RELATED: Snowden did a TV interview last night.
"There are times that what is right is not the same thing as what is legal,” Snowden said. “Sometimes to do what’s right you have to break the law.”...
“Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else,” Snowden told [Brian] Williams. “Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country and knowing when to protect the Constitution against the encroachment of adversaries. Adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries. They can be bad policies.”
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49 comments:
For all of the bad he may have done, Snowden has done an amazingly important thing for this country and should be applauded for that.
Sullivan's piece was dumb and fact free. She got the whole premise of the "Pentagon Papers" case wrong.
On Snowden? Give him a Peace Prize, then hang him for treason.
On Greenwald? A Pulitzer and then 10 years for various aiding and abetting / conspiracy charges.
There are a number of entities that expect our loyalty: our boss, our organization, our country, etc. They sometimes have to be prioritized.
I've worked for people in the federal government who thought the boss should be at the top of the loyalty hierarchy, and, presumably, the country was at the bottom.
On Snowden? Give him a Peace Prize, then hang him for treason.
If we're going to be hanging anybody for treason it should be those who authorized the illegal spying on Americans and lied about it under oath. If anybody's going to be frog-marched to the gallows it should be James Clapper not Edwards Snowden.
Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country and knowing when to protect the Constitution against the encroachment of adversaries...
...said Snowden from asylum in Vladimir Putin's Moscow.
"Adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries. They can be bad policies.” Or irresponsible politicians who are in power at the time: spy on citizens, not upholding the law: let illegal alien criminals lose, not securing the borders...
If Snowden should be hanged for treason, so should that bunch in Washington.
Snowden is a dissident.
Snowden didn't commit treason, not in the least; he broke a law in order to reveal to us the far vaster and more dangerous law-breaking of the NSA, (and, no doubt, the multiple other intelligence/police agencies known and unknown). He acted in service to the American people.
Greenwald committed journalism.
Yesterday the website of the encryption program TrueCrypt that Snowden recommended posted a cryptic message indicating that the software was insecure. The newest version of the software has all encryption disabled. There's much speculation TrueCrypt was forced to close by some court order that the TrueCrypt developers were not allowed to disclose.
If TrueCrypt in fact was forced to close by some secret court order, likely this is some Nixonian machination on the part of Obama and his henchmen to now or later steal secrets from their political enemies or to blackmail them. At least, I think prudent Americans should more-or-less behave as if that is a valid assumption.
The privacy of one's own personal writings is much more important, I'd say, even than the privacy of one's private communications. If we ever get into a time where decent people need to fight tyranny in secret, the people who spend more time thinking and writing about things and less time in secret communications will tend to have the better ideas, and will tend to want their ideas to be posted in the open once they have been carefully composed. The people who spend more time secretly communicating without having many original ideas will tend more to be plotter types excessively wanting power.
damikesc,
"For all of the bad he may have done, Snowden has done an amazingly important thing for this country and should be applauded for that."
I wish someone would enlighten me to what that is. The government watches the internet? Communications? Wow - who'da thunk it? (O.K., black people have been watched for centuries but, who else? And where was the outcry before? If there was no outcry, what should blacks think, now that there is but, as usual, it's not for us? Is Snowden's a crime and the previous instances worthy of being applauded? Why?)
I just don't get the history, or the double-standard, at work here:
Though I'm aware, this is America, where the white double-standard is also standard operating procedure,...
Given how this adminstration works, and big institutional government in general, it's not surprising that all his emails to superiors and others were ignored. If he's being honest with us, he raises a very important question.
If we can't trust the government to run the VA properly, how can we trust them to run healthcare or anything properly?
A big question that is not being addressed is the increasing politicization of the military leadership making it ill-equipped to handle its mission let alone serve the country.
Wouldn't it be amazing if Snowden was deep undercover secretly working for the US? I bet Russia is worried about that possibility, in fact.
Of course, I suspect the truth is close to the general perception of him. He's a loser, self-absorbed punk who has become a serious pain in the butt for the US, and strangely, some good might even come of it.
So what does the law require a citizen do when he finds that Government Agents he works with are intentionally violating the Constitution in secret?
Protecting the Constitution from all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC is the oaths they take. The original secret enemies when that was written were the British Empire and the Catholic Church's asserted rule over governments in Christendom.
Today we suddenly have the computer's ability to institute and administer a One World Government over every sentient being on the planet. And the agents of that government actually believe that we have to kill off the world's surplus humans to please Worls Religion purity of nature laws and erect a Colossus Statue to Thomas Malthus.
All the surplus private property of the murdered surplus people must be stolen of course to create super wealthy Rulers of the Brave New Computer World Order
Is that Constitutional? Snowden said no. Should we remain silent?
"Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country and knowing when to protect the Constitution against the encroachment of adversaries...
...said Snowden from asylum in Vladimir Putin's Moscow."
He should go to prison for exposing criminals? In any sane version of the Founder's America the people responsible for the action Snowden exposed would be stood against a wall.
Marks wrote:
"If we're going to be hanging anybody for treason it should be those who authorized the illegal spying on Americans and lied about it under oath. If anybody's going to be frog-marched to the gallows it should be James Clapper not Edwards Snowden."
Was it illegal spying though or spying that he wasn't happy with. Because a lot of it was "oh my god they have the capability to look at your emails" and the potential for abuse became te issue and not actual anuse.
As someone who used to work in IT I know that there is always potential for abuse. But was there abuse? Not that I saw. If you told people what an admin could
Do on your computer you'd not want to use your computer.
At the end of he day, the Internet is open. Even advocates of a free Internet demand that it be open. Of its open govt can access info like everybody else.
I liked Kerry's take on this: that Snowden is a coward and should man up and come back to the US.
Is Kerry the stupidest SOS we've ever had?
How could anyone as stupid as Kerry almost be President?
My mom, an Old hippie in the 60's used to think that the CIA was bugging all of the cable boxes so could watch you while you watched tv. And I pointed out that that would require someone to watch hours and hours
Of video everyday. And
There would be millions of
People watching tv. So how could
They efficiently monitor that many people without hiring millions of agents? It made no sense. Were they pitentily monitoring people they wanted to monitor? Probably.
But if you were se nobody u doubt they'd care that you were sitting on the couch.
Technology has gotten better since the to where they can compile all this data.
But realistically, again, they are not just reason all your emails even if they have the ability to do so unless you are a target .
If Republicans win they can look at who was targeted by the previous administration and see if the NSA was abided for political purposes.
But don't end the program just because there is a theoretical potential for abuse.
broom handle,
"In any sane version of the Founder's America the people responsible for the action Snowden exposed would be stood against a wall."
What is that? And I ask again:
Is it anything that black Americans haven't been facing living here?
If not, then,….?
The government's incompetence at letting a contractor's employee access to all this information is staggering.
The federal government is a bloated bureaucracy. The VA debacle, the Obamacare website, the IRS abuses. Snowden is just another example of this.
Generals Hayden and Alexander may be wonderful people and perfectly honorable, but they did not know about Snowden, and they do not know who else in their bureaucracy may have ideas not approved of in the NSA charter nor what those ideas may consist of.
The idea of the NSA's capabilities in the hands of this administration and future others like it, but more competent, is deeply disturbing.
MarkW said...
On Snowden? Give him a Peace Prize, then hang him for treason.
If we're going to be hanging anybody for treason it should be those who authorized the illegal spying on Americans and lied about it under oath. If anybody's going to be frog-marched to the gallows it should be James Clapper not Edwards Snowden.
We should try Clapper for perjury and send him to Leavenworth for lying to Congress. Noted. I agree
The Snowden thing is a lot more complicated. Let me take his actions and divide them into three piles.
1. Disclosures about NSA gathering metadata (both not contents)of emails and phone calls from non-US Nationals (outside the US) on various watch lists who call US numbers or email. Even when the other party turns out after the fact to be a US Cit. I believe this is both legal and prudent. traffic analysis is one of the hearts of SIGINT. Who talks with who, when and how much. The ACLU may disagree, but we have a body of law on the topic. I think Snowden was wrong to disclose these operations. Other people may differ, but the disclosures helped our enemies...
2. The wholesale capturing of voice and email content from US ISPs on US addresses without regard to probable cause or watch list status. I think this was wrong. Allowing the Feds to have this data on average citizens and trusting them not to peak is not a good ongoing schema. Snowden could have been a Whistle blower here and I thank him.
3. Going off to Hongkong or Russia and revealing US Sources and methods of our foreign SIGINT operations? Treasonous. period, end of statement
PS: My first Army assignment was in SIGINT and I've been in the field for 40+ years now.
traditionalguy said...
So what does the law require a citizen do when he finds that Government Agents he works with are intentionally violating the Constitution in secret?
One outcome of the Nuremberg Trials is that "I was only following orders" was not an acceptable defense. Many people who simply followed orders (and who were on the losing side) met their death at the end of a rope or in front of a firing squad.
In the US military, every inductee is taught about the necessity of disobeying unlawful orders. It's a very tough call because you'd better be right. Failure to obey is a punishable offense under the UCMJ, but obeying an unlawful order could get you charged as well.
