php?ref=fpblg My purpose here isn’t to say, what the **** are these people thinking. I’m trying to think through what is the difference between the prisms we’re looking through that makes us see it so differently. Here is I think the essential difference and where it comes back to what I referred to before - a basic difference in one’s idea about the state and the larger political community. If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor then really anything you can do to put a stick in its spokes is a good thing. Same if you think the conduct of US foreign policy is fundamentally a bad thing. Then opening up its books for the world to see is a good thing simply because it exposes it or damages it. It forces change on any number of levels. From that perspective, there’s no really no balancing to be done. All disclosure is good. Either from the perspective of transparency in principle or upending something you believe must be radically changed. On the other hand, if you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this are purely destructive. They’re attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf. Now, in practice, there are a million shades of grey. You can support your government but see its various shortcomings and even evil things it does. And as I said at the outset, this is where leaks play a critical, though ambiguous role, as a safety valve. But it comes down to this essential thing: is the aim and/or effect of the leak to correct an abuse or simply to blow the whole thing up? In Manning’s case, it’s always seemed pretty clear to me that the latter was the case. Let me put my cards on the table. At the end of the day, for all its faults, the US military is the armed force of a political community I identify with and a government I support. I’m not a bystander to it. I’m implicated in what it does and I feel I have a responsibility and a right to a say, albeit just a minuscule one, in what it does. I think a military force requires a substantial amount of secrecy to operate in any reasonable way. So when someone on the inside breaks those rules, I need to see a really, really good reason. And even then I’m not sure that means you get off scott free. It may just mean you did the right thing. So do I see someone who takes an oath and puts on the uniform and then betrays that oath for no really good reason as a hero? No. The Snowden case is less clear to me. At least to date, the revelations seem more surgical. And the public definitely has an interest in knowing just how we’re using surveillance technology and how we’re balancing risks versus privacy. The best critique of my whole position that I can think of is that I think debating the way we balance privacy and security is a good thing and I’m saying I’m against what is arguably the best way to trigger one of those debates. But it’s more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it’s clear he’s trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he’s doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don’t think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he’s not just opening the thing up for debate. He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal. I think it’s easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don’t buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who’ve been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law? I don’t have a lot of problem answering that question. Individual conscience is always critical. But when it comes to taking a stand on conscience it’s not just the thought that counts. You put yourself to the judgment or the present and the future about whether you made the right judgment. Now does this mean I don’t think any of his leaks should have been published? No, I’m not saying that. I think it’s quite possible some of them should have been. But I’m talking about how I see the guy himself.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>This is CNN <a href="http://t.co/EVI8DvQQlw" title="http://twitter.com/fletcherprevin/status/345715442838536193/photo/1" org_href="http://twitter.com/fletcherprevin/status/345715442838536193/photo/1">pic.twitter.com/EVI8DvQQlw</a></p>— Fletcher Previn (@fletcherprevin) <a href="https://twitter.com/fletcherprevin/status/345715442838536193" data-datetime="2013-06-14T20:32:39+00:00">June 14, 2013</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>....
Nice to see Republican mouth-pieces like basso all of a sudden sound Libertarian and start to care about civil liberties & the constitution. Even though you are over 10 years late to the party we still welcome you...
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Govt has to scrape all your phone calls and emails because govt forgot to enforce immigration law on 20 expired visas in 2001.</p>— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) <a href="https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/statuses/343359471550074881">June 8, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Whiny Senators should do their jobs before b****ing about not knowing what's going on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/senators-skip-nsa-briefing_n_3446446.html Senators Skip NSA Briefing: Only 47 Meet With Top Officials On Surveillance Only 47 senators attended a closed-door briefing on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs Thursday. More than half of the 100 United States senators opted out of a meeting with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and other officials. A Senate aide confirmed the number of senators in attendance at the briefing to The Huffington Post. This was the third classified briefing in a week on the NSA surveillance programs, according to Politico. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, was frustrated by the lack of attendance, according to The Hill: The exodus of colleagues exasperated Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who spent a grueling week answering colleagues’ and media questions about the program. “It’s hard to get this story out. Even now we have this big briefing — we’ve got Alexander, we’ve got the FBI, we’ve got the Justice Department, we have the FISA Court there, we have Clapper there — and people are leaving,” she said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) made a point of recessing the Senate for an hour on Thursday, saying it was so no one would have an excuse for missing the briefing. On Tuesday, Reid criticized lawmakers who claim they had not been briefed on the NSA's surveillance programs, saying it's their own fault if they didn't know. "For senators to complain that, 'I didn't know this was happening,' we've had many, many meetings that have been both classified and unclassified that members have been invited to," Reid told reporters.
^^^^^^^^^^ it's because they didn't agree with a "classified" off the record, briefing. Why didn't they involve all members of Congress originally instead of a select few that went with their "secret" agenda? Too late to try and explain their position now.
So you're saying they'd rather throw a fit and whine and yell about stuff they don't know anything about, rather than learn what is actually happening so they can do their jobs? There have been over 50 briefings over the last several years about the various programs, available to members of Congress. And as Wyden demonstrated, anyone who actually wanted more information could get it through additional private briefings. The American people have every right to be upset or angry at the relevations. No one in Congress has that right - they had all the ability in the world to know, if only they were interested in doing their jobs.
This seems to be in direct contrast to what the company line is right now that an analyst couldn't possibly do that and Snowden is a liar.
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Dem Congressman Claims He Was Told Government Could Listen To Phone Calls Without A Warrant… Senator Obama outraged, President Obama . . . not so much. Via BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski: Democratic New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler claims he was told in a closed-door briefing that the NSA could listen to a specific phone call, and get a call’s “contents” without a warrant, based solely on an analyst’s decision. FBI Director Robert Mueller said that wasn’t true. Nadler’s office did not return an immediate request to clarify his comments. http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/video-congressman-claims-he-was-told-government-could-listen
