Maybe a naive question, but what would the risk be for me to sign this? I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border? Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble? Increased scrutiny from the IRS (which should have nothing to do with this, but "they" might say hell why not?)? Inability to get security clearances in future? Being targeted for more intense data collection by the NSA?
God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
This is the so-called "chilling effect" that's one of the most worrying implications of mass surveillance on a society... people feel afraid to speak out due to a concern they may be added to a list of some sort, and face negative real-life repercussions due to expressing their free speech.
There were a couple of times where I actually called the public contact numbers for NSA & GCHQ regarding particular stories about which I was especially upset, identifying myself by name and politely but firmly expressing my views. NSA told me to go away, but surprisingly the woman at GCHQ heard me out for several minutes and let me finish my rant. That's the British establishment for you I guess - they can be assholes, but polite assholes.
Snowden risked everything to inform us all of the crimes of the FVEY governments and the least we can all do is take inspiration from his actions and stand up and publicly make our views known, whatever they may be. The day people stop being willing to express their political views publicly is the day we lose something very important.
NSA - my name and XKEYSCORE selectors are in my profile. Feel free to add me to whatever lists I'm not already on.
It's not so much about mass surveillance but rather things like the TSA and stupid immigration policies which are at play here.
Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance. It's not even a breach of privacy in any sense, because that's exactly what petitions are for.
> Really, spotting your name on a petition isn't mass surveillance.
No. The goal of a petition is to show support for a course of action, and in this context, exercising freedom of speech in a democracy.
Taking the list of people who signed a petition, assigning a "risk score" to them because of their activism, storing it in a database for the future, and using that as a means to make decisions that affect those individuals freedoms is exactly the purpose of mass surveillance. In isolation, for one petition or one activity, it is a sensible thing. As a general practice it promotes the notion of thought-crime or pre-crime in which an individuals freedoms are curtailed because the individuals exercise of their freedoms is unpalatable to either the elected officials, or the entrenched bureaucracy.
Even taking that list and using it to discredit people isn't mass surveillance, it may just be mean, or stupid or even evil.
On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way. You just had to look harder for this information.
You are correct, taking a single data point and discrediting people with it isn't surveillance.
Taking the list, and merging it with the myriad of other sets of metadata, reports, and other resources at the government's disposal is what makes it a contribution to surveillance.
Taking all of those lists and resources, and performing that activity as a blanket activity across an entire population is what makes it mass.
Your argument is entirely unhelpful because you are arguing one specific activity, which on it's own, against a single person or group of people, might be sensible, but across the general population, without any reasonable suspicion of ill intent, leads to exactly the kinds of problems that we all piss and moan about when we get on an airplane (security theatre, screening for brown people, not terrorists, etc, etc, etc).
Also, unless that petition is material to their ability to do their job, what the hell does it matter?
Well, you could say that about the Nazis and Charles Manson, too. Couldn't you basically call anything just a "physical process" and get it over with? The rights of people are being violated by those sworn to protect them, and they feel helpless to change that. That is a problem, to put it mildly.
> On the other hand, if I research someone for a position, I would rather not like to see their name on a petition for certain things. It always was this way.
Yeah, it always was that way with too many people, and left unchecked, it will lead to the destruction of humanity. So I propose a new and much better way: when "researching" people, do not trust anyone who didn't give you positive confirmation of having spine, attention span and responsibility. I'm not saying signing a petition does that, but generally: go the other way. Do not waste your personal and professional time and energy on people who after all may remain on the wrong side of history. If the ground you stand on is not liberated ground at all times, reconsider your life. Don't be that guy obedient to what ultimately amounts to a bunch of deranged folk from a Stephen King novel or something. Realize that it would not be more than that, and that they too shall pass. The only open question is, whether they will take humanity with them, but there is no question in my mind about "their" (our) self-destructiveness. It's just not worth it to give in, in the really long run.
> "Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it's important to distinguish between two things.
One is personal accountability for the views that you express, where people around you might dislike you for it. That's pretty unavoidable, but you can also choose who you associate with.
The other is the government threatening or implying a threat to its citizens for thinking or believing a certain thing. This is very bad in the long run for minorities in race, opinion, or otherwise. Changing which government you live under is potentially quite difficult, certainly harder than choosing who you hang out with.
> It's not so much about mass surveillance but rather things like the TSA and stupid immigration policies which are at play here.
There have been cases in the past where American citizens have been refused entry into the US: they've been denied boarding in a foreign airport, leaving them stuck there. I know, it is hard to believe, but it is true.
What's worrying is not so much that the petition to be considered as Mass surveillance... but that the petition coupled with data obtained through mass surveillance. Who knows what kind of flag it will raise signing this petition will have when coupled with a ton and a half of seemingly unrelated data.
What recourse one has to proove wrong some top-secret algorithm once said flag has been raised ?
Paranoia is extremely contagious and often countered with more paranoia.
This chilling effect has a counterpart which would be directly amplified by pardoning Snowden.
In short, if Snowden gets pardoned, it will encourage further people to leak confidential documents and violate the Espionage act since they will be emboldened by the thought they might get pardoned down the road.
That sounds great to me. We need more whistle blowers and more civil disobedience. We need to change, the US is a joke; a parody of itself. We have all of this freedom branding, but are afraid of that freedom. We cower behind a police state and express our fear as hatred for those who are different from us. We have exported the American Dream to the world and destroyed everything about ourselves that made this place special.
We have demolished the middle class. Our infrastructure is shit. Education is so expensive it often makes economic sense not to get educated. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars on "defense" instead of investing it in fixing all of the broken shit we have going on.
Worse, our election system is so broken that we have to pick between two pieces of shit that don't represent anyone's interests. There is no nuance, it's one tantrum after another.
Who do we hate now? Who's personal life do we need to pry onto? Can we talk about how hot Kurdish freedom fighters are? Hillary is not a criminal, she's like grandma. Can you believe Tump has small hands? Look at his skin! Jobs?! You want jobs? Talk to the Mexicans who took your jobs. TPP? What TPP? NAFTA? What is? You want healthcare? Welcome to indentured servitude. National healthcare is for freedom-hating communist muslims. Public education? Too expensive. Of course, we have to spend $1.5 trillion on fighter jets, but that's basic common sense.
I am honestly disgusted by what we've become. We should change our slogan to "fuck the world, kill them all". Then, at least, we'd be honest.
This is not true. Snowden had to fly to Russia and live there for three years before a hypothetical pardon. If that is the minimum for the possibility of a pardon, I don't think many people would find that emboldening.
That's not really true. Though i'm in favor of pardoning him on balance, it would definitely embolden other leakers. I'm quite sure that if I was someone considering leaking classified documents and I saw him get pardoned after spending 3 years in Russia, it'd embolden me.
Spending three years in exile is not great, but it's a far cry from a long prison sentence for leaking classified documents.
It should embolden other leakers. The official reporting for these things is corrupted beyond viability. But Obama won't pardon him. He's at least as conservative as Bush and in some ways far far worse (that he's a considered a constitutional scholar is laughable).
There are many axes on which you can be liberal or conservative. He is President, not a judge, and his job is to lead the country. There's not much point in acknowledging Obama's security policies without mentioning his social, fiscal, environmental, and foreign policies.
Obama may be one things, but lying on a political spectrum neatly is not one of them. In fact, it's pretty damn hard finding a president who HAS been straightforwardly liberal or progressive, much less one that played well with the constitution. I'm not sure why you expect those two things to align.
Especially if you plan ahead a bit better than Snowden did and emigrate to the country of your choice while you can still travel before leaking the documents.
There's only a handful of countries capable/willing to resist a US extradition request. Your choices are extremely limited.
Sure, you could try to go "underground" but you'd then become a top assassination target for the worlds most powerful security service. No one would ever know of your assassination either - you'd just disappear.
The other leakers, the ones without great plans, have much weaker media followings.
Those potential leakers might be emboldened, but I doubt many would get away with it. There is also a great deal to be said for Snowden being right.
If the President pardoned him while denouncing other named leakers (Manning, et al), and highlighting that Snowden was the only one protecting the constitution. Then perhaps only the leakers strongly backed by the constitution would be emboldened.
If people are emboldened to blow the whistle on outrageous, secret, unconstitutional, anti-democratic activities of the US or state governments, then this is the best possible outcome.
However, if people emboldened to get their 5 minutes of fame for releasing some really juicy confidential or top secret info that has nothing to do with [your list here], this is the WORST possible outcome.
You act as if it is all arbitrary but I'd assert that, on balance, it's largely not. We have a system of laws and the contention is that many of these programs are extraconstitutional aka – illegal and in contradiction to the US constitution. When things are done in secret, there is no opportunity for the legal process to work, just as it largely has for many other cases over many years. It isn't perfect, but rogue actors and illegal program hiding behind governmental authority certainly cannot be argued as better.
Even the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes it clear that soldiers have a duty to not obey an unlawful order. The idea is that we are all answerable to the principles in the constitution (and, if you believe, to a higher power or to the idea that some rights are considered inalienable).
So, no, I don't agree with your implicit assertion that all of this is arbitrary and depends only on the whims of the individual.
In theory, that's what impartial courts are supposed to be for. To make fair judgements on the specifics of each case.
If the public interest and the principles of freedom were served by the leak, then that should be treated very different than a purely self-serving (or dangerous) leak.
Seriously. I feel the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has just been thrown out the window. Parent comment is literally advocating "guilty even if you're innocent because someone else might potentially be convinced to commit a crime in the future"
Yes but you're being a bit naïve here. Things never really go like this.
Snowden didn't just blow the whistle on some shady activities, he dumped hundreds of confidential documents that put at risk the lives of hundreds of operatives working for your freedom and others'.
define "dumped." He tried internal channels, which unsurprisingly failed (as several legitimate whistle-blowers and even just employees have expressed) and then went to well-reputed journalists in the most professional, transparent, and safe way possible. They even leaked redacted materials slowly to emphasize this.
So: Why did you use the word "dumped" and can you explain explicitly what he did wrong?
Snowden dumped foreign operations on foreign journalists unredacted... already bad... who also aren't experts at INFOSEC or OPSEC. They then published a bunch of them with some redactions of names but not methods. Many of the methods were quite unique to the point that they helped identify Equation Group and some other stuff later. A number of others would've been blown simply because the targets would know what to look for, what components to replace, what systems were less vulnerable, and so on. I doubt anyone died but they definitely lost lots of SIGINT. It's a natural consequence of their specific mechanisms all being exposed at once to targets that read the news.
So, like Manning, he definitely leaked stuff he didn't need to leak that harmed NSA's foreign operations that Americans were OK with. The kind the NSA was created for. That's not whistleblowing like his domestic stuff that Alexander and Clapper lied about. That makes him a whistleblower on domestic leaks and traitor on most, foreign ones. I put in for pardon given benefit of the whistleblowing but he's certainly guilty of damaging leaks.
I just don't see a reason to charge him if lots of scumbags on top are still walking free despite clear potential for Contempt of Congress or perjury charges. A little unjust, yeah?
Ah the Espionage Act. It's written by the organization that will penalize you if you speak out against them - but don't worry, they're dedicated to protect your speech even if you speak out against them.
Yeah, laws, acts, and shit suck, right? Because they weren't written by me, especially, by your tally. Maybe if you folks would stop worrying about being "put on some list" as if that'll happen because you say "Snowden should be pardoned!" What about the list for us good people that say "Snowden should be tried and jailed!" Don't you want to be on OUR list?
Good people? I believe the argument is that these "good people" would be counted as sheep compared to those that would be against the powers that be. So yes, you would be counted as "good sheeple"
If doing so proves beyond a shadow of doubt that our government officers are lying both to the people of the United States and to their representatives in Congress, as Director of National Intelligence did, isn't that a good thing?
The solution to that is not to not sign the petition, but to lobby for proper whistleblower protection, so the whistleblowers go through the proper channels to expose the crimes without retaliation.
If the answer to that is "well, they'll never agree to that", then leaking will happen regardless of whether Snowden is pardoned or not.
What if some whistleblower wannabe releases information about the next strike on [pick a target] just because he thinks words are better than weapons and we should "talk it out."
I used to work for the UK National Council for Civil Liberties - the UK ACLU if you like. (I was trying to prevent legislation removing right to silence in UK).
The organisation was well respected and had before I got there forced Britain's Security Services to admit and release to holding files on all the workers there - people who later became cabinet ministers under Blair / brown.
I have always assumed I also have a very thin file.
I am not ashamed of having that file or have having taken democratic action to change my society. What I am ashamed of is having done it so badly - the campaign did not really use web or email (This was the when of Internet cafes), I had no suit when I went to the Lords and got flustered on radio interviews.
So in answer to you, sign the petition. Be proud of your dissent and mostly do your best to make an effective protester. there is plenty of time to turn the ship around before western democracies become irredeemable. But we do need to Start. Why not here?
What is especially worrying (as partially evidenced by the OP) is that it's difficult--if not impossible, due to the proliferation of secret laws and secret courts--to know what is legal, both for oneself and for the government. Most people are not willing to test the legality of the no-fly list, so they will self-censor to avoid the risk of being added to it. The recent raid of Tor exit node operators in Seattle is enough to discourage future operators even if the raid was illegal. The government leverages a massive power and information asymmetry in the ability to argue its case in court and in the consequences for breaking the law.
chilling effects need to be kept in perspective; for example, while I'm completely fearless about telling off the govt whenever I wish, no way I'm going to reveal how I feel about Snowden to the HN community: I'd be ostracized!
We should hope that all perspectives could be voiced here, if they are reasoned well and non-combative. If we feel strongly about something, it usually signals the end of thought and the beginning of belief. It's valuable to understand an angle that challenges popular opinion, so that we can question our beliefs, begin to think again, and remember that everything is a probability, rather than an absolute.
What about a negative opinions? OSTRACIZED!
Didn't like someone's show HN? OSTRACIZED!
Didn't make your post happy enough? OSTRACIZED!
Cuss a bit? OSTRACIZED!
Offend the army of apple/react/nodejs/cloud/social fanatics? OSTRACIZED!
Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)
(In the interest of keeping topicality, one could argue the above are examples of chilling effects in a community)
>Not that it matters, ostracization means losing a few HN epeen points, so meh :)
people who care to take part and comment here might be more sensitive to social approval than the median - the quest for approval might ba a motive to participate. Therefore the loss of a few points might be more of a loss for them. In the long run that is not so good for the diversity of opinions, but so it goes...
Yeah,I would shocked if it wasn't. Its a unique fingerprint that can be used to collect large amounts of metadata of a subset of the population that is both technically able, not wanting to be listened to.
i appreciate the parent's frank concern regarding signing this Petition "God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US..."
your response is the body punch that reminds us who is the person at the heart of this petition and that whatever the risks referred to in the parent, they are minuscule by comparison
It's a chilling effect because the current view in the US is that something as seemingly innocuous as peaceably assembling (virtually in this case) and exercising your right to free speech would possibly result in more data being added to "your permanent record" which, it is believed, has the potential to be used against you in unpredictable ways.
