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Author Topic: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?  (Read 193270 times)

32BT

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #80 on: July 07, 2013, 06:30:21 pm »


The naivety being demonstrated is almost unbelievable. Most of the posters here seem to think this has something to do with politics. The fact that the composition of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is headed by a Democrat and, outside of that, evenly balanced between Republicans and Democrats should tell you at least something. It should, but evidently it's not telling you anything. I know, it's a really difficult concept to grasp. Requires actually taking into account evidence instead of your biases.


"Intelligence" of course being far more important than the Supreme Court…

(You know, that would be the institution that was really meant to ultimately protect your civil rights, and which managed to rid itself of the only remaining democratic judge. An appointment for life mind you and she wasn't even dead yet. All very conveniently during the bush administration. That should at least tell you something. But what do I care, I don't even live over yonder).

I rest my case.
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BernardLanguillier

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #81 on: July 07, 2013, 08:14:41 pm »

RSL,

I am not sure why you keep commenting about the terror risk and the need to take the right measures? This is not the core discussion.

The core discussion is whether Prism, and the equivalent measures taken in other countries, have followed the required democratic control processes. We know that the Senate control entity, the SSCI that you told us about in this very thread, was lied to about Prism. What other control mechanisms are in place then?

In this context, what makes you think that proceeding with Prism was the right thing to do?

Is citizens control not required for certain matters? Does the NSA have a supreme duty to protect the USA against certain things (what?). What makes you think that the NSA deeds are necesseraly good?

Let me ask you one simple question. When various gov entities told the world that Irak had weapons of mass destructions, did you believe them? You do realize now that those were not just mistakes, but purposeful lies designed to serve an agenda. What does that tell you about the credibility of those agencies and about how reasonnable it is to give up on control?

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: July 07, 2013, 08:16:43 pm by BernardLanguillier »
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nemo295

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #82 on: July 08, 2013, 02:04:39 am »

Prism doesn't require direct Congressional oversight, because the collection and use of metadata isn't spying. It's a means to determine who may warrant further investigation, which would be made much more difficult without Prism. The spying comes later, with prior approval from the FISA court on a case-by-case basis.

Anyone who thinks that Prism is spying either doesn't understand it, or they don't care what it really is because they believe that anything the NSA does is, by definition, evil, and by logical extension that cellphone communications should be a safe harbor for terrorists.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2013, 02:06:56 am by Doug Frost »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #83 on: July 08, 2013, 02:50:09 am »

Prism doesn't require direct Congressional oversight, because the collection and use of metadata isn't spying...

Why is it so secret then? If it is such a normal, number crunching-only activity, why is it such a big deal that the guy made it public? Once again, you can't have it both ways.

Rob C

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #84 on: July 08, 2013, 05:12:14 am »

Slobodan, it would be fascinating penning a reply to your missive, but there is no point: you simply take everything I write and say it is something that it most certainly is not. Time - mine at least - is short.

There is no way forward in these circumstances: you just believe in one thing and I in another - just as with stamper and his Red Clyde political beliefs and my own, first-hand working experiences there in engineering in the mid-fifties, when there was still huge employment, and companies would visit schools seeking recruits after the final-year exam results came out. Memories of being loved...

I recognize the harm these left-wing, idealistic and impossible ideologies create; why there is no shipbuilding there now, no car industry, and how even the English Midlands became an engineering desert beholden to a few remaining US branch-factories and, irony of ironies, to Tata, an Indian engineering giant for their very survival. (They also own much of the tea in the cuppas.) Oh, the Chinese bought the once-famous MG marque... I'm told they have also acquired Sunseeker, the foremost luxury-yacht builders we had. The latter reminds me of the letter posted here recently about the party drinking in the pub, and the ratio in which the tab got split. The rich guy eventually moved away when they beat him up out of gratitude for doing most of the paying... now they don't drink very much - they just sit around talking revolution. Or back on the Clyde, nationalism. Smaller is stronger. Obviously, nobody spent much time in the schoolyard

Just to pre-empt further accusations of my famous, alleged xenophobia: we owe the Japanese a debt of gratitude for having accepted special incentives to create car factories oop north; I also own non-British camera equipment, but then, who doesn't?

;-)

Rob C

« Last Edit: July 08, 2013, 05:24:22 am by Rob C »
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tom b

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #85 on: July 08, 2013, 05:50:51 am »

When Osama bin Laden was caught he had thumb drives, no internet, no mobiles. Just saying…

Cheers,
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Tom Brown

dreed

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #86 on: July 08, 2013, 09:04:09 am »

Oh were public life the simple thing some would have it be!

The reality is different. There are always infinite layers and there have to be.