Snowden broke the law as written, but were those laws actually lawful?
"...said Snowden from asylum in Vladimir Putin's Moscow."
Yes, what a sad commentary on present day America, where an American serving the American people can find asylum--though unintended--only in Russia.
"If TrueCrypt in fact was forced to close by some secret court order, likely this is some Nixonian machination on the part of Obama and his henchmen...."
Fucking Jeebus!! This is not about "Obama" or "Bush" or any particular president at this point: it's about the state acting to assert its dominion and power over all. This will not change with the next president--of whatever party--except to get worse. Our two-party system is a fraud, and the presidents all serve the same masters: the oligarchs.
I tried to watch the TV broadcast of the Snowden / Williams interview last night. Inside 5 minutes two things were obvious:
1) Snowden was much smarter and much more prepared for the interview than was Williams,
2) The broadcast of the interview was very heavily edited, to the point where I was noticing cuts every 3-4 seconds whenever Snowden was speaking. His responses were being diced into single sentences (or shorter fragments) cut together.
I abandoned watching it as pointless. There was no need to send a crew to Moscow just to tell me what NBC's point of view was.
A total failure to commit actual journalism, despite the enormous opportunity. Not a surprise, sadly.
I wish someone would enlighten me to what that is. The government watches the internet? Communications? Wow - who'da thunk it?
To the level it was done? No, that was not known.
And since Greenwald is set to name people who were specifically spied on, the programs might end up dying.
said Snowden from asylum in Vladimir Putin's Moscow.
The people he exposed haven't been penalized in the slightest. Why would he expect anything resembling a fair trial or an "unfortunate accident" where he dies?
Who remembers the Y2K threat? Poof, it went away. But that unavoidable end of civilization as we know it was said to be caused by computers not communicating anymore. That can still happen by use of a network kill switch, which raises three questions:
1)Why is the internet control under attack to get a kill switch installed from the White House.
2)Why do militarized Federal Regulatory Agencies need as much ammunition stored up as a domestic army soon to be at war.
3) and why has Homeland Security suddenly built a system of RR spur tracks to remove people to fenced in isolated camps filled with Emergency Housing Units "for disasters?"
We need more insider Snowden type with the answer those questions before it's too late. Expecting the media to investigate the current government is silly.
"This is not about "Obama" or "Bush" or any particular president at this point: it's about the state acting to assert its dominion and power over all."
Indeed. Some people cheer for that dominion, such as (for example) when the IRS targets people for incorrect political views. Cook's point in general is correct, that it is much worse when "The State" rather than a particular president is doing the targeting. It won't stop when the party in the White House changes.
The combination of bad policies and official secrecy and lack of disclosure about those policies is indeed threatening. Take Obama's promise that there would be no info obtained without a warrant. That seems so soothing and legal and all. Until you find out that blanket warrants are being issued, and then you realize that the entire system is close to devolution.
If I were ever on a Snowden jury, I wouldn't vote to convict. I'd sit there for six months if I had to. And that, I think, is why the government doesn't want him back and didn't really try to get him in the first place. There are too many people like me wandering around.
I watched the whole interview last night. Have to say I ended up with a bit more respect for what he did. If his statements that he tried to connect with 2 different departments about his concerns before he acted are true, I think that speaks to part of the reason he did what he did. Brian Williams confirmed one contact.
Still conflicted over what he did just a bit more pissed off at the government than Snowden.
I am still surprised no news agency has been able to get anyone that he worked with to confirm a thing. Even in a wig, back lighting and voice disguising. Are they all scared?
Three posts by Robert Cook and I am not in total disagreement with him. The third one talking about serving the oligarchs has me a little puzzled though. I hope this isn't code for the Koch brothers.
Make no mistake, if Republicans are elected into power, they will continue the NSA spying expanded by Bush and Obama. They will, no doubt, make it worse. Remember all those right thinking Repubs who ran for election claiming they would repeal FISA.
Where is the evidence that Snowden approached the NSA IG or a Select Committee staffer with revelations of wrongdoing? And was turned away or retaliated against?
Bueller? Anyone?
Seems his first recourse was Drill Sgt's #3. So much for "serving the American people".
Well, unless they agree with the Prez and/or his administration. Then it's perfectly OK!
I saw part of Snowden's interview. He gave off a rather smug vibe. He seemed like the kind of guy who spends a lot of time regarding not just the proper moral response but the superiority of his own moral response. He'd be well advised to not give any more interviews. I don't think he could withstand a lot of scrutiny.
3. Going off to Hongkong or Russia and revealing US Sources and methods of our foreign SIGINT operations? Treasonous. period, end of statement
You mean like the NSA Cisco router 'upgrade' factory?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/
Sorry, no, I'm not going to condemn Snowden for revealing that either.