To be more specific, this (let's say) metaphorical file could have entries in it as a result of you signing a petition to pardon Snowden. While such entries could be myriad and varied in detail, I'll pick two hypothetical variations.
1) "Subject exercised right to free speech online."
2) At 1820Z, Subject did willfully and intentionally announce their position against the protection of national security, the lives of US Armed Forces soldiers, the lives of US Intelligence operatives, and the lawmaking authority of the legislative branch of the US Government by supporting an individual charged with espionage. Furthermore, by doing so, Subject did willfully and intentionally foment rebellion within the US general population by the "social proof" of his anti-authoritarian position.
Not knowing if, or which, entry might be made by the mass surveillance of even public forums, where there is no expectation of privacy, is the concern. Not that the speech is public, but that the speech isn't expected to be used in unknowable ways against the speaker.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
The United States government has done an excellent bit of propaganda to convince the bulk of the public that they are the most free people on earth. We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents' pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant "USA" at political rallies.
But the government of the United States has perpetrated terrible violence and destruction of liberty against its own citizens and many more abroad. Through endless military engagement abroad to harassment, detainment, and imprisonment at home, the government serves its own interests first, and enhancing and preserving your liberty is not among them.
I should be very concerned about coming to the attention of anyone within government -- at any level. Even the local code enforcement board can extract time, energy, and money from you should you come under scrutiny.
But as others have said, you're already on the lists. No need to be paranoid. Go ahead and sign the Snowden petition. It's just one more data point on your dossier. The government already has enough on you to put you away for life if you become inconvenient to the state. Three Felonies a Day[1] and all that.
Noam Chomsky talks a lot about "Manufacturing Consent" (he wrote a book with this title). He says that in a democratic society you can't use force to control people, so you have to control them by controlling attitudes an opinions instead.
It works well, and the people of the United States are heavily controlled by the elite, who in this case are the corporations and the media companies they control.
I tend to agree with Chomsky's views, but sometimes I feel he's too extreme and that makes him lose credibility. Maybe it's my misunderstanding, but he often sounds like there is a bunch of people, "the elite" that plan together how they are going to control the rest of the world. I see this instead as a natural, non-coordinated phenomenon caused by various powerful people trying to serve their self-interests.
Isn't "making the world better" a value judgment that can be shaped by your peers and by your environment, and also not mutually exclusive with making the world worse?
Thus, if an elite makes the world worse in my opinion by reducing diversity of competing opinions in mass media, they could use that platform to propagandize and publicize any philanthropic efforts they may also involve themselves with, such that your opinion of them is neutral or positive.
Do you derive from first principles what things would make the world better and then check to see who might be doing any of them, or do you hear about what certain people are doing, and then make value judgments on their public activity?
An example from the set of making the world better would be Bill Gates' foundation which is helping eradicate polio [0]. If that is not a good thing I give up.
Giving these individual examples, anecdotes really, is even more simplistic in a sense. Within just about any social phenomenon, you can find examples of practices/effects that are incongruent, or even opposite, to the “main gist” of the phenomenon itself. It's really not about what any particular individual does at some particular time, it's about the collective effect a certain social group.
Of course, having the state of affairs as we currently have it, B&MGF's efforts are certainly to be saluted, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't contemplate and work towards a world where you don't need to depend on the good will of a billionaire to have a chance of people not dying of various preventable diseases; Or, indeed, even to recognize that such a state of affairs is unacceptable.
Bear in mind that the BMGF is a separate entity from Bill Gates and Melinda Gates, albeit nominally controlled by them. It may control funds that do not even come from the Gates family (most notably Warren Buffett).
It isn't clear to me that establishing yet another donor-advised trust is making the world a better place, and it seems to me as though the foundation funded by the trust is not taking action on its own initiative, but instead just giving money to those people and organizations who are already actually expending the effort in making the world a better place.
Yes, it is a good thing, but don't go overestimating the wattage of that halo on Bill Gates's head. I give most of the credit to the people who actually uproot their lives, go to Pakistan and similar environments, and try to administer vaccines to people who deeply mistrust their motives.
In what way is it too simplistic? Is it not correct? I don't think I commented on whether or not it's good. Though I happen to think we'd be better off with a more democratically organized society.
You are giving them too much credit, we live in a system of rules (loosely speaking) and it is these rules which have the power. In fact "elites" are probably more frustrated by them than the average citizen because they stumble onto them more quickly.
Who is too blame for advertising to children directly? Is it a few people? Probably not, in fact it brings in a lot of talented people, of whom each may in fact have a negative opinion of advertising to children when asked.
If you are talking about giant corps that can influence rule(s), then ok, but these are not individuals but are the stakeholders and can be large swaths of people.
We also compete to rise to the elite ranks, demote persons and families who prove themselves incompetent and boast a competent (a function of competition, in contrast to Europe) and diverse (a function of not killing each other, in contrast to China or Russia) elite.
I think the meaning of “elite” is clear from context here (i.e. C. Wright Mills' economic, government, and military elites). He certainly didn't mean elite academic mathematicians, etc.
As an independent/libertarian, I find this distinction lost on most democrats. Sadly, it seems they define people by income - thus the income inequality debate - which, among other confounding variables, completely ignores things like mobility.
This remark of yours is truly an ideological minefield!
I completely agree that the debate on income inequality and the resulting
sorting of people is irrelevant. Income inequality itself is irrelevant, it's
just an ideological misdirection. But, since you proclaim to be libertarian, I
suppose you wouldn't agree with me on why it's irrelevant: it's being pushed
to actually preserve overall capitalist relations. Sacrificing low taxes of a
billionaire or two is a small price to pay to help the ruling class keep
ruling. This is practically the central theme of Keynesian economics, and thus
of a great deal of 20th century. The strategy is still extremely effective,
and so in this election cycle we had good old Bernie Sanders act as an
acceptable vent for social and economic discontent of working people by ranting
about “the billionaire class”. To anyone not horribly politically illiterate
(sadly American culture is generally grotesquely politically illiterate) it was
painfully clear from the moment he entered the primaries how his “revolution”
will end. So income inequality discourse not only does not help alleviate the
problem, it maintains it.
Democrat-style liberalism is so effective because it's an ideological Escher
drawing. To even start to explain why it's wrong (or even better: why it's
not even wrong!) and even in many cases harmful, you have to rewind the
arguments aaaall the way to first principles (let's ignore the likely case that
then you end up with the problem of getting people to universally agree on a
coherent set of first principles) while constantly being under the threat of
being, 1930s Pravda style, denounced as pro bigger evil. As a friend of mine
recently semi-jokingly said: “There are no bad guys, just a liberal hell in
which all is mixed, a hell in which evil people do good things and good people
live in a fantasy.”
As for mobility, there really isn't any significant mobility, this is
empirical. Unless you count moving from lower middle to upper middle class
(I'm not sure even that is a significant case, I just assume it is, but even
then it's likely plastered with all kinds of demographic qualifiers). But
still, income inequality in and of itself is not a cause of this, it's one of
the symptoms, and not a particularly onerous one.
It's worthwhile thinking of advertising as a persuasion technology ( because that's what it is by definition ) and adjusting your expectations accordingly. A wise man once told me "If yer at a poker game and you don't know who the sucker is, you're it." Or, if you prefer, "Learn or be sold to."
It really helps a lot when you have huge swaths of the population that are simply stupid and you can turn them against minorities to further manipulate and control them. I think the US is far and ahead of all other nations in such means of control and has been employing it for hundreds of years. The difference now is that they have realized that they do not have to control all speech or even most speech and they do not have to use violence to suppress speech. It's a lot simpler to just mark people who the government doesn't agree with as conspiracy theorists or nut jobs and let the idiot masses discount them with their idiocy.
As an US citizen, I no longer salute that piece of cloth or sing the national anthem at sports games. I don't even bother standing for it and encourage others to do the same to show our distaste for how our own government treats us.
I was disgusted in the 2000's when being against the Iraq war was not only being flaunted unpatriotic but not supporting our troops. That's BS. I support our troops and would rather not have seen them deployed to conduct Cheney's bidding.
I will sign the petition and if some asshole gives me trouble at the border for it, so what? I'm a US citizen and entitled to re-enter my country. F them.
"If patriotism is 'the last refuge of a scoundrel,' it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism, but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinctions altogether”
~ Ralph B. Perry
> I will sign the petition and if some asshole gives me trouble at the border for it, so what? I'm a US citizen and entitled to re-enter my country. F them.
I posted this reply earlier too, but figured I'd respond here also. The US government has, in the past, refused entry to US citizens. They do this not at the border, but at the foreign airport. Say you fly to Germany, and then try to come back. They'll tell the airline to refuse to board you, and then you're stuck there. Sure, if you managed to somehow reach a US land border, they would have to allow you in (after a lengthy interrogation, I imagine). But that's not very practical or economical.
That's exactly right, here's a real-world example:
But the worst cases are those like Long's: when the person is suddenly barred from flying when they are outside of the US, often on the other side of the world. As a practical matter, that government act effectively exiles them from their own country. "Obviously, I can't get to Oklahoma from Qatar if I can't fly," said Long. "Trying to take a boat would take weeks away from work just for the travel alone, and it's not affordable. If I can't fly, then I can't go back home."
This is most probably because no-fly list is a pile of steaming crap, they had Senators, Congressmen, military veterans, toddlers, etc. on the list. 99.99% it has nothing to do with this specific person (though of course not being a Senator, but being a Muslim from Qatar doesn't exactly help). It's not targeting, it's the opposite.
I'm not sure though why he couldn't fly to Mexico instead - is DHS no-fly list mandatory for other countries?
> As an US citizen, I no longer salute that piece of cloth or sing the national anthem at sports games. I don't even bother standing for it and encourage others to do the same to show our distaste for how our own government treats us.
The fact that you can do this and face no consequences says something about our freedoms though. At the very least we have a foundation that is worth taking the effort to improve.
"I'm a US citizen and entitled to re-enter my country"
they think otherwise. they rightfully own you and can do whatever they please with you. feel free to try to prove me wrong and not to sound like minuteman.
I think you are mistaking the resulting meta-consciousness created from the game theory in society and government with individual's based consciousness and some internal intent to deceive. While I would agree the government may try to deceive us, it does so by formally rationalizing government individual's actions as needed to "protect" us from threats. There is likely not one or two people "plotting" out what is happening. It's more probable that something like the angry meme phenomenon[1] has taken root in our government and is now attempting to isolate itself from harm. I think this came about because we tend to become fearful about things that may happen if we don't do X, Y and Z to stop them before they happen and those X, Y and Z things are now hard coded into our government and affecting the game theory around it. As a result, you get a meta-govt-conscious thing acting irrationally and making everyone very nervous as a result.
Or as Gene Belcher put it, "Everything is randomness and chaos."
A Turing machine is a good example of a construct that is able to self reference and take action based on measurements. In a Turing machine, one can model other machines.
With human consciousness, this analogy would be applied to a "higher level" of consciousness forming around/on top of the human's interaction with that particular "thing" that allows the thing to take action on given metrics and share it among other consciousnesses which are in communication with it and assist with sustaining it's existence. In a business, for example, the game theory/model would govern the way the business makes money and the processes in which the company provides product or services to a customer which best ensure the future success of the company as an entity.
If the founders/influencers in the company approach building the model with the assumption the customer facing processes are mutable (which itself is dissonant in nature without customer approval), the resulting "consciousness" of the business might focus on building value by marketing means and acquisition (both viral based growth methods). This "intent" is then translated into the day to day processes required for raising additional awareness of the company's product in the market, again at the customer's cost. In extreme examples where such entities can survive long term, such as with the government, these intents may extend well beyond any intent by the individual's involved. I don't think anyone working for the government really wants to violate your privacy, but they are heavily influenced in their need to rationalize it given they wouldn't want the same thing happening to themselves, nor would they want fail at stopping a terrorist blowing up something on American soil. So, they make it "OK" to deal with personally, and the government entity is able to survive symbiotically with the host which is currently being kept in "stable" condition.
Richard Dawkins calls them memes, but they are likely capable of more complexity than we realize, given the somewhat substantiated claims in the video titled This Video Will Make You Angry on YouTube. It would also make a lot of sense if they worked toward escaping attention, given the awareness of them by the host is akin to inoculation.
>We salute the flag and sing the national anthem at games. We have the presidents' pictures on the walls of our classrooms. We chant "USA" at political rallies.
That does sound very authoritarian, honestly. Maybe that's why there are so many libertarians in the US - it's a reaction to the authoritarianism in American culture.
The word you're looking for is "nationalist", not "authoritarian". Authoritarianism is when you're commanded to do the stuff you quoted. Nationalism is when you do it of your free will or out of peer pressure from others who do it of their free will.
Nationalism is more insidious than authoritarianism. When you have an authoritarian government, you have an enemy you can clearly identify and the resistance feels morally justified. Resisting nationalism often elicits negative reactions, such as branding you as "unpatriotic" and such.
Except that this behavior is not indoctrinated by an "authoritarian" state, publishing you with death, but rather by a omni-present culture punishing you on social grounds.
IMO libertarianism that gives corporation more freedom than people, just make it easier for them to push through any legislation and "cultural propaganda"and they want, not so much solving this problem.
If you want freedom from government interference in your life, Somalia is still a pretty good bet.
And no, I am not being facetious. People like to think of freedom as a scalar, but it's actually a vector with complex interactions among its various dimensions, one of which is the government.
That said, I am absolutely signing the petition. Ed Snowden put a lot more on the line by blowing the whistle than I am by signing.
The question is not "most free from government", but "most free". It's like answering the question about which restaurant is most sanitary by suggesting to eat nothing at all - of course, you'll starve to death but at least no chance for food poisoning!
And you're wrong about Somalia btw: they do have a government, which collects taxes, introduces regulations and does all good government supposed to do, including corruption. [1][2][3]
> Ed Snowden put a lot more on the line by blowing the whistle than I am by signing.
Well, yeah, by signing you are putting absolutely nothing on the line so that's true :)
You're right, the halcyon days of the 1990's, after the complete collapse of the Somali government, do seem to be drawing to a close. You might try Yemen or South Sudan.
In Somalia you do have a lot of government interference - you just have many smaller (wannebe) ones there, fighting against each other for power, vs. one big.
But "one big" vs "wannabe" is the defining characteristic of a government. The reason that Somalia is universally considered a failed state is precisely because it has many smaller wannabe governments fighting each other rather than one big government maintaining order.
And that is precisely my point: people think of freedom as a scalar, as the absence of constraints on their personal decision-making. But this is wrong. Your decisions are always constrained, if not by "government" (however you choose to define it) then by your fellow humans. And if not by your fellow humans (e.g. if you go live in the middle of Nunavut) then by the laws of physics.