In a world where every government, 'friendly' or blatantly not so realises that alliances and friendships between governments are always based on self-interest and can switch at the roll of a revolution, it's patently madness and lack of due diligence to leave one's nation unprotected from possible/probable international political power shifting. The only way you can do that is by knowing what's really going down in other governmental circles, not what they tell you is the reality.

Would you have your government the only one neglecting its responsibilites to stay ahead of the game?

As for the whistleblowers, I'd jail the lot and dump the keys. The surprising thing is they passed any screening to get to a position where they can do so much international harm.

If you really want to help the world or even 'just'  Mexico, why not start at home and do something about the appetites of all those junkies driving the murder of so many people across and along the Rio Grande? Fix that first. It can be done if the will is there. A grateful world will pay tribute to you.

Rob C

I'll mark that up as one narc that has outed themselves.
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dreed

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #87 on: July 08, 2013, 09:13:38 am »

One thing everybody seems either to forget or ignore is that when Snowden went to work for the NSA he took a solemn oath to preserve the secrets with which he was entrusted. Nobody who violates that kind of oath is a "hero."

Or maybe he is protecting the constitution by trying to expose those who are ripping it to shreds?

Then again, if Americans no longer value what is written in the constitution and the rights it gives them, then maybe you're right and he's not a hero because the values which he believes in (those that are written into the constitution) are outdated.
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dreed

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #88 on: July 08, 2013, 09:25:18 am »

Unlike in Russia, China, and many, many other nations, in the United States the citizens do decide, Bernard. They decide every time they go to the polls.

The citizens decide who will sit in the chairs of Congress and in the White House. And that's it.

There's much debate about whether there is now any difference between the two parties.

The problem isn't who gets voted in, it is who's there that isn't voted in.

Who's that, you ask?

The entire military chain of command, for one.

The entire administration and government beaurocracy, for another.

The electorate voted out Republicans and voted in Democrats but in a few key areas, no change has been observable. Why is that?

Because the administration (or government employees) that run the government effectively decide what the policy will be, not who's elected in.

So all the while, the populace gets to think that they're having a say in how the country is run and that they've got a choice when really they don't.
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dreed

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #89 on: July 08, 2013, 09:32:21 am »

Prism doesn't require direct Congressional oversight, because the collection and use of metadata isn't spying. It's a means to determine who may warrant further investigation, which would be made much more difficult without Prism. The spying comes later, with prior approval from the FISA court on a case-by-case basis.

Anyone who thinks that Prism is spying either doesn't understand it, or they don't care what it really is because they believe that anything the NSA does is, by definition, evil, and by logical extension that cellphone communications should be a safe harbor for terrorists.

Tell you what. Since you're so ok with drag-net style collection gathering, why don't you volunteer to send the police the GPS coordinates of where you start and end every car journey you make?

That's just metadata that shouldn't be seen as spying, right?

I mean it isn't like they were following you everywhere you drove... and if you happened to one day end up being parked at the same place a crime was committed, you wouldn't object to them arresting you and/or doing a search of your home/office/car based on that metadata that they collected, now would you?
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dreed

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #90 on: July 08, 2013, 10:07:28 am »

He is both...he knew full well he was breaking the law (he admitted as such) and yes he exposed what some would consider "useful content"...it really depends on which side of the equation the "useful content" falls...personally, I think he did nobody any favors. Much of what he (and others) have disclosed failed to deliver any real useful context. Raw data is raw data and needs a degree of context to comprehend...if selective eavesdropping prevents deaths, can you really argue against that? Can you really make the argument that privacy trumps everything? Yes, if you are doing something nefarious...not so much if you are a normal citizen. If you are doing nothing nefarious, why would you care?

Jeff, watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
... why is that relevant?

Because information can and will be misused by law enforcement to further their own ends. Their job is to arrest/convict and fine people for illegal activity, not to prove your innocence. If you start giving them bits of raw information that they can use for whatever purpose, then you're terribly exposed.

Quote
I live in an area where certain high priority politicians have been known to visit (yes, I've had my phones taped and keywords scrubbed to determine if I was a "threat" by the Secret Service–sadly, The SS thought I was "safe") and I have no problem with that...we've had Clinton and Obama in our neighborhood (pretty sure we've not had any Republicans in our hood–it's pretty democratic here in Chicago). And I have no problem with the NSA recording and evaluating my calls or emails. I'm not a terrorist...I'm not planing an overthrow of the government...the biggest thing I think about this whole thing is that the more data that is evaluated, the more difficult it will be to evaluate. Talk about drowning in data...but if they can mine some useful data, more power to them.

There was another organisation in the past, that collected a lot of information on the citizens of the country through various means.

The East German Stasi.

Is that a period of time during which you could imagine yourself feeling comfortable living in East Germany?

Do you find it odd that there are those in Germany that now refer to America's government as "soft totalitarianism"?