"Snowden broke the law as written, but were those laws actually lawful?"
-- If you are going to couch doing something illegal under the banner of "for the greater good" or "civil disobedience," be ready to pay the piper and face the court of public opinion AND the real courts.
Jesus Christ Crack, not everything is about the blacks.
Snowden has "snow" in his name, how dare that racist bastard.
Go find a street corner to beg for reparations on. I would say you should be executed, but apparently the wise latina and the rest of the commies on the supreme court don't let retards get executed anymore.
The problem with Snowden is that he stole 3 million documents that have nothing to do with NSA spying on Americans -- they are only useful to people who want to know our troop capabilities and tactics. And THAT makes Snowden's haul much more valuable to the Russians and Chinese than to people who want the NSA reined in.
To put it in perspective only about 5% of what he stole from NSA conforms to the storyline Greenwald has been pushing about spying on Americans and foreign leaders. So how and why did he acquire the other 95%? (Traitor!)
How could anyone as stupid as Kerry almost be President?
How could anyone as stupid as Obama be President? FIFY
I liked Kerry's take on this: that Snowden is a coward and should man up and come back to the US.
Kerry should man up and show us his Vietnam era bandaids. THEN he can call out Snowden.
“To live above the law you must be honest,” Snowden added.
President-Mom-Jeans,
"Jesus Christ Crack, not everything is about the blacks."
Bullshit - Snowden isn't describing anything the government hasn't been doing to blacks forever - so where's the crime?
You whiny bastards seemed pretty damned comfortable with everything when it wasn't you.
STOP PLAYING THE VICTIM,...
After the program aired, I looked at some of the supplementary material on the NBC website, and I think the most important thing Snowden said was (perhaps intentionally) left out of the broadcast. He made the claim that the vast amount of data the government is collecting actually hampers their ability to predict terrorist actions- that they're making the haystack much bigger, and the needle harder to find. He suggested that money for people on the ground in intelligence has been siphoned into data collection and cyberspying, to the detriment of the intelligence we are able to amass. I've seen no one else examining this assertion, and it seems a dangerous oversight. Overall, I was impressed by the way Snowden came across in the interview- thoughtful, giving measured, reasoned responses and staying on his points. I was less impressed with the interviewer, who missed every opportunity for follow-up and in-depth discussion of the issues. For whatever it's worth, I trust Snowden much more than his governmental superiors right now. I believe he endeavored to get the proof he needed to expose unconstitutional behavior at high levels of government, while attempting to protect our people- intelligence agents, military personnel, etc... He's not the enemy, he's a whistleblower defending the constitution.
"Sometimes to do what’s right you have to break the law."
Likely the rationale of many he exposed.
Who's moral high ground is higher?
Fortunately for Snowden, he found protection from a real moral high ground kinda guy
"Protecting the Constitution from all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC is the oaths they take. The original secret enemies when that was written were the British Empire and the Catholic Church's asserted rule over governments in Christendom"
The constitution was written against the Catholic Church?
Just wow, that's really a new one. I there I thought the anti-catholic bigots only recycled their pseudo-history.
Mind you, I do know that one of the beefs the revolutionaries had was that the newly conquered catholic canadians weren't put to the protestant "inquisition".
Lucky for the USA that George Washington wasn't a bigot.
Mike said, pulling this out of his nether regions:
"The problem with Snowden is that he stole 3 million documents that have nothing to do with NSA spying on Americans -- they are only useful to people who want to know our troop capabilities and tactics. And THAT makes Snowden's haul much more valuable to the Russians and Chinese than to people who want the NSA reined in.
"To put it in perspective only about 5% of what he stole from NSA conforms to the storyline Greenwald has been pushing about spying on Americans and foreign leaders. So how and why did he acquire the other 95%? (Traitor!)"
Unless you've personally reviewed the documents Snowden stole, how do you know any of the above is true?
"Where is the evidence that Snowden approached the NSA IG or a Select Committee staffer with revelations of wrongdoing? And was turned away or retaliated against?"
He's never claimed to have done this, as far as I know. One would have to be pretty fucking naive/stupid--and Snowden does not appear to be either--to believe such actions, although "encouraged" as the way to bring wrong-doing/incompetence to light within a large institution, will ever result in anything other than negative consequences to oneself from one's higher ups.
I stand corrected. I guess Snowden does claim to have reported his concerns internally. I guess he was more naive than I thought.
Speaking of naive: I saw on Facebook today, a body language expert watched the Snowden interview and concludes that he's lying through his teeth.
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