Depends on what kind of freedoms you are looking for. Many European countries, Germany for example, have better protections from law enforcement and crime. On the other hand free speech is more restricted by libel or hate speech directives.
The previous poster was correct - it depends on what sort of things will make you, personally, feel free.
I wound up in Norway, and find a certain freedom here. I don't mind the taxes and such, and I rather enjoy the general equality in opportunity sort of thing. I'm no longer worried that blue hair makes me un-hireable (though it might make it harder to find work). But other Americans here simply hate it and can't wait to wind up going back to the states.
The best bet is if you have some choices in the matter - and know it - join some groups with other americans living there and talk to them about their experiences there.
> I'm no longer worried that blue hair makes me un-hireable
This is also absolutely true in US. Of course, that differs whether you're trying to be a graphic designer or a banker or a trial lawyer. Blue-haired trial lawyer probably would raise more eyebrows.
I was lucky enough to work at a pharmacy that didn't mind the bright hair in the US, but heard a good number of folks lament their employers wouldn't allow such things. I always found it somewhat sad.
Don't get me wrong, there are still some quirks with it here, but it isn't the same sort of hindrance as it was in the states.
It's kind of cool that there are so many different countries with different variables and that some people are fortunate enough to be able to pick the one that suits them best.
Homogeny in this case would actually be a bad thing.
The Heritage Foundation published its Index of Economic Freedom[1], which tracks various factors for many nations. While not a direct analog to personal liberty, economic freedom certainly is something to strive for.
Take a look for yourself and see if their rankings make sense.
You can't even chew gum in Singapore. Australia probably is free if you are not an Aboriginal. Hong Kong Free as long as China doesn't want you. This list is crazy. The free countries are probably all third world but then people are free to literally eat you without punishment.
It is an economic freedom index from a conservative American organization's point of view, actually. Part of the metric is government spending: Another portion rates laws about firing folks, minimum wages, and other such things.
It is unfortunate that the heritage organization is one of conservative leanings and that their chart is definitely skewed in that manner. This chart is really helpful if you think high government spending or having small government is a marker of your personal freedom, economic or otherwise.
I'm not: I'm all for government health care, government supported time off work for sickness or children, and other such things. These push up government spending, but yet can mean freedom from financial burden. When I consider what I paid for health care in the US, the tax rate isn't a big deal at all. For my personal economy, i'm actually more free because I don't have to plan for being sick and going broke from it - I gained some economic stability.
Also interesting is the "labor freedom" metric - basically, laws making it more difficult to fire folks and things of that nature. While there are occasionally downsides to this, it also means there is a sense of job security. If your personal beliefs are such that this is a hinderance, it might be a bad thing, but I suspect most folks would find this to mean more actual economic freedom because there aren't so many surprises to plan for.
I seriously doubt that Singapore is even in the top ten for personal liberty, much less #2. I have heard good things about their economic policies though.
High freedom from corruption in Chile, a country whose government is essentially a kleptocracy? Yeah, I would take that with a hefty dose of sodium-chloride.
"The Legatum Prosperity Index" (1), states that:
"Canada is now the freest (sic) country in the world, having risen five places to 1st in the Personal Freedom sub-index." (2)
The Nordic countries probably. Throw in Holland or Germany maybe. Another commenter said there's a bit less room for speech and press but you you're not constant target of police and government. Sounds accurate. It's what I was considering thinking of U.S.'s recent elections plus me being on their shitlist.
Yeah, destruction of evidence and seafood smuggling are just everyday activities.
(those are both real examples from the book...whether there was a great deal of intent in the lobster tail case is disputed, but it was a pattern of shipments involving thousands and thousands of pounds of tails)
I've read the book and I agree that a lot of it concentrates on cases which are rather unusual for a common person. Not all of it though.
E.g. evidence rules mean you can be committing a felony just by deleting an email that some prosecutor may consider important - even if you haven't been under investigation at the time. And you can be investigated for things as simple as depositing sums under $10000 in the bank on routing course of business - just because it looks like "structuring". And you can also be prosecuted if you make any false statement to a government employee, no matter if it relates to any crime.
You know what? I don't think that's an unreasonable concern and it's exactly why this situation is so horrible. It's the return cold war communism paranoia. "Of course I'm allowed to do this, but will this get me on some watchlist?"
I guess the ethical answer is that, the more people will sign this (think a million?), the less likely it is to be used as some kind of filter. Even though what's one million names in a database? Sigh... Awful.
You're allowed your quota of one medium-impact dissident action per week, just like everyone else. As it helps to keep up maintaining the illusion of democracy and free speech, you are actually doing your country a great service.
If you start to do more, however... Consider yourself warned. ^^
In this case, I can reassure you though:
Online petition clicktivism has been shown to be very ineffective, so it's only considered a minor-impact dissident action. You are allowed five of those per week. ;)
I "love" how China actually tried to formalize this some time ago. Every citizen would get a citizen score, like our credit ratings, but grading how politically loyal they were. There was quite a bit of outrage on the western internet about this.
The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things (though still to a lesser degree, and secretly). A big difference is that China often doesn't have a sense of tact when it comes to not sounding dystopian, and happiliy uses phrases like "citizen score", "criminal elements" and "reeducation". Also Big-Character posters are still a thing [1], though slightly modernized.
Although, we are getting there. At O'Hare airport in Chicago I remember seeing a poster urging me to "be vigilant", which has a nice ring to it...
The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things
No, they're provably doing similar things. A "citizen score" only has cosmetic differences to the data crunching done by machine learning predictive policing.
The differences are just as large enough to avoid fitting into any of the identifiers for bad governance that the American collective conscience is already keyed into.
The main difference is you're not getting fired or ostracized or jailed for run of the mill political views or dissidence.
There are two different aspects.
The difference you're focusing on seems to be setting what positions are acceptable, and what gets done to people who hold them them.
The similarity I was focusing on was that they're being tracked at all. And in the cases that they're not not immediately actionable, I don't draw much distinction between a bureaucrat with actuarial tables and machine learning.
> The main difference is you're not getting fired or ostracized or jailed for run of the mill political views or dissidence.
Jailed, no. Fired and ostracized? Certainly, except for narrow definitions of "views" and "dissidence" (largely calibrated by region and type of employment).
You're conflating government action with civil actions. Civilians do all kinds of things governments are constrained from doing --I can be ostracized by colleagues for being irreligious or contemptuous of management or being pro choice, or conversely pro life or being too PC or not being PC, etc.
I'm unaware of dragnets and massive house to house searches in order to discover and punish people who went out for a brief protest against against a corrupt government office.
> China actually tried to formalize this some time ago [...] The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things (though still to a lesser degree, and secretly).
They may be doing it to an even higher degree (given they are far more sophisticated than CCP) but the key feature is that they do it like criminals that they are and in "secret".
The Chinese are stuck with the CCP and a techno-Scientific ruling elite unless they manage to have another rovolution. The generation that survived Mao is, imo, probably psychologically shorn of any will to express robust dissent given the state terrorism that they had to endure. The new generation is fed hyper-nationalism and has front row seat on the gloabally televised hypocrisy of American governing elite. (Isn't it so fine that in 21st century USA has become the enabler of autocrats the world over?)
We have a constitution that if ever resurrected would deal with all this. We need to focus on that.
Problem being that ML manifests the unconscious biases of its author -- in the form of its learning set being biased, in the form of not-spotting patterns that are obvious for human heuristics or in the form of training not capturing something the author sees as significant.
I recall a story recently about ML detecting risk for post-op inpatients. Human nurses know not to send people with Asthma home after an operation due to their high risk profile. Because the ML system was always ignoring Asthma patients as they were never queried, it assumed it was safe to send them home.
I would argue that that racially biased policing in ML is just an extension of racially biased data scientists in Ft Meade, or Silicon Valley or Wall St or where ever.
> The "funny" thing is, our governments are probably doing very similar things
perhaps in capital driven liberal countries it's called Credit Ratings - rather than your worth being judged through your loyalty, it's judged through your willingness to spend and accrue debt.
not trying to sound bleak and cynical, but just a thought.
why so tentative? i pay my limited bills on time, i have taken on debt twice and paid it off as soon as possible, living basically within my means, and because of this my credit score is terrible.
i can't get a phone contract, a mortgage is out of the question. i automatically fall to the bottom of the list when trying to rent an apartment. don't know what went on at the places i applied to for employment that requested a credit score waiver, but can't imagine it was to my benefit.
now i can't even get on the credit train and start maintaining a card because i'm apparently such a poor risk.
its clearly not the same set of concerns as a patriotism score. but there's clearly some kind of profiling and clustering going on.
Have you got any credit cards? Get one. Before trying the crappy "secured" cards, try a Discover, they seem lenient if you don't have cards yet. Stuff it in a drawer, add something small to it, such as Netflix, setup autopay, forget about it.
Your credit score will slowly increase. And at no cost to you (other than the time to setup this, which can be minimal if you can get approvals online).
You can (and should) live within your means and that's fine. What creditors want to see is that you have access to credit and you use it responsibly (eg, paying on time). You don't actually need to use any of your available credit.
It's hilarious I think. It's sort of the same end result, but the means to get there are a bit different.
Having a Citizen Score would send me into a fit of rage, but I probably have some kind of other score I don't know about. Or I'm on a List. Those Lists. Must take much money to maintain them.
It might have been just "thank you for your vigilance" or something similar, but it strongly reminded me of a game. Thanks for reminding me of what it was called :-) great game!
China actually tried to formalize this some time ago. Every citizen would get a citizen score, like our credit ratings, but grading how politically loyal they were
And as a result, crime and unemployment are unheard of and the greatest risk to public health (aside from freedom-loving terrorists) is a debilitating LACK of mental stress.
> A big difference is that China often doesn't have a sense of tact when it comes to not sounding dystopian, and happiliy uses phrases like "citizen score", "criminal elements" and "reeducation".
Clintons "basket of deplorables" is a reminder that this sense of tact could change after the election.
It bothers me that one tactless moment from Clinton seems to get more attention than a lifetime of tactlessness from Trump. The guy openly insults anybody who doesn't unconditionally support him, but Clinton has one quotable moment of frustration and it's all of the sudden the evidence we need that politics isn't polite anymore?
Who gives a shit anyway? "Offending" Trump supporters isn't going to change anything. Not like they were on the fence.
I love the double standard being applied here. It's like what Trump says is just "expected", but Clinton says one thing you find offensive (oh no, political correctness!) and you're all up in arms. Woe is the deplorable Trump supporter.
I would LOVE to have that kind of formally acknowledged scoring system. I could then actually weigh the decisions - "I'm currently at 523 risk points, which puts me at the 65th percentile of ethical divergence. I can sign this petition and go up 10 points. I'll only be at the 67th percentile and I don't plan on doing anything else subversive so I should be able to decay back down to below 500 before I need to book my vacation next spring."
Instead you have to guess "is this going to put me on a list? What does being on the list mean? Does the list exist?" Well, aside from the obvious list of the petition itself. You know what I mean.
Depends on where you are. I have friends in Turkey who signed an online petition and (the next day) lost their jobs over it. Some of the other people who signed that petition are not allowed to leave the country anymore, and some are even being detained. Very scary.
Comeon, in Russia, you can sign thousand petition like this, it will be simple ignored, goverment didnt cares that their people sign. I sign a lot petitions and nobody threaten or fire from work
Turkey is at this time no longer a democracy. It's very sad really, although the military coup d'état would have been worse imho. I hope for the Turks to realize how dangerous the current administration is and overthrow it before it is too late.
In Turkey, the very next step is being thrown into jail for voting for some political party which the ruling party doesn't like. Yes a successful coup would have been a hard-to-reach "even worse". An unsuccessful one is a nightmare too: I see many people asking each other: Now what?!
It's like a broken, rotten implementation of IDemocracy. It satisfies all the API but throws a lot of exceptions, and people in jail. Internals has been spilled all over, and you don't know who has access to what and with what kind of execution level.
Go to Istanbul as a tourist and you will see absolutely no problems whatsoever (Well, a different story if you speak Turkish and can understand people when they're complaining). OTOH, being a citizen who has even once touched the surface of "wrong" politics is a game of waiting in fear.
"As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be a party to this crime!
The Turkish state has effectively condemned its citizens in Sur, Silvan, Nusaybin, Cizre, Silopi, and many other towns and neighborhoods in the Kurdish provinces to hunger through its use of curfews that have been ongoing for weeks. It has attacked these settlements with heavy weapons and equipment that would only be mobilized in wartime. As a result, the right to life, liberty, and security, and in particular the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment protected by the constitution and international conventions have been violated.
This deliberate and planned massacre is in serious violation of Turkey’s own laws and international treaties to which Turkey is a party. These actions are in serious violation of international law.
We demand the state to abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region. We also demand the state to lift the curfew, punish those who are responsible for human rights violations, and compensate those citizens who have experienced material and psychological damage. For this purpose we demand that independent national and international observers to be given access to the region and that they be allowed to monitor and report on the incidents.
We demand the government to prepare the conditions for negotiations and create a road map that would lead to a lasting peace which includes the demands of the Kurdish political movement. We demand inclusion of independent observers from broad sections of society in these negotiations. We also declare our willingness to volunteer as observers. We oppose suppression of any kind of the opposition.
We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state. We will continue advocacy with political parties, the parliament, and international public opinion until our demands are met."
I'm the CTO of a startup that's trying to solve this very problem. Online activism isn't very effective, so our thesis is that small groups of determined people can affect change when they meet in person around specific issues and legislation. To facilitate this concept, we've built basically a mashup between Twitter, Meetup.com, and an API feed of legislation.
The goal is to find events going on in your area and you can join and be a part of the change. Sometimes just being able to find the events going on about certain topics is the hardest part.
We're launching on October 1st, so I'm hoping we can make a small, meaningful impact in fixing this.
I wish you luck. But my suspicion is that the most effective way to drive legislation would be to funnel large sums of cash to legislators, the way politics has always been done.
When I was a kid in the 70s, you could listen to distant shortwave stations and if you heard them on a certain time and freq, you could send a note and get a postcard to collect. So we picked up Moscow and thought that would be cool for the collection. We wanted to make sure we weren't going to get in trouble or a watchlist (McArthy was very fresh on our minds) so we called the FBI office first; they were amused we'd ask.
For me it's basically pushed the US far down the list of places to go for leisure. I see the risks as still being very small, but why take the risk when there are so many other great places to visit too?
US immigrations stands out for the least pleasant experiences I've had on entering a country, and that includes entering places like China, despite most of the time being perfectly fine (I used to fly in/out of SFO every 6-8 weeks for a period of about two years, so I got to compare them a lot).