Obama's Soft Totalitarianism: Europe Must Protect Itself from America

How the pendulum swings...
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stamper

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #91 on: July 08, 2013, 10:23:15 am »

Quote Rob.

Slobodan, it would be fascinating penning a reply to your missive, but there is no point: you simply take everything I write and say it is something that it most certainly is not. Time - mine at least - is short.

Unquote

You have had time to post 10269 posts. I hate to think how many more posts you would have managed if you had more time. ;D

Again a quote.

There is no way forward in these circumstances: you just believe in one thing and I in another - just as with stamper and his Red Clyde political beliefs and my own, first-hand working experiences there in engineering in the mid-fifties, when there was still huge employment, and companies would visit schools seeking recruits after the final-year exam results came out. Memories of being loved...

I recognize the harm these left-wing, idealistic and impossible ideologies create; why there is no shipbuilding there now, no car industry, and how even the English Midlands became an engineering desert beholden to a few remaining US branch-factories.

Unquote.

The reason why they disappeared was because Thatcher - may she rot in hell - butchered the industries and the left wing - and the working class - tried in vain to prevent it. It is all on record and your attempt to rewrite history is simply lies. :(

 


nemo295

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #92 on: July 08, 2013, 11:32:11 am »

Why is it so secret then? If it is such a normal, number crunching-only activity, why is it such a big deal that the guy made it public? Once again, you can't have it both ways.

I'm not having it both ways. It's secret for the simple reason that we don't want to tip our hand to the people we're trying to identify with Prism. We don't want an awareness of Prism to cause them to change their modus operandi. We want to use Prism to try to catch them. But now that they know Prism exists and how it works, they're going to try to change the way they operate. Prism has been compromised, and that's a bad thing.

There are many levels of secrecy. Prism was never anywhere close to the most secret thing thing our intelligence services do. It's not a "black" operation with a secret budget. It was approved by Congress with bipartisan support. Nonetheless, it was illegal for Snowden to "out" it. As far as the "big deal" goes, that's also very simple. Snowden deliberately broke the law and violated the blanket secrecy agreement he signed when he began to work for the NSA. But more importantly, he went public with it. He sought the notoriety, and our sensation-hungry mass media obliged him. Snowden planned very carefully to ensure it would become a big thing and he succeeded.

There's one more possible angle to this that my conspiracy theory paranoia leads me to consider. That's the possibility that Snowden blew Prism's cover as part of an NSA operation. What if Prism wasn't working nearly as well as the NSA expected and they decided to kill it off in a way that would be useful? Perhaps setting up a phony whistleblower to betray the program would force terrorists to use other, potentially less efficient and less secure, means of communicating with each other. It would be highly disruptive to their operations if they could pull that off. It's possible, if far fetched, that Snowden's leak was planned. That Snowden is either a willing operative on a secret mission or a sacrificial lamb whose purpose was to have the revelation of Prism cause panic within terrorist circles.
« Last Edit: July 08, 2013, 12:02:05 pm by Doug Frost »
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mezzoduomo

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #93 on: July 08, 2013, 12:26:27 pm »

You boys need some fresh air and sunshine.
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #94 on: July 08, 2013, 12:46:32 pm »

The only one that were unaware of Prism was general public.

Speaking of naiveté in this debate... I find it quite naive to believe the bad guys were unaware of it. They probably did not know its code name, form and shape of existence, but they surely knew they are being followed, monitored, under surveillance, and ultimately located and terminated by drones and satellites. As my Soviet poster indicated, being aware that the enemy is listening is part of the game since the dawn of mankind.

Another naiveté: this high hope for high-tech solutions. The more you rely on high-tech, the more bad guys go low-tech. After all, they used box-cutters and pressure-cookers, for god's sake. Soviets were counteracting your high-tech approach, and quite successfully, for years, by decidedly low-tech. While you were trying to catch their high frequencies, they relied on a low-frequency pillow talk of their sexy agents. Or dead drops. The only Stealth fighter plane that was ever brought down was not defeated by a higher-tech weapon, but by several generations obsolete Soviet technology (that you taught it is too old and crude to take into account).

Prism is supposed to yield useful information. But you had useful intel for 9/11 too (a bright - and human - mind of an observant FBI agent, among others). You just did not "connect the dots." Or did not want to. Who's to say that Prism-generated intel is going to connect the dots any better? I presume Prism also contributed the false intel in the embarrassing blunder of arm-twisting sovereign states into closing their air space for a head-of-state plane? What's next, cavity search for presidents and prime ministers?

The only ones that were under surveillance without being aware of it (until now) are law-obiding citizens. And that is the real issue of this debate.

nemo295

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #95 on: July 08, 2013, 01:33:52 pm »

The only one that were unaware of Prism was general public.