For business, I will still go if necessary, but I'm finding that I'd take the same precautions for the US as I did for China: Make extra sure to have a full, recent backup, and move "everything" off my laptop onto online storage, just in case they decide to seize it.
Since 9/11 the US already states very explicitly that it doesn't want me as a visitor - I'm not going to go through the (visa) hoops they hold up to me.
It was actually administratively much easier to cross the iron curtain in the form of the berlin wall back then than it is now to get into the US (me being german).
(This is a bit unfair because there were special regulations for germans inside berlin, and US visas weren't that easy back then either.)
the number of chilling-effect style questions I have to ask myself increases every damn week.
you know what's even scarier? I'm scared to to even write about what those situations were for the same reason they arose in the first place. Now some friends tell me there is a threat to the legality of tor in the US, I'm actually starting to become a bit panicked by it.
I pick my battles - I think a lot of the time I do choose to take the bold move but I'm also aware that just being self-aware of censorship and chilling effects doesn't keep me safe from the psychological impact of those efforts.
What is freedom anyway? Any attachment to external systems threatens it in my opinion. You work through the systems you're attached to and they limit you - for example - me posting my thoughts on HN or reddit is nearly pointless yet a lot of us a spend significant amounts of time chatting back and forth, thinking we're accomplishing something significant - so we're content with that and less likely to spread our message in ways that might have more impact.
I start to laugh at myself when I blame big corporations and shady nations for the mess we're in - but this is a system we ALL buy into. Blaming a corporation is like yelling at an inanimate object when you stub your toe on it. I gave up my smartphone - that's a tiny first step towards taking your privacy back - yet who here would actually do that?
I find it hard to believe anyone would seriously say that Pete Seeger should be on the list of people that should be feared for their "un-American" leanings today, but in the past apparently several people thought he was worthy of that label.
But it's also worse in a way because many people who sign these petitions think they are actually helping so they are less likely to do something more which might actually help. If they forward it to five people and create awareness then they are helping a little. If they just sign and go on their way they are doing no more than the guy who does nothing.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
It's ironic that given all the valid concerns in your post, you also fell for the oldest piece of propaganda in the book by the very government you're concerned about and that you think that socialism has something to do with dictatorships, rather than it being just an idea that itself has nothing to do with dictatorships in itself, but was in the past implemented by dictators, same as capitalism was in Latin America and elsewhere.
Nazi ideology is much more inherently tied to strongmen and dictatorships than socialist ideology is.
You also seem to be talking about communism, rather than socialism as such and fail to see the distinction between these two, or indeed between communism and Stalinism, but that's for a longer discussion...
This is a gross misrepresentation and I hope that this belief isn't more widespread.
The only thing that socialism and naziism had in common was the idea of an economy that will make a group of people better off, (which is pretty much the idea behind every economic model in history), but naziism is based on the idea of a "superior race", which is inherently better than the rest of the population and thus is entitled to the slave labour of the other, lesser races.
Socialism is pretty much the exact opposite, it's about people having equal access to basic set of utilities and services and about large enterprises sharing a proportional amount of its profits with its workers, it has nothing to do with race, in fact it makes things like race, sex etc. not be a factor in entitlement to these things.
Hitler hated the idea of socialism, (as well as communism) and actively prosecuted socialists in Germany, a chunk of which then escaped to Czechoslovakia, which was part of his reason for invading it, same for the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately this "belief" is pretty wide spread on the American right.
It's not actually believed, though. It's just an attack point to try and associate "liberals" with Hitler in Internet comments and what not. Pretty standard troll tactic.
This is bad history. The Nazis who emerged in power had no ties to socialism. By this logic, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a purely democratically run country.
huh? The nazis were entirely socialist and ran a socialist agenda. That was their platform. Centralized education, centralized health care, strict gun control laws, the list goes on and on.
As I said above, the "socialism" promised by Hitler was that they should no longer pay for WW1 and since they're a superior race, they're entitled to the labour of Jews, Romas etc. for "free" - that's the "socialism" behind Naziism, just because the words are the same, doesn't mean they're the same thing.
Hitler essentially wanted the superior Germans to do nothing and be provided for by lesser races and I presume that's why you think he was a "socialist", but in reality he was much closer to early U.S. history than to socialist ideology.
> Centralized education, centralized health care, strict gun control laws
More like common sense laws than "socialist" ones if you ask me...
This is what upsets me about the right, they're so easily scammed by random screams of "Big government", "centralised health care", "strict gun control", "centralised education" etc. and the counter is simply "FREEDOM, LOW TAXES, PRIVATE HEALTHCARE, "THE BEST PROVIDER WINS" etc. and I get the appeal, these things sound awesome, but the problem is in the details; the "low taxes" are not for you, they're for Apple, Google, Shell etc. "private healthcare" is not excluded under socialism if you want it and can afford it, it's just that it's not the only option and every citizen has some form of healthcare provided, regardless of their socioeconomic status, just by the virtue of the fact that they're...you know...human.
The people who say it's too expensive ignore how much is spent on the military, (i.e. US military has 800+ overseas military bases, do you really think you need (all) of them?), the fact that US already spends more on healthcare than virtually any other modern nation and despite this it still has the worst quality healthcare of all of them.
"Centralised education" means that creationists in Iowa can't not teach evolution, which I would argue it's a good thing, but again, it's a base, so that everybody gets at least "some" consistent quality of education, it doesn't mean it can't be expanded upon...
> strict gun control laws
Again, more like common sense, than ideology driven, look up gun deaths in the US vs Europe.
If you have a gun in the US you don't actually have an advantage, because everybody else is armed as well, i.e. it's basically as if you didn't have one, but with greater risks of getting shot.
Your comment puts Snowden's actions in perspective. He risked his liberty, if not life, so that we could learn about the scope of US mass surveillance.
You worry about the risk of being registered as a Snowden sympathizer if you voice your support and the discomfort that might bring with it.
To quote a man who was actively surveilled by the US government for much of his later life and no one believed him...
"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason."
That quote is from "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter" which was published in Esquire in 1935 and was about war (based on his experience from WWI), not about surveillance or about standing up for democracy in times of peace.
Nobody in the US will "die like a dog" for supporting a presidential pardon of Snowden and Hemingway did not suggest that one should stay out of politics.
You could end up in prison. It's not likely, but it's possible. Signing this petition could get your name on a secret list of people who are likely terrorist sympathizers, and that in turn could lead to your arrest on trumped-up charges, or perhaps even non-trumped-up charges based on coincidental circumstances that would never have been noticed had you not signed. There are also a whole host of other less serious possible consequences. You could end up on the no-fly list. You could be denied a government job. Who knows?
And that is exactly why you must sign. Ed Snowden put a lot on the line so that we can know for sure that we are facing risks like this, and possibly even do something about it. The least we can do IMHO is to take a small risk to help him come home. That's why I signed (and made a modest donation).
I signed it and to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of Snowden but think he deserves an opportunity for pardon.
I'm honestly not the slightest bit afraid of retaliation, and if I was targeted it would be evidence in favor of Snowden's cause.
I don't understand how an American citizen could be afraid of exercising their free speech rights -- if they are violated, then one can vocally draw attention to their situation. I'm really not afraid of repercussions as a random American.
> I don't understand how an American citizen could be afraid of exercising their free speech rights -- if they are violated, then one can vocally draw attention to their situation. I'm really not afraid of repercussions as a random American.
Because some random American has no practical recourse in such an event.
"You shouldn't change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because were afraid we don't care about those values very much." ~ Edward Snowden
Normally I'd call that paranoia. But after reading about the case in which a Goldman Sachs programmer aroused suspicion [0] from the FBI for using "Subversion" and occasionally erasing his "bash history", I think it's reasonable to remember that anything you say can and will be used against use in the eyes of the law
"They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when
not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to
learn this particular lesson." -- Richard Stallman (http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/109)
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
what does socialism have to do with this? maybe you meant to say "a mode of thought I would expect in totalitarian police states..."
it's true that some totalitarian police states have, nominally if not really in practice, also been socialist. however, there have been just as many fascist, capitalist, monarchist, and theocratic totalitarian police states as well.
so I ask again...what does socialism have to do with this?
This exactly why I think we should sign it. The fact that you now second guess everything shows this is very wrong. It will only get worse if we keep our mouths closed.
First the pardon will never happen. Neither Obama nor any other President can or will pardon him, lest they encourage the next Snowden. So signing it will not actually help Snowden.
Second, it's entirely possible that your fears will come true - obviously the government will receive your information and they can use it how they see fit. Not only that, but they appear to be running a co-registration campaign with the ACLU, and you don't know exactly who else will get your name, email, and physical address, or who those people will sell it to. I would be also curious to see what kind of remarketing cookies they are using. You can easily be put in the bucket of "HN users that visited the support Snowden page" and be stalked accordingly by advertisers across millions of Adsense-supported sites, Google search, Facebook, and the general web with just two or three remarketing cookies.
The creators of this site undoubtedly know that their stated goal will never be accomplished. So this looks more like an attempt to build a marketing database of people with a specific viewpoint than anything else.
All acts of resistance have consequences. That's because it's important, and "they" know it's important. I think it's reasonable to assume this gets you put on a watchlist if you're not already.
As others have (snarkily) pointed out, this is a pretty mild form of resistance, so I'd imagine the consequences would be pretty mild.
Literally millions of Americans think Snowden should be pardoned. Expressing that belief won't make me a target.
That being said, I could see the government trotting it out if there were ever a separate case against you. "captainmuon is already known to harbor sympathies for known traitor Edward Snowden."
It's awful that you are thinking about this, imho, as am I. I signed it, because I'd prefer not to live under an unaccountable surveillance superpower.
Being in Australia, I'm at best, someone that kowtows to a surveillance superpower. Sucks to be me, I can't even vote to not be surveilled.
Asking, "Will the government persecute me if I democratically voice my
opinion against a crime executed by the same government?", is exactly
the type of questioning that should be avoided.
It is same as asking, "Will the mafia kill me if I speak the truth about
the murder as an eyewitness?" Government is not supposed to operate like
a mafia. (But sure they can violate Human Rights and the Constitution, and
public will not even care.)
However, I am afraid by asking that very question we are already talking
from within the context of a regime that is "totalitarian". The various
degrees to which an average US citizen believes that they are not in a
totalitarian country unlike those "other" "socialist" or whatever
countries out there, is irrelevant:
Surveillance is Totalitarianism.
It is no surprise for people get paranoid in a country with large-scale
surveillance technology. And that's the point. Because it has never been
merely about the "terrorists" who are "out there"...
For people who are concerned about getting a "high score" in whatever
threat inventory, we are all a threat already. That's the very basic
rationale behind mass-surveillance. For the record, a majority of HN
members would hypothetically get pretty "high scores"...
Back to the topic of the thread, Obama will not pardon Snowden.
By logging into "hacker news" regularly, mentioning the NSA (and probably other key terms: data collection, US citizen) I'm sure you are already on a list.
> By logging into "hacker news" regularly, mentioning the NSA (and probably other key terms: data collection, US citizen) I'm sure you are already on a list.
If the NSA really does maintain these macabre "lists", it's kind of hard to believe they'd be so unsophisticated as to put you on one for visiting a website called "Hacker News" that has nothing to do with the definition of "hacking" that they care about.
It may be hard to believe, but it's typical of surveillance programs. They aren't run by cunning Men in Black, they're just another government program with bureaucratic directives and clueless people in charge.
If you signed a petition in Thailand, and it had anything to do with the royal family, then you would be arrested and imprisoned under the lese majeste laws. If you signed a petition in North Korea or Syria, you would be tortured and killed.
Be thankful that you can exercise your right to sign this petition in the US, and the only thing you might need to worry about is increased scrutiny from the IRS.
I had the same thought, but I signed it, because he did a helluva lot more for me than sign a petition, and also because "failing to do the right thing because of concerns about your personal safety/convenience" is known more succinctly as cowardice.
(Whether "signing an online petition" is "doing the right thing" is outside the scope of this comment.)
I made a small donation to Glenn Greenwald, back when he was writing for Salon. (Back when concerns were hanging chads, weapons of mass deception, and the like.)
I've had occasion in recent years to speculate how many lists that has put me on. And to explain to a few friends "three degrees of separation" and what that might imply for them, as well.
I don't particularly like being listed. But I really don't like and fear the utter lack of transparency and accountability, and how such information can and apparently is "weaponized" against individuals for personal, political, and financial objectives.
Not only is it scary. It is, ultimately, a wasteful mis-use of resources. All this dirt digging and slinging and lawyering up takes away from more useful activity. Like fixing blight and illness before it engenders disfunction.
Call me an optimist. I believe -- or at least hope -- that we can do better.
I don't know what to make of this. We lose if Snowden is "pardoned", because that would mean he did something morally wrong. Snowden loses his life in the US if he's not pardoned.
I'm not American, but the issue cuts across all countries and Snowden is a representative.
I think about this sort of thing quite often, actually: Your fears are exactly why i've not signed it. I'm American, living in Norway. I don't really plan on living in the states again, but I very much want to be able to visit family. I already wonder if that doesn't put me on some sort of secret list, but there isn't a decent way for me to find out. I don't even feel I have adequate representation anymore - I can vote based on my previous address in the US, but I highly doubt I'd be listened to. Not that it was adequate to begin with, but I at least had the facade.
When you start to feel that way is when you need to stand up the most. We get further into this mess by staying silent out of fear and we get out of it by being millions strong and protesting the state of things.
> I wonder if I (a US citizen) might get trouble the next time at the border?
I would be hugely surprised to learn that anybody would spend any time or attention to whoever votes how on a petition. There are thousands of those and only so many border agents, and making trouble to an US citizen carries a non-zero risk. Your profile is too low for that.
> Or get a higher score in some database, that combined with other things might get me into trouble?
Possible, but other things should be like donating to known ISIS front or frequenting a Hezbollah darksite, or something like that. Otherwise it's just noise.
> Increased scrutiny from the IRS
Unlikely, IRS is interested in money, not online petitions. You'd need to do something more spectacular to deserve special scrutiny, that puts you out of the crowd. Voting on online petition puts you in the crowd.
> but "they" might say hell why not?
Customized treatment on these scales is rather expensive. If voting on online petition had triggered customized treatment, they'd have to do a lot of useless "increased scrutiny". If they did, you won't be different from millions of people, but most probably they don't.
> Inability to get security clearances in future?
Security clearance is one area where such scrutiny could be warranted. But given who gets clearances, at least at low levels (like terror operatives working at airports and security companies, etc.) not likely unless we're talking about very high clearance levels.
> Being targeted for more intense data collection by the NSA?
Unlikely, again, you'd have to get out of the noise level for that and voting on a petition does not do that. If you'd be a close personal friend of Snowden then it'd be a different thing...
If Snowden revealed something is that the NSA and accompanied services are very smart, very powerful and very resourceful in achieving their goals. Nothing suggests they are so stupid as being unable to distinguish between signal and noise. They may be collecting a lot, but it all would be useless if they couldn't distinguish between interesting things and noise. Signing an online petition is noise.
I don't think the paranoia is unreasonable, however, it is exactly this sort of self censorship that dictatorships bank on to stay in power. People don't speak out for fear of repercussions. Snowden sacrificed almost everything to do what was right by not only the people of the U.S. but what was right for the people of the world.
I think it's only right that we all put our neck out for him, the same as he did for us - if only to say thank you for having our backs. I'm signing it.
Why do you think this won't happen if you write that exact comment here? Quite sure for writing here we are all added to the database or our attention factor gets slightly increased if we already are in it, maybe depending on how critical the word cloud of our comment looks to their analytics software. And don't think it's different if you are a US citizen or not. They probably add people from everywhere. A few billion data sets are probably not as big a deal anymore nowadays.
I tend to doubt your fear is to have your "terrorism points" incremented in some database, but rather the cold and distant nature of the federal government makes it nearly impossible to reason through how you're _not_ a terrorist (assuming you're not). There's no organized mechanism by which you can disprove your terrorism affiliations. Otherwise, being put in a database would be as much an issue as changing the wrong address on your insurance policy.
Better to be on the right side of history. I mean, if you are asking the question, you have already made a personal decision that you would like to sign it. Not doing so would be betraying yourself. That would be worse than not getting a security clearance I would have thought. In any case, I doubt the spooks would be really that bothered. You can still spy AND take the moral high road :-)
I am reasonably certain signing this petition would increase your bad karma with NSA. This in itself may not cause a problem but next time you come on their radar this might hurt you.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
USA is moving rapidly towards socialism though it is much behind than say UK or France. This sort of government overreach is inevitable.
The UK's "peak 'socialism'" time was in the past. Depending on how you apply metrics to socialism it would either be the good parts (Attlee/Bevan establishing schools and NHS after the war) or the bad parts ("winter of discontent" 78/79).
UK surveillance is part of the permanent state and is imperialist in nature.
In some ways, the UK is less authoritarian than in the past - the Human Rights Act has had a real effect, along with the Good Friday Agreement. There are no longer troops deployed in the streets with live ammunition nor elected MPs who are forbidden to speak on television.
More than one historian (e.g. Dominic Sandbrook) has pointed out that the "winter of discontent" wasn't caused by socialism in the Attlee & Bevin sense but out and out naked self interest in a way that was closer to the "no such thing as society" of the Thatcher years.
I love Thatcher's description of Attlee:
"He was a serious man and a patriot. Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show."
I think we're back to debating what is and what is not socialism here, but the conflict was between labour unions and the state-owned enterprises that employed them. Both of which are very social democrat / mixed economy kind of institutions. Hence the Thatcherite response to both privatise everything (making employee relations someone else's problem, and also making it much easier to fire employees), severely restrict the unions, switch UK power generation away from domestic coal, and finally have a punchup between the police and the NUM.
The Labour party failed to develop any effective way of saying "no" to naked self-interest in unions (In Place Of Strife passim). Intrinsic problem in 'socialism'? Possibly.
There might be a risk. But if you do not act the risk is much higher. I am not talking about social good or sacrifice. Just think about the state in which your children's and their children's will live in. It is not worth living in a state like that. Its like we are being prepared for breeding future slaves.
Paranoid? Naah. I'm working on the assumption this site (pardonsnowden.org) is run by the CIA, or one of it's proxies, whatever, to gather the names of Snowden sympathisers.
Surely, right. If history has taught us anything. I mean, we know some of the things the CIA has gotten up in the past.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
What is your definition of "socialist" ? A lot of European countries are "socialists" in a way (always a nuance) but they don't have an aggressive kind of local NSA (even if some have a local NSA).
I don't think they would have a problem with people signing this. It lets the people blow off steam with no real effect. Once you sign it, you think "well, I've done my part. I signed the online petition, and changed my Twitter/Facebook icon."
The fact that the United States government can indiscriminately designate people as being "in trouble" and then use this as an excuse to trample upon their rights. The real trouble is a situation in which Snowden is not pardoned.
> A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...
I hate this notion. I stay in India -- a socialist nation, which has its own problems but "lack of freedom" compared to any other nation in the world is not one of them.
I accept that I've probably said enough nice or not-bad things about Ed Snowden that I'd probably never get a security clearance as a U.S. citizen; and as a dual citizen I have no hope at all to begin with.
I think signing that petition is the least of your worries, the amount of data already collected about you including this comment here will be used to profile you for years to come.
Even if there is some correlation between signing this petition and some of the things you say, the expected (in the statistical sense) damage to you is tiny compared to the cause in question and the principles, so frankly I think it is lame of you to even be writing about this, and I don't think it should be the top comment. It makes HN readers look like a bunch of #firstworldproblemers lacking perspective and fretting about minor inconveniences to their privileged lifestyles.
According to a journalist who gave a talk here (Stuttgart, Germany) last week, there is a speed radar and license plate scanner at the local NSA installation, and going by too slow gets you on the 'suspicious people' list.
About 3 years ago, a story broke up about a three-letter agency requesting from Twitter (subpoena IIRC) the list of handles who were following a particular Swedish Pirate Party politician.
I remember reading the article via twitter and after a while watching a tweet from the politician in question appear in timeline.
I didn't even recall following her, but at some point in time I did. I froze and panicked, my twitter account is eponymous.
What will happen to me when I cross the US border? Hopefully/Probably nothing, but the thought lies in the back of my mind.
Okay, not to break up the tinfoil hat party here, but you're not going to get dragged off to US prison for following Birgitta Jónsdóttir (Icelandic, not Swedish) on Twitter.
Yeah, if you post threats on your Twitter account immediately before visiting a country that could be an issue. So don't do that. Threats against persons or property are reasonable things for public officials to be concerned about.
I repeat: you're not going to get dragged off to US prison for following Birgitta Jónsdóttir on Twitter.
I strongly agree that Ed should be pardoned and that the US government has a lot of problems (like any country), but let's not go completely overboard here and write off the entire country as North Korea meets McCarthyism with a heaping side of Turkey. You can't and won't be prosecuted here for having a political opinion or for following people that do on Twitter.
If I had the slightest hint that I will be prosecuted or go to prison,I would never risk traveling in the US. I am not a person of interest by any means for any gov.
I was referring to a possible detention in the borders, stripping, electronic devices control and so forth.
If you fear signing this, _and don't_, you really don't understand long risk mitigation and are just preparing yourself to be scared even more in the long run.
Just like privacy doesn't exist without others, signing this will at least help by giving strength, and privacy, in numbers.
Leaving this resistance alone, as if they were some heroes you respect but won't stand by, is really a cowardly way of being anti society and skipping your citizen duty.
First they came for them, etc... You know how it ends.
Morality is difficult to stand up for. Civil rights was tough to fight for (still is). The right to privacy and govt transparency in the face of tyranny is another of those difficult battles.
Let's be like the founders and stand up to our government [1].
[1] List of quotes:
- The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." --Patrick Henry
- "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." --George Washington
- "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." --William Pitt in the House of Commons November 18, 1783
I don't know what long risk mitigation is, but I'm offended. /s
But seriously, nobody at the NSA is going to place* you on a watch list because you are part of a small vocal minority that raised support online for Snowden, a wanted traitor and saboteur of the USA.
*There is however a good chance that the money grubbing bastards at one of the third party contractors the NSA eats up reports and analytics from will profile you into something you are not (or lets face it, you are) and that will be ingested into our intelligence pipeline.
I'd be very surprised if the NSA doesn't collect these signatures for later matching. Doesn't mean that you'll have black vans following you around because of it - they have lots of lists for all kinds of things.
The most obvious application in this case is that you would be automatically disqualified for a security rating in the future. You'd never get to know the reason of course, you'd just be rejected.
EDIT: I still think people should sign of course. Let's not let them win by default by letting our fear control us. Do you really want that security rating if these are the requirements?
Pretty sure regularly visiting hacker news would also raise a flag... I mean seriously, they were flagging people who were on the Linux mailing list and what not.
In the end though, if they want you to work for them, security clearance will be granted.
>But seriously, nobody at the NSA is going to place* you on a watch list because you are part of a small vocal minority that raised support online for Snowden
I agree. They will not place you on a watch list because you support Snowden.
They will place you on a watch list because they can.
Good point. At some point in life you won't be able to run away from standing up for what you believe in (at perhaps small or medium risk to self) or else direr consequences may result.
If you believe he acted ethically, then sign the thing with me.
In addition, history is long and tech grows fast. I imagine at some future point and well within our lifetimes it will be trivial to infer our political attitudes and assign semi-anonymous screen names to real persons just by scrapping the web of 2016. Especially since absolute certainty of guilt is not the highest priority in these cases.
And since there's very real possibility of having a lunatic at the helm of government at some point, yes, one had better speak up now.
Who are these guys? Registrar is in Panama. The site says "partnership with ACLU and Amnesty International", but I cannot find any links from those sites to pardonsnowden.org
Both ACLU and AI have their own petition forms with different letters.
The top comment in this thread is paranoia about whether this site is a hostile name collection honeypot (I think if it is, so is commenting on this thread, hello nsa).
One way of combatting such paranoia is to establish trust. This site accepts donations, but nowhere does it say WHO is running it. It has neat ACLU, Amnesty International, and HRW logos at the bottom, but anyone can put graphics on a page. It has a whole list of supporters, but all without any citation of their support (you would expect the Chomskys, Lessigs, and Greenwalds, but the Soros are a bit more surprising).
This is at best a rushed, uncoordinated release. At worst, it IS a name collection honeypot.
If this group does in fact have support of ACLU, AI, and HRW, it should link to those organizations' press releases of this particular domain. If it has the endorsements of popular figures, at the very least link to a tweet of theirs.
Snowden should be pardoned because he revealed that in the land of the free, we should always be looking over our shoulder asking if this is an NSA sting job. A good way of fighting that paranoia lifestyle is with credibility. These guys are failing that fight.
I just asked a few people on the "supporters" list who said they had "nothing to do with it", after trying to figure out more about it's core and see if I could get added to the list myself (my opinions on the NSA dragnet crap are well documented, I do not live in fear of them: http://blog.neocities.org/making-the-web-fun-again.html).
I'm starting to think they just got a list of people they believed might support this petition drive, and then added them to the site as "supporters".
Saying they are "supporters" of this drive is misleading. They should change the copy to say "these are some people that also support pardoning Ed Snowden".
At this point I would be extremely hesitant to donate money to this group until its foundational structure gets clarified.
Update: This has indeed been validated by multiple sources to me as a real thing. The two people I asked about this told me they forgot that they signed up for it (sigh). How's your morning going?
Also, the FAQ page https://www.pardonsnowden.org/faq mentions, "We've partnered with the nonprofit Center For International Policy (CIP) so that we can offer tax deductibility to donors. Your donation goes to the CIP, they enable tax deductibility, and it is then transferred to us to be used for the campaign."
I think the problem is, people do not care anymore. The scandal is over, business as usual. Only a small percentage of the population still cares about Snowden. I think the image of the NSA has been hurt and a change in legislation might get you some positive press in the future, but I do not think that pardoning Snowden would be worth the effort for a politician. On the other hand: Obama probably does not have to care.
Edit: I normally don't do these edits, but seriously, why am I getting downvoted for this? Obviously this is bad, that does not make it any less true. You must be the ones downvoting sad YouTube videos and the reason why Facebook had to introduce multiple like variants.
Snowden's actions were effectively an attack on the mechanisms of governance: if they let him off the hook, they fear they will encourage more people to act like him, and that affects the solidity of the lever of governmental power.
If government is a tool, it's a rare politician that votes to make the tool less reliable. Note that this is distinct from changing the scope of what the tool can affect: this is about the reliability of the tool. Even politicians that were in favour of what Snowden did, who thought he contributed positively, and voted against surveillance, would still likely baulk at making life too easy for more people like him. That's because government is supposed to flow from the top down, and policy change is not supposed to emanate from the machinery. The machinery is supposed to execute the orders of government.
One could argue, that it was really the press acting here, which as the 4th power is also part of the machine. Also the Nazi trials largely ended legal positivism [0].
And you know what's also awful? We expect neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump to pardon Snowden in the future. In this sense, Democrats and Republicans are not all that different. It's still all about the interest of the powerful.
The if Hilary claimed she would pardon Snowden I'd vote for her in a heartbeat. I hate her because to me she seems to want to expand the surveillance state. I hate Trump because with a surveillance state anyone who makes fun of his hands would/could be arrested...
Hence, at the moment I'm voting Gary Johnson, who I actually think is the most qualified, but also made it clear he wants to downsize the NSA
I'm not going to get into a flame war, but pretty much everything related to libertarians are freedom of choice. I strongly agree that mandatory vaccinations on a national level should not be required.
As long as it does not harm me, I don't think I should disallow someone to do it. That is to say, I don't think I should, or society should pressure our beliefs on others. I would vaccinate my own children because it makes sense to, but I wouldn't force my neighbor to at gun point because that isn't going to help anyone. Which is the whole premise of the libertarian party.
I really like the idea of the small state. Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler. Children have rights and when parents do not protect these rights, the state has to. There is a hierarchy of rights. The right of the child to be healthy is greater than the right of the parent to ignore scientific evidence.
I strongly agree with that in general, I just think it might be enforced differently. For example, you lose social security benefits if you do heroine, but heroine isn't illegal.
In the case of children I agree for like polio, but perhaps not flu. Either way it's hard to judge and the major point of libertarians is that the state should decide. For example, a west Nile vaccine makes sense for almost everywhere. Besides the bay area which has no mosquitos.
I'm sure Gary Johnson would agree to some extent, and he has already changed his mind when presented with evidence.
> I strongly agree with that in general, I just think it might be enforced differently. For example, you lose social security benefits if you do heroine, but heroine isn't illegal.
I think it should be illegal, but junkies should not be prosecuted. So I have a similar stance. The US seems to be goldmine for political activists. It is already very rich and successful and many of its social problems can be changed just through policies (e.g. prison population).
It is interesting how different (neo-)liberalism is seen in Europe vs. the US. When conservatives in the US speak about liberals they mean ordoliberalism and leftism, meaning increasing rights for people and decreasing rights for corporations, while Europe's left means the exact opposite, when it speaks about neoliberalism.
Both are wrong. (Neo-)liberalism includes both social liberalism and market liberalism. Maybe "individualism" is an easier term to describe the general idea. It should be seen as a second dimension on top of the left-right spectrum. You can introduce liberal policies that harm or help the poor or the rich.
I do not know the Libertarian party in the US, but what you are describing as libertarian here does not seem libertarian to me at all. Just careful and sensible liberalism. Libertarianism has some anarchist vibes to it. I would say the Tea party has libertarian policies.