Speaking of naiveté in this debate... I find it quite naive to believe the bad guys were unaware of it. They probably did not know its code name, form and shape of existence, but they surely knew they are being followed, monitored, under surveillance, and ultimately located and terminated by drones and satellites. As my Soviet poster indicated, being aware that the enemy is listening is part of the game since the dawn of mankind.

Yes, of course. It's knowing that they now know the specifics that's so troubling.

Quote
Another naiveté: this high hope for high-tech solutions. The more you rely on high-tech, the more bad guys go low-tech. After all, they used box-cutters and pressure-cookers, for god's sake.

True, but they planned it all using the internet and cellphones. They couldn't have carried it out without a lot of high tech help with their logistics.

Quote
Prism is supposed to yield useful information. But you had useful intel for 9/11 too (a bright - and human - mind of an observant FBI agent, among others). You just did not "connect the dots." Or did not want to. Who's to say that Prism-generated intel is going to connect the dots any better?

9/11 was one attack and we were lucky to have the intel we had. That we failed to act on that intel was an unforgivable failure. "Connecting the dots", which Prism attempts to do, is another and very useful tool. I say the more such tools we have at our disposal the merrier.

Quote
I presume Prism also contributed the false intel in the embarrassing blunder of arm-twisting sovereign states into closing their air space for a head-of-state plane? What's next, cavity search for presidents and prime ministers?

That's a fair sized assumption, but I doubt that Prism had anything to do with that. It's more likely that we were acting on bad human intel, and that it was possibly deliberate disinformation designed to embarrass us. The Russians have a long history of using disinformation and they're very good at it. I can see Putin having a good laugh over the incident.

Quote
The only ones that were under surveillance without being aware of it (until now) are law-obiding citizens. And that is the real issue of this debate.

I don't dispute that the U.S. government has the means to spy on anyone it wants to. I also think our intelligence services need better oversight to help ensure that they don't violate the privacy of law abiding citizens. However, Prism itself is not the real culprit, since it isn't spying. Prism is about ferreting out the targets to spy on. How we act on Prism's output is the real issue.
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Chris_Brown

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #96 on: July 08, 2013, 01:35:22 pm »

The only ones that were under surveillance without being aware of it (until now) are law-obiding citizens. And that is the real issue of this debate.

+1
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Rob C

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #97 on: July 08, 2013, 03:53:11 pm »

The reason why they disappeared was because Thatcher - may she rot in hell - butchered the industries and the left wing - and the working class - tried in vain to prevent it. It is all on record and your attempt to rewrite history is simply lies. :(

 


That's right, it's great Conservative policy to slay golden geese, close places making money.

Wake up, stamp, your dream has never worked. Anywhere. Ever. Folks died, shot by guards as they leaped barriers to get away from it.

And that's also on film, but probably false, no doubt. More Hollywood Berlin.

Sheesh.

Rob C

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #98 on: July 08, 2013, 04:46:25 pm »

...Prism is about ferreting out the targets to spy on. How we act on Prism's output is the real issue.

Doug,

I do not dispute that certain form of intelligence gathering can be useful and necessary. The trouble is, it could be misused too, if not now, then in the future. One example I already posted (FBI database), and the other would be IRS cherry-picking its audit targets based on political affiliation.

I personally object to Google-style metadata collecting as well, but the worst that can happen is being bombarded by their ads. Or another example how much metadata can reveal: how Target knew a teenager is pregnant before her dad did. But the worst that can happen if the government starts abusing it is frightening.

I agree that he gist of this debate is a balance between what the government does and the oversight of it. And sometimes such an oversight can not be trusted solely to a shadowy committee. Sometimes the public indeed has the right to know. And sometimes it might require someone to break the law for a public debate to happen, just like Rosa Parks did. She went from a common criminal to a civil rights hero, but only after a shift in public opinion, spurred by her breaking the law and the ensuing public debate. So, no doubt that Snowden broke the law. Whether the end result will be a shift in public opinion and a change in practice, remains to be seen, of course.

What makes me personally uneasy about Prism is the underlying logic: it is not just like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is more like burning millions of haystacks to make it easier to spot a few needles.

RSL

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Re: Is Richard Snowden a heroe or a criminal?
« Reply #99 on: July 08, 2013, 05:08:26 pm »

Okay gang, time to fish or cut bait. How about all of you who're convinced we've imported either the methods of Hitler or Stalin to the United States please explain how you'd change the current system to provide reasonable security, recognizing that we're at war with an international conspiracy. This emphatically is NOT a law enforcement issue. It's a war issue and an intelligence issue.

I can't wait to hear your plans. If you're not awake enough to realize we're at war, please say so. That makes the solution easier because it doesn't require a solution. We simply can surrender unilaterally and nothing bad will happen.
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