If you're curious you should actually look up where the Johnson/Weld ticket stands on issues [1].
The libertarian party in the U.S. is branding itself as "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" meaning government should be lean and allow for as much social liberty as possible. They kinda tried to take the "common sense" approach. At least, that's what they say their stance is. Based on both of the governors terms in office I'd agree.
I always like to call myself a liberal, it totally throws off my friends who are Democrats and Republicans though.
Not enforcing vaccinations leads to loss of herd immunity [0] which means that you (and any children you may have) are more likely to catch whooping cough, typhoid, etc etc.
Therefore by your logic, you should be for mandatory vaccinations. This is a valid and consistent opinion for a libertarian to hold.
In the second paragraph of your link, one learns that only certain individuals with particular conditions actually benefit from herd immunity over simple vaccination. We can assume that none of those people are libertarians, so the "valid libertarian opinion" is simply to vaccinate and let others do as they will. The primary victims of the lessened herd immunity that results from less than total vaccination are the people who don't vaccinate. This is a problem that solves itself. Presumably Gary Johnson simply opposes the creation of some sort of Trumpian Vaccination-or-Death Squad.
But everything affects others, especially in this ever-more-connected-and-congested world. Standards are useful for computer, and for people.
Libertarianism has attractions, but idealism only goes so far. I believe the Libertarian world would collapse in flames (or disease, or hunger, or congestion).
There are multiple approaches to structuring society consistent with the idea that violence shouldn't be used to coerce people into desired behavior. There are multiple libertarian worlds.
>As long as it does not harm me, I don't think I should disallow someone to do it.
Oh, so you don't understand the most fundamental bits of science at play in the vaccination debate. Why am I not surprised. I recommend you Google "vaccines herd immunity".
Children have already fallen gravely ill in some places in CA because of the stupidity enabled by this "libertarian" mindset.
While I'm personally in favor of mandatory vaccination for kids, there's an argument to be made for not requiring them by law. There's all kinds of ways to use the levers of government to induce people into getting their kids vaccinated without making them mandatory.
On the other hand in northern New Mexico, there was a Molycorp mine. There was metals contamination in the Red River. It had gone on for decades. And for decades politically it was being protected because of the jobs that were involved. I took office and I said, you’ve got to clean this up. You have to come to the table and you have to clean this up. They refused to come to the table. So my biggest club in the bag was, I am going to declare you a Superfund site. I’m going to hand you over to federal EPA unless you come to the table in 30 days and come up with a plan for fixing your metals contamination.
And they claimed that it was natural! It was ludicrous. It was a slap in the face. And they refused to come to the table. My phone is ringing off the hook, politically. It’s ringing off the hook. There were all these jobs. And my response was: “These people are bad actors and they have to be brought to the table.” Thirty days went by and they became a Superfund site. So there’s an example of the EPA and why the EPA should exist. And why government should exist to protect us against those who would do us harm. And in this case the Libertarian argument would be, as individuals we could have brought suit against polluters. We can bring suit individually. Well, in the case of Molycorp, you know what, they would have been able to withstand any individuals trying to bring that suit against them.
Sure, that is bad. But on a grand scale of things the president or whether or not one man will be pardoned is not really what matters for the American people. To me it is an important issue, but things like wars, mass surveillance and so on are even more important. And you cannot fix them with a broken parliament. However the parliaments are broken, because its members are invincible [0]. Name recognition beats everything. They do not have to fear to do something wrong but for their names to not be recognized anymore. So money talks.
Hard to imagine how this could be fixed. I guess you would have to restrict the amount of money to be used, but who would shoot himself in the foot? You would need shitloads of money from a source, who does not care - rare combination. Also the topic is not as sexy as "curing X".
After that the even bigger problem would be to find a way to get the media to actually report on things and/or the people to actually pay attention to such reports. A glimmer of hope to me is Jon Stewart (and the group around him, especially Last Week Tonight).
Interviewer questions have shown more care about Snowden's personal drama instead of focusing on the issues of growing censorship and surveillance.
I wish people would stop donating money to twitch gamers and instead support journalists who investigate, setup tor-relays/seed-boxes and reduce the dependence on centralization.
And then there are people like me, who don't see the situation as black&white, i.e. I am not signing that petition. In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers. Like what the Brits are doing and currently they didn't have any big attack after the London bombings.
I am not an American and I don't have a motivation to defend NSA or whoever, I just think that what Snowden did was partially wrong. Of course, caching the Internet like NSA and others are doing has human rights consequences, and those should be discussed publicly. But question the very existence of such practices is unreasonable in the situation the world is in nowadays. There are LOT of people in the world today who would want to wipe off the whole Western civilization, if they could... there must be a protection from them.
In my opinion, for the sake of security, it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.
Except you know, it doesn't prevent terrorist attacks. At all.
All it does is make the pile of hay with the needle in itthat much bigger. And a hell of a lot more expensive to the tax payer that is paying for the privilege of being spied on by their own government.
Even Snowden agrees that surveillance is necessary. However it is done outside of the public's eye and as we have seen without legal authorization. That's the part that made him blow the whistle.
Mass surveillance is deeply contrarian to our core values as a democratic society. If it is to happen there needs to be a discussion and a public decision. That's exactly what is set into motion by the Snowden revelations.
He agreed that targeted surveillance is necessary (I do too), not this indiscriminate 'collect it all' bulk surveillance of entire populations that we have now.
I think targeted surveillance is not enough - if you find a suspect, I think you need to take the bulk surveillance data and look at what that person communicated in the past and whether he is indeed a suspect, not just watch him only from this point on.
Considering the bulk approach is what they've been doing for 10 years or more and terrorist attacks continue to happen, usually by people the intelligence agencies already identify as risks, it doesn't seem to be at all effective.
The bulk approach leads to a saturation of data. That doesn't make things easier, it complicates them.
Isn't that what startups do these days? Collect every piece of damn information from each user visiting their site? Log when they hover over a link and all?
Morals aside, startups are after typical behavior. When you do analytics, you normally want to discover things something between 5% to 90% of your users. Most companies even have problem for getting into that 5% limit because it is too small.
Terrorists are a few hundred, spread through the billions of people. Or, on the same kind of numbers, around 0.0000001% of the people the NSA spies on.
If you include other agencies or even the whole military-industrial complex, it seems to me that they are both source and solution to the problem. With Saddam still in Iraq, ISIS would not be a thing and there would not be a need for intelligence on them. Doing less can be more.
The usual justification for invading becomes ridiculous in that context: We need to restrict the people's freedom by spying on them, because we tried to bring freedom to another country.
Yes, I recall that line of reasoning very well - When Saddam is gone, that is, after bringing democracy to Iraq, the rest of the Middle East will become democratic and peaceful. Iraq was to be a beacon of for freedom and democracy.
> ... it is necessary to "cache" the whole Internet communication to prevent terrorists attacks and other dangers.
Keep in mind that while we're trying to prevent terrorist attacks against us, we're actively and have actually used those same terrorists to further our goals in other countries.
If you are so sure that this sort of surveillance is effective due to the non happening if a rare event, then I have a tiger repelling rock to sell you. It is garunteed to stop tiger attacks.
I'm still genuinely curious about what the intelligence community thinks of him, if it's bad, what are the arguments against him. I've heard Mike Baker on the Joe Rogan experience say that he did not trust Snowden one bit.
In the intelligence world, it's common to be very cautions about leaks since foreign actors like Russia can really benefit politically from such scandal.
It can be difficult to really know all the details since it's covered in secrecy, and Snowden himself will knowingly avoid to say too much to reduce the damage.
In my view, digital surveillance is a complex issue because people don't really understand how it's done, the west is still waging a war against terror to avoid attacks in land, and agencies will often want to screw the due process to catch terrorists however they can.
From what I've gathered, the intelligence community thinks bad things about him; their view is "fix it from the inside."
Public leaks can be incredibly damaging to our operational advantages against various adversaries, and it's often non-obvious which data will be most helpful to them.
The main reason I stand behind him is the matter of the director of the NSA lying to congress under oath. We don't even have the illusion of a democracy if we can't have effective congressional oversight of intelligence agencies with as broad a reach as the NSA.
That's certainly not William Binney's view, but then, as a leaker himself, I suppose he's no longer part of the "intelligence community" as he reached similar conclusions as Snowden did.
He was asked if the NSA had records on millions of US citizens and his answer was "No sir. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly."
His first explanation for this answer post Snowden was that the program was too secret to reveal publicly, so he had to give the "least untruthful answer" that wouldn't reveal the existence of the program.
Later his lawyer said that he had forgotten about the program in question.
Either way he did not use true words, but he may have merely forgotten rather than lied.
He made up meaning sharply at odds with any common use of the words, and then didn't explain them. Outside of political fantasy, that is not called "using true words" - it's called lying.
"No, honey, I technically told you the truth when I said I didn't have sex with her, because my buddies and I had secretly decided that 'sex' means gardening."
My conservative friends, not in the intelligence community, really don't like him. They try to be civil, but I can almost hear them hiss when I mention "Snowden".
It's odd to me. They don't mind digital surveillance at all. They think it's good if it makes everyone safer.
Throwing in my two cents, what interests me on the Snowden topic, is his character. While I'm glad Snowden took the initiative and risk, I don't believe he did it for altruistic reasons: sacrificing himself for the greater good. My opinion is based on seeing and hearing Edward Snowden talk in the documentary "Citizen 4" and other interviews. Many people say, "Look at what he did. He gave up his life in America. He sacrificed everything for no financial reward. He's a hero." It's true he took a big risk; he could still spend a lot of his life in prison. But he has gained huge from this risk. He is famous and respected by many; they're making a fucking movie about him. It reminds me of the line at the end of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford": "You know what I expected [after I killed Jesse James]? Applause."
I really wish I could understand the people that are:
1. "patriotic" but don't respect those who stand up for ideals in the Constitution
2. "anti-government" or "anti-authority" but don't respect those who stand up to challenge the blind power grabs by the government and say things like "fix it from within" (when they would never, ever say the same thing about the IRS, for example)
3. "libertarian" but again, don't actually seem to care about liberties other than the Second Amendmend and finding ways to defund public services so they can pay less taxes.
Just seems like a lot of cognitive dissonance at play among the libertarians who don't support Snowden.
> 1. "patriotic" but don't respect those who stand up for ideals in the Constitution
Perhaps we think that we are standing up for those ideals? Perhaps we believe that the Constitution actually does set up a government and grant it certain powers, and that it's perfectly constitutional for that government to use those powers?
> 2. "anti-government" or "anti-authority" but don't respect those who stand up to challenge the blind power grabs by the government and say things like "fix it from within" (when they would never, ever say the same thing about the IRS, for example)
Because national security is an issue. You simply don't reveal your military strengths and weaknesses to potential adversaries; that's like going into a dodgy bar and announcing, 'BTW, in case of a fight, I have a bruised right rib.'
> 3. "libertarian" but again, don't actually seem to care about liberties other than the Second Amendmend and finding ways to defund public services so they can pay less taxes.
I care deeply about my liberties. I just don't believe that anything Snowden alleges constitutes an infringement upon those liberties.
> Perhaps we think that we are standing up for those ideals? Perhaps we believe that the Constitution actually does set up a government and grant it certain powers, and that it's perfectly constitutional for that government to use those powers?
The government is granted those powers by democratic mandate.
When a mass surveillance system can be set up without any democratic debate, these powers were never granted to the government, it grabbed them without permission.
When the director of the NSA lies to Congress under oath, there is no democratic oversight over these powers.
Wow. Mass, completely unwarranted surveillance of all citizens is really just no sweat to you? Breaking into domestic corporations and invididuals' computers? Lying on an unprecedented scale, including to Congress.
I just can't take this comment as being in good faith. The NSA has countless times violated the Constitution that binds our "government" and separation of powers that you hint at.
Was GP talking about libertarians? I only saw mention of conservatives. Granted, there are people who blur the line, and libertarianism isn't as coherent a political philosophy as e.g. anarchism, but there are lots of libertarians who care much more about e.g. police excess or censorship than about gun rights or taxes. It is a disservice to rational conversation to conflate different concepts in this way.
If I recall correctly, Snowden didn't even have concrete plans to escape from Hong Kong after revealing his identity. Wikileaks sent someone to get him to Russia. He just assumed he'd get caught.
If this is true, I find your theory implausible.
Also, from hearing him talk, I'm quite convinced he thought long and hard about the moral implications of what he's doing. To the point where it would surprise me very much if "the greater good" weren't his primary motivation.
Interesting thoughts. Snowden definitely has some well thought out arguments in favor of his actions. I would guess he believes he is "just". My opinion is based on reading his voice and body language. It's hard to describe; he seems a little too pleased with himself and a little too happy to be along for the ride.
He may very well be vain (I haven't really picked that up myself, but I heard several people independently form that opinion, so that's plausible), but I don't think that's mutually exclusive with pure intentions.
well I'm conservative and all this surveillence runs roughshod over the 4th amendment. What we have is a bunch of control freaks in government who are afraid of their own shadows. I worked for years in black hat type ops and the attitude especially of the FBI is both creepy and hyper paranoid. Interestingly enough when it's someone very high up in the government incompetently and negligently dumping a bunch of intel (like some former sec of state) it's hands off. But crucify the guy who tries to expose gross abuse of power and bring down the machinery.
The machinery wants to crucify him and make a huge example. The machinery needs to be fixed and Snowden's actions need to be better examined by a group not so invested the massive machine.
Are you sure you're not thinking of Assange or Manning? Snowden and his team have been much more careful and restrained with what they release than, say, WikiLeaks.
>Snowden and his team have been much more careful and restrained with what they release than, say, WikiLeaks
Maybe at the very start, but that eventually changed. For example, I'm not sure how you can justify leaking 9 years of NSA internal newsletters as whistleblowing. [1]
The thing I hate about all petition sites is that they ask for my personal information for... what purpose exactly? They don't even seem to try to verify anything. They just look like scams to me, which is a shame because I really think they shouldn't be...
The fact that your name and address is known to the entity receiving the petition shows that you really mean it. Also, for some entities it might be illegal to be moved by petitions signed by non-citizen. Unfortunately, those petitions systems only ask for your address, not for your citizenship. But we can assume citizenship from the address for the first order.
I know. Notice my complaint was about the lack of verification or other genuine need of the information. Not about the request for personal information itself. If they made legitimate use of it (and ONLY legitimate use), I would understand. However, the ones I have tried do not seem to verify anything, and instead use your contact info as a way to send you campaign materials and advertise to you in the future. That's the part that rubs me the wrong way - it feels like a scam designed to get your personal information. And in this age of identity theft, I really have little incentive to risk it.
To prevent ballot stuffing I would assume. With a name and email address you might check the validity of a petition by randomly mailing some of the petition signers to validate that they did sign it themselves.
I am for a full pardon. The risks to our privacy are greater now than they have ever been and a lot of people think it will keep us safe. If I knew more about history I'd be tempted to compare it to something like a more insidious version of the cuban missile crisis, but it's probably a bad comparison. Any historians around here - what would you compare it to?
How about comparing it to the war on drugs over the last 100 years? is the war on privacy taking a similar path?
Starts out using racism by claiming we need to restrict privacy (drugs) to prevent muslims (hispanics) from terrorizing us. Next it's associated with sexual deviants (reefer madness), and anyone who opposes it must be one of them. Then people start to realize that privacy isn't just an ideal, but it's a physical feeling of freedom - a feeling that they have never felt before, the freedom to be the captain of your life (damn hippies!) - people have tasted freedom and they want more of it. To fight against it, governments spends trillions of dollars hunting out anyone who provides privacy services (drug smuggling).
Eventually there is reform,etc etc... so, it took like a century for cannabis.. 20 years for privacy?
Lots of crazy shit has been walked back over the years, and I assume it felt very doom-y at the time. That said, I don't see this being walked back. Snowden outed the US Government as ever conspiracy theorist's worst nightmare minus lizard people, and the country kinda shrugged.
>Snowden outed the US Government as ever conspiracy theorist's worst nightmare minus lizard people
Not even close.
For one, many non-crackpots (IT/infosec professionals and academics) strongly suspected NSA possessed capabilities similar to these and were probably exploiting them for many years before Snowden. Most details weren't known, but many people were not remotely surprised by the revelations.
Actual conspiracy theorists tend to believe far more ridiculous scandals. Most of them believe mass homicides are orchestrated by governments to achieve political goals (Bush destroyed WTC to invade Afghanistan and Iraq; Obama murdered Sandy Hook children to pass stricter gun control legislation). If any conspiracy like that were ever proven in the same way NSA surveillance was, the shitstorm would (justifiably) be 1000x worse.
But it is true that history almost definitely will not treat NSA's current actions kindly. It's only a matter of how far away we are from that time.
You are right, the leaks weren't that surprising (I had not read the actual ant papers until recently, they are pretty cool) - I do actually question the possibility that the leaks themselves were psy ops though, here's my reasoning:
The power of the NSA, et al. was probably overstated up until a few years ago - for example, if you're so powerful and omnipotent, why trust your top stuff to booz allen contractors? Also, Natanz was amateur hour - inside sources have essentially admitted that - it's not the sign of a robust or mature operation that had been in place for a decade. Also, only a small amount of the software/tools that the papers mention has actually been verified (if any at all, I have not been following it recently).
But that's unlikely and I do support a pardon if the accepted version of the events is true. Even if it did end up being psy ops, they might have jut been showing nefarious material to enough contractors until one inevitably leaked it. Honestly the way they are written is kind of odd, not like technical manuals an engineer would use. edit* - and yeah they're not even billed as manuals, just as a catalog. They kind of strike me as realistic ideas or concepts, maybe even with some prototypes - thrown in with a couple of things that do exist. There's nothing technically amazing about any of the things it describes though - if you watch old def con videos you could probably figure out how to do a lot of that stuff anyway (which you alluded to)
I'm not a historian, but consider that the "medium" if you like, the Internet, all it's awful mudpie history of protocols etc, is ripe for the plucking by both sides.
Do you stand idly by while the hostile ones (whatever that might mean) use it to their advantage, or do you get your government with their huge funds to help in this regard?
The latter, of course. Trouble is when that agency becomes rogue, which it certainly seems like the NSA have, with rubber stamping.
But we still need some form of accountable defense I think. It's just gone horribly wrong.
That debate will always be at the forefront of security. In the 19th century, when the first professional police departments were established, people were outraged and convinced that the police were there to take away their liberty.
It doesn't excuse all action to improve security, but we do have to occasionally align our security with modern standards. What would happen if we left all cybersecurity (including banks, power systems, etc) to the private sector?
And then, where do we draw the line? Is it okay for the FBI to target people who visit a child pornography site? Most would say yes... People who download The Anarchist's Cookbook? Probably another yes. But what about collecting info on the people who supported that whole ordeal with Clive Bundy? Or people who belong to a non-state sponsored militia? That's where the line starts to gray for many. The point being, it's never cut and dry.
should you be on a list just for mentioning the anarchist cookbook? Personally I think being targeted for being curious what the anarchist cookbook is is a bit much - I think every other high schooler in my generation downloaded the thing for kicks - most of it is utter bullshit anyway. But yeah - clearly most people have their own definition of when it's justifiable to spy on people vs what's not so it does create difficulties.
Yeah it's a tough question, and due to the complex nature of the technical and political systems involved, it's probably impossible to simplify/distill the situation down so that ordinary people can have any sort of informed opinion. Right now, people say "give us privacy" because it's a smart thing to say - but they don't understand what they're fighting for so I fear they'll be quick to give up at the first sign of resistance.
There might not be a single person in the world who understands all the moving parts well enough to say what's right.
To pardon Snowden seems like a very popular opinion around here. Can anyone help me change my opinion on this matter?
The way I currently see it:
- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
- The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.
- Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.
- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
- Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.
- Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.
- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing. As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.
I have a lot of respect for whistleblowers, and also for Snowden. What he did is nothing short of heroic. But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia. What's missing for me?
Here is a well produced oxford style debate between qualified debaters on the topic. I found it very enlightening and hope everyone gives it a listen. It's available as a video or podcast. http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/snowden-was-jus...
Thank you for posting this great debate video. Although it did not change my opinion on the pardon, I now have a more nuanced view on this matter. I thought all the debaters in this video had good points, but I still agree with the opposition.
facts. you mis-stated several things about the story. I don't have time to do your research for you. there's a lot about it on the internet already. begin by educating yourself about the facts and then make your judgments.
> high-school diploma Snowden.
vicious cheap shot and ad hominem. why did you say that? do you only respect people with piece of paper signed by a university dean?
He did the same thing by making sure to reference Greenwald's "boyfriend". He wanted to make sure to emphasize to you, the reader, that Glenn Greenwald is gay and is therefore bad.
I thought both your "arguments" were petty and slightly offensive. To say basically: 'Just Google my rebuttal' is not worthy of a reply. You could have just skipped my sincere request for reasoning opposite to my own.
Without volunteering too much entropy: I myself have a high-school diploma and my sister is gay.
You are perfectly fine to read "partner" there, though that may not convey the fact that they were not married (which would arguably have made it slightly better).
you're responding to the wrong poster. but seriously, you need to learn to educate yourself when you want to engage with an issue with some depth. others have pointed out to you the various ways in which you are ignorant. it's not anyone else's job to inform you.
if you want to just admit that you're not well informed on the issue and move on, that's fine. but you're coming in here with a strongly held and deeply controversial opinion, which you have expressed with language that is filled to the brim with weasel words, assumptions, and ad hominem attacks. expect to be challenged when you express yourself like that.
I do not think my opinion on this matter is deeply controversial, it is just that opponents of a Snowden pardon wisely keep their mouths shut.
I also think that my request for views opposing my current view shows my flexibility on this matter. If someone can show convincing arguments against my view, I am perfectly willing to adapt and concede.
You did not. You told me to go research the "facts", while you took your "facts" the same as I did mine: By researching sources on the internet. It is weak to say that someone with an opposing view must have this view because he/she is ill-informed.
The so-called 'ad hominem attacks' are likely the result of my poor mastery of the english language, combined with an assumption of bad faith on your part.
The "internal channels" have been broken for years, and do not work. Snowden was aware of this, and AFAIR has commented on that on several occasions.
> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
What? Incompetent? They managed to do their job, in the face of GCHQ and the NSA. Just because they made some mistakes, that doesn't make them "incompetent". If they were, we wouldn't have heard anything at all!
> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
So, being competent is a strike against Snowden, but being incompetent is a strike against Greenwald (who presumably doesn't have any training from GCHQ)?
> - The vast majority of these documents do not constitute whistleblowing, but are standard operating procedure for the NSA. The US expects the NSA to do this.
Everyone who was paying attention knew a lot about the clearly illegal stuff that NSA have been doing, from previous leaks - that doesn't mean the leaks didn't have value.
> I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.
The first part was in my eyes a prerequisite for having a sizable useful set of documents to leak. The second part is really two parts: he fled - he didn't submit himself to capture, torture and/or assassination in the US. He did this by fleeing to Hong Kong.
Then he went to Russia, the only port within reach that offered sanctuary. I'm ashamed that Norway didn't - for example. But of course we're NATO allies, and with the not too distant history of Mossad carrying out a botched assassination (successful kill, wrong person) on Norwegian soil, and Norway being complicit in extralegal detention and torture by allowing CIA's "white planes" to transit through - it would probably have been hopelessly naive for Snowden to try to flee here, even if offered "safe passage".
> So, being competent is a strike against Snowden, but being incompetent is a strike against Greenwald (who presumably doesn't have any training from GCHQ)?
I think you laid bare my mental split on this issue and for that I thank you. I will concede the point on Snowden being competent.
I said it because it felt (and still slightly feels) wrong to me: Like a kung-fu student hitting his master with a punch he was taught by that same master. Snowden used the trade craft he picked up at the NSA and CIA against these same organizations.
But he would have been foolish to ignore his own skills and I can't expect him to forget these and put his life in danger (more than he already has).
> Snowden used journalists (really just greenwald) to vet the documents.
It's a form of vetting, yes, but useful? Hard to say. It's also trusting a lot of information that could get people killed in someone's hands. Who's to say someone didn't pay Greenwald $10 million for a copy of all of it? You'd never be able to prove this happened unless they were really stupid about it.
> He did attempt to use internal channels.
The only thing I found regarding this was that he emailed a few "district heads" which, last time I did work in the area, don't really do anything. There is an actual, official channel to go through to reporting stuff like this (there are actually multiple; one for the NSA and one for the DoD in general). There are also more appropriate people he could have emailed.
Now I'm not saying internal channels would have worked but I haven't seen anything that showed me Snowden really tried hard to go through those channels in the first place.
> His original intent was not to go to russia, it was a last resort.
China is also not the greatest place to go. Honestly anywhere outside of a SCIF and you could get picked up by interested parties. But since he did go to China and Russia we have no way of knowing if both of those countries have a full copy of his data or not.
"Snowden used journalists (really just greenwald) to vet the documents."
But isn't that the crux of the problem?
Let us assume the best about Snowden: that he did do this for noble reasons, that he was acting on his own initiative, that he did attempt to restrict the documents he took to those dealing with unethical or unconstitutional espionage that a fair and impartial Inspector General or similar authorized party should have reviewed.
What happened if something completely unrelated (but classified) was also in the dump (say, information about Russian nuclear forces or Pakistani cooperation with a terrorist group) that ended up being vetted not by him (in an authorized facility prior to his flight) but by Greenwald or another journalist (out in the wild)?
At that point, regardless of his intentions, he has disclosed classified information to a non-authorized party and has broken the law.
At that point, whistleblowing has nothing to do with it.
Note, I'm not arguing against a pardon for Snowden-as-whistleblower. I simply think that such a vetting argument doesn't hold water.
While I think it's true that he took too many documents and probably released too many documents, I think his intentions were good, and overall was an important contribution to public knowledge of the way our governments work. It was an eye opener for a lot of tech companies, to be sure.
He was essentially forced to flee to Russia-- no other country could protect him. I don't think it's where he wanted to end up.
I don't think he should be pardoned. He committed crimes, and possibly could have found a better way to get this information out there. I do think he should be offered a generous plea-bargain in return for coming home and debriefing the NSA/CIA and congress about what exactly he took, how he took it and the status of all of those secrets.
My goodness, this reads like Stewart Baker is sock-puppeting. If you'd like to convince someone, perhaps sticking to the truth when stating "facts" would be a start. For instance,
> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
is simply false.
> - Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
Nice innuendo. Please state your concerns in a concrete fashion. If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where. If it is that he was stranded in a regime unfriendly to the U.S. regime, what do you expect him to choose? England? Canada? It is also good to remember that U.S. actions are responsible for him being in Russia.
> - Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.
> - Leaking standard-operating-procedure documents damaged the NSA, and thus the security / defense of the US.
1) Assuming "damage" is defined as spending money and time to evaluate the breach and implement corrective measures, sure. I've yet to see anyone point to anything beyond "I can't tell you, but be very afraid". Remember how the release was going to lead to imminent terrorists attacks in Missouri?
> - Snowden's documents ended up in the hands of Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies.
Proof, please.
> - Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
"Secret agent skills?" Isn't that normally spelled with a "z" on the end?
> - Snowden's innocent leaks, such as the entire Intellipedia, damaged the intelligence community, causing them to "clam up", and place more mistrust on "outsiders", such as high-school diploma Snowden.
"High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots. I except that sort of low-rent smearing from Slashdot and gov-contractor flacks, not Hacker News. And which is it - is Snowden a mad-1337 super agent super hacker, or and uneducated outsider? Character assassination works much better when you're a bit more consistent.
Anyway, shorn of the non-sequitur schoolyard taunting, what is the complaint? Intelligence operatives, shown to have expanded surveillance far beyond the imaginations of the voters in the democracy that supposedly as a voice in what they do, had their feelings hurt when they were exposed?
This is the same argument made by police apologists: if you keep taking pictures of us illegally killing people, we'll stop doing our jobs.
> - Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.
> But I do not believe in a pardon for someone who misuses his admin privileges to download all the documents he could get his hands on, then flees to Russia.
Please describe the conditions under which whistleblowing is acceptable to you. If Snowden had received the documents from someone else (thus hadn't "misuse[d] hist admin privileges"), would that make it OK for him, but not for the hypothetical other person? Of it he hadn't been stranded by the U.S. in Russia (he didn't choose to stay)?
Based on your litany above, it sounds like intelligence whistleblowing is only acceptable to you when the documents involved are officially released, the release doesn't damage any existing power structures, no intelligence operatives have their fee-fees hurt, and the leaker is better educated and collaborates with journalists you personally like more.
You ask for parent to provide proof in some places but don't provide it yourself which makes me think you're more interested in arguing versus being productive (which, to be fair, some of parent's points sound like they're coming from a similar place). But just in case I have a few questions
>> - Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
> is simply false.
As far as I was ever able to find Snowden emailed "district heads". That was the only internal channel he went through that I could find. Considering the NSA and the DoD in general each have channels to go through along with far, far more appropriate people to email / call about it (district heads is something you basically never hear about in the intel space; they're not useful at getting anything done) I would also say he did not go through internal channels.
If you have proof outside of this I'd love to read it.
> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where.
Why does it not? He had a very, very large corpus of classified intelligence that any enemy of the United States would love to get their hands on. Granted he had little choice once he got to China but I don't understand the claim that it doesn't matter where he went considering the payload he was carrying.
> You elide the difference between taking documents and releasing them. As others have said, vetting was done by journalists.
I'm not sure I would consider that vetting. Regardless a large corpus of classified and likely damaging data was taken, carried and given to multiple parties. A vetting prior to documents being indiscriminately taken would have been far more responsible though the considerable time that would have taken would have made leaking impossible in the first place.
I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.
This has been spun exceptionally hard in multiple versions of their story, and as best I can tell, "proper channels" as used by NSA flacks at this point means "people who could shut him up." This is based on the FIOA'd discussions found in the above-linked documents. Snowden's account hasn't changed and has matched details the NSA story only included in later versions (apparently because there were releases they didn't expect with contrary facts after their first version). Everyone, of course, will form their own opinions about this.
But let's say that Snowden never attempted to tell anyone inside, at all. Do you think the general population of the U.S. would have learned what is being done in their name? Do you think a single program would have changed, even the cosmetic renaming and budget-shuffling that allows spokesmuppets tell highly deceptive technical-truths in congressional hearings?
>> If it is that he fled, then it doesn't matter to where.
>Why does it not?
You misread. I am not arguing that it doesn't matter; I'm parsing the GP's argument.
> I'm not sure I would consider that vetting.
Many people have differences of opinion. Unfortunately, I have yet to hear of a vetting scheme that would both satisfy critics and have informed the general public to the same degree.
My personal belief is that the damage done by an out-of-control intelligence regime is far greater than burning necessarily transient sources and methods. Even if it weren't, I'd grade the disclosure on a curve, because the spin coming out of any intelligence agency about this sort of thing is inherently untrustworthy, and intelligence has to be kept on a short leash. Add to that the incredible scale of the NSA/Five Eyes networks and the fact that the NSA is demonstrably harming (at least) civilian security by emphasizing offense over defense, and we have something incredibly frightening with intrusive capabilities the Stasi could only have dreamed of. You can have that, or you can have democracy, but I don't believe you can have both. And that's only looking at "official" uses; we know NSA employees also have used the data for, ah, call it personal reasons. Both anti-democratic uses are inevitable.
> I wouldn't be so quick so side with every single thing Snowden did to avoid being cast as a zealot.
You're clearly not. Oh, you're trying to politely advise me? I don't side with Snowden (or Greenwald, or Wheeler, or...) on everything (or even "a lot"), but I probably am a zealot by your definition, because I believe the "moderate" approach here is a vastly (as in arguing over orders of magnitude) scaled-back, retooled NSA/FBI/CIA.
> "High-school diploma"? WTF? Have the courage to say what you mean or cut the cheap shots.
As someone with only a high-school diploma myself, I do not like others with only a high-school diploma, who blow the chances they've been given.
Should Snowden only have been glad someone took a chance on him and shut up? No. He did a brave thing.
Will it be harder in the future for someone with only a high-school diploma to get admin access at the NSA, as a result of Snowden's actions? Yes. NSA will start focussing on Ivy League students and family members of NSA employees.
> So you don't like Greenwald. That's lovely. Now please describe how the romantic connection indicates incompetence, and what exactly the bad result that said incompetence lead to.
I think Greenwald is an ok journalist. I think it is grave incompetence to use your romantic interest as a document mule. Journalists may be able to handle sensitive documents. The partners of those journalists... not so much. They are basically civilians.
The bad result is that his partner was caught by customs and detained. A bad result may have been that other agencies got to his partner before the UK did. Everyone around Greenwald became a target the moment he was in possession of the cache. That he actually gave the documents to his partner, shows that he was a valid target at that.
Do you honestly think Snowden thought it was a good idea that Greenwald let his partner handle these documents?
Most of you points are simply blatantly false tho.
>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
That's why he gave them to a small group of well respected journalists, so they could use their professional discretion to vet them.
>- Snowden indiscriminately hovered up so many documents, it was impossible to vet all of them.
I highly doubt that, but even if it that were true those documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists, only the ones showing the NSA doing illegal things are.
>- Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
Yes he did.
>- Snowden leaked / whistleblowed these documents in an operation using his secret agent skills.
Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent. He just copied files, fled to China and shared them with a small group of people, none of which required "secret agent skills"
>- Snowden fled to Russia, a currently not-so-cold competitor of the US.
So? You can't blame Snowden for that, blame the Justice department. If Snowden could have been even remotely safe anywhere but Russia, he wouldn't be there now. You can't chase after somebody then blame them for hiding somewhere safe.
>- Snowden gave the document cache to incompetent journalists. Greenwald send his boyfriend to smuggle documents through British customs.
No he didn't, he gave them to perfectly competent journalists. Greenwald is very competent and well respected as a journalists. Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain the important thing is that he did without them getting leaked earlier than he wanted.
>If Snowden had given only the slides on the NSA spying on American citizens, and cooperating with US companies, that would have been whistleblowing.
He tried that and nobody took him seriously.
>As it stands, to me, it feels like a Russian operation to inflict PR/diplomacy damage on the US.
Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.
> That's why he gave them to a small group of well respected journalists
You can not vet encrypted documents. These documents were unencrypted and handled by journalists who could never stand the full attention of the world's intelligence agencies.
Laura Poitras was very qualified. Greenwald... not so much. He had to receive a crash-course on computer safety. He left unidentified USB-sticks in the laptop with the documents. He gave the documents to his non-journalist partner in an attempt to smuggle them through customs. Greenwald is a professional. He just did not get the gravity or technicalities of most of the documents he saw.
> those [standard-operating-procedure] documents aren't the ones being leaked by the journalists
They are not being leaked to the general public (with a few exceptions). But one has to assume they made it to the competitors of the US. And it points to indiscriminate leaking -- maybe Snowden did not even fully realize what he all had, as he took everything he could get his hands on: mailing lists, internal collaborative wiki's, technical details on ongoing missions.
> Snowden did not attempt to go through internal channels.
I do not think Snowden went through the official internal channels. He may have tried to ring the alarm bell with some people internally. If you have anything to challenge this, I'd be interested.
> Lol wut. He was just a contractor, not a secret agent.
He was a former CIA operative. He took his job at BAH with the full intention of leaking everything he could get his hands on. His flight, undercover operation, and handling of the documents, was all very deliberate and possible due to his trade craft.
> [Snowden fled to Russia] So? You can't blame Snowden for that
Why not? Proponents almost make it sound he was chased to Russia, or that Wikileaks kidnapped him and released him there. He ended up in Russia. I think both destinations were chosen very deliberately, to avoid rendition, prosecution (or worse: assassination or torture).
> Doesn't matter how he got the documents in Britain
I think it does. From journalists we can expect them to maybe handle very sensitive documents. The partners of these journalists? Not so much... That is as close to civilian as you can get.
> He tried that and nobody took him seriously.
So he downloaded everything else, filled 4 laptops, and now we do take him seriously? Maybe I have missed something here? Did Snowden try to leak these important documents before he went to Poitras and Greenwald?
> Considering he only ever entered Russia after he had distributed the documents and none of them ever entered Russia this opinion is based on nothing other than emotion and isn't substantiated by any facts.
Sure, Russia and China won't come out and say that:
- we have the documents
- Snowden was one of our own
But to think these documents are not in the possession of every competent intelligence agency in the world may be a bit naive. I'd reckon these intelligence agencies knew of these documents the moment news agencies around the world starting working on them.
At least some of us living outside the US are still US citizens, whom he presumably ought to care about (at least a little).
My actual experience, though, is that emigrants are viewed with some disdain by a good portion of US citizens. Then again, viewpoints like that are one part of why I'm an emigrant...
Nope, it definitely existed. I googled "snowden hero not traitor amnesty international" and the first link is a press release from the Amnesty International itself (the press release is also down) that links to that page: http://imgur.com/3Ttfjc5
We need your address to process your credit card payment. This lets our payment processor (Stripe) verify your identity and process your payment. We don't ask for information beyond what's required by Stripe. The people at the pardon campaign will be able to see your name, email address and physical address, but we will never see your financial data. Here is Stripe's privacy policy; here is our privacy policy."
That's a straight up lie. Stripe does not require physical address, it's entirely optional. Know what you're signing yourself up for.
Holy hell! Looking at the supporters page (https://www.pardonsnowden.org/supporters) I do have to admit that they've acquired support from some people that I never thought to see there, like Steve Wozniak, Noam Chomsky, and George Soros.
The only one I find surprising among those three is Soros. He's a pretty Janus-faced individual though in general, so... maybe shouldn't even find that surprising anymore.
hughperkins was using a "security mindset", and was implying that the site, due to lack of authentication, was being tricked into showing "George Soros" as a supporter because it just let anybody type in "George Soros".
This is not the case. The page of supporters is a page they designed, with no user input. The site is making the explicit claim that George Soros, that George Soros, is a supporter.
If you believe the site is lying, no amount of authentication on the site's side is going to fix that!
Well, from a political point of view, Snowden is just a guy, and he did what he could do already. Pardoned or shot dead, makes little difference now (well, chilling effect is certainly even worse if the latter happened tomorrow, but its bad enough as it is).
The important thing would be wistleblower protection laws changes that would protect a future Snowden from this situation.
Edward Snowden is hugely valuable politically because he stood up to the intelligence agencies and survived (so far). Most importantly, we have a moral obligation to get him pardoned. Snowden sacrificed a great deal already. He doesn't need to be martyred, he should be allowed to return home and continue his life.
>should be allowed to return home and continue his life.
That is only true if you are operating under the assumption that liberty, human welfare, and strength of America as a nation is a good thing for the future.
To me, it's not at all obvious that our ruling class really gives a shit about those.
You might still divide your feelings about the American ruling class, and Edward Snowden, presently facing criminal prosecution and long time, possibly (though doubtfully) death.
So, no, yours isn't the only reason to support pardoning Snowden.
It's also, distantly, possible that the act of allowing for the potential good of his actions might lead more to question an unwavering support of present American principles, values, and policies.
oh no doubt, what was done to him is atrocious and repugnant. I was only trying out an argument that politically his fate is no longer important, and it is of greater value to focus on what will protect the next Snowden better.
It's still clearly a moral imperative to help Snowden.
What happens to Snowden sets a precedent. That has huge implications politically. An America where Snowden gets assassinated will be a different America politically than one where Snowden gets the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
> oh no doubt, what was done to him is atrocious and repugnant.
What has been done to Snowden that is atrocious and repugnant? He is the one who stole information; he is the one who absconded to adversary states. Nothing has been done to him.
> It's still clearly a moral imperative to help Snowden.
The moral imperative is to see that he gets a fair trial, and then upon conviction to ensure that he is humanely executed.
Wow. Fine, I'll bite: He is prosecuted for the greatest act of whistleblowing since the pentagon papers. This has enabled improvements in both privacy regulations and accelerated the deployment of strong cryptography across the Internet.
As the Berlin University puts it, he can thus be credited with "extraordinary achievements in defense of transparency, justice and freedom".
Yet despite this, his country of origin has no laws needed to protect him and any future cases of the kind. And what the hell are advesary states? Last I heard the cold war was over...
There is of course no possibility that he'd get a trial, so your morbid fantasy is just that... Again, I'm simply astonished that there are people in the US who could see this act as anything other than utter heroism.
I'd imagine the US gov will hardly want to encourage whistleblowing of that sort nor a patriotic aire about the act. It is a national security risk regardless of how any individual act pans out.
Stripping whistleblowers from their constitutional rights and condemning them to a lifetime in prison is arguably a worse national security risk.
A society needs layers of checks and balances, and whistleblowing is one such layer. When whistleblowing is penalized so harshly you create an environment of unchecked power. Citizens can't do anything because even when they know they're being lied to, they need to know the specifics of what's going on in order to protest effectively. Because as we've now learned even the elected representatives get sidelined, so they're pretty much useless.
Realistically speaking, how much damage can one whistleblower really do when they have no malicious intent? Not much. What are the negative consequences of unchecked power? Effectively unlimited.
One does not know what a whistleblowers intent is ahead of time. Further, we are talking about secret service stuff here rather than all whistleblowing.
No whistleblowers in this area does not mean no oversight or no checks and balances. It's just that as an audit mechanism, it presents a lot of risk since it leaves what can ultimately effect national security to the discretion of the whistleblower.
It means an extremely opaque system of checks precisely in an area of the state that is particularly succeptable to abuse. That is a real risk to national security here.
Contrary, I can see exactly zero potential for jeopardising national security by any mooderately sane law on whistleblower protection in this area.
All whistleblowing is taking things into one's own hands at the risk of persecution, and here its only more so, given the seriousness of the charges one will face if one's defense on the basis of whistleblower protection ie arguing one acted in the public interest and revealed gross abuse of power fails.
Whatever is at the discretion for the potential leaker to decide, is at that discretion regardless of legal defense opportunities a leaker may have after the fact.
It is simply ludicrous that revealing rampant abuse of power by precisely those tasked with protection of the constitutional order, and precisely at the point where such control is most needed can be a punishable offense in any democracy.
But naturally any such leak needs to be able to stand up in court and satisfy some reasonable criteria of public interest and of having revealed serious violations - nobody is suggesting blatant espionage be legalized ffs.
I think that's agreeable but you're just asking for legislation that results in a balanced outcome.
In this case there was clearly a public good. There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
Which effects national security more in the long run strikes me as a difficult thing to speculate about. However in the short term I'd imagine every organisation of interest to the US in the world promptly switched keys, hardware, routine, whatever after the story broke...
Yeah, though not so much that some kind of legislation should be found that creates a balanced outcome, but that just even broad strokes of some vanilla whistleblower protection legislations are themselves reasonable and balanced, and hence should apply in the security setting too.
> There was also a massive national security compromise in the US ability to conduct surveillance.
but, but that's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it; the curtailment of mass surveillance? I mean, we're talking about a public agency; it needs to act within a clear public mandate when striving to reach its goals. It is not an end in itself, so when it oversteps its mandate, its not in fact providing any public good, but diminishing it, and so hindering it in further action on this course is in the public interest.
So sure, having the public aware that it engages in mass surveilence and bulk collection on both its citizens and non-targeted citizens of the world more generally -- is inconvenient to the agency, but is a win for the public. And consequently so are any actions third parties then take to make its life more difficult -- because really it is the rouge party here!
Something seems upside down to me in this logic where obscuring the price you pay for a public service can be permissable simply because people expect some reasonable level of that service. And hence the scandal of realizing the true cost of that service, and the public finding it too expensive can be seen as a story that has two sides, merely because any limits that public may decide to put on the price naturally cause the quality of the service to degrade. But,but if the public isn't the one that decides on the quid pro quo here, who the hell is being served here anyhow??
Surely if its the public that's served by a public agency, then a person who uncovers that the agency is costing us way way more than is known and than it claims - even under oath to the congress for christ's sake - is a desirable correction, for no decision could even be made under false information.
Oh I'm sure they wouldn't. But there is no risk to national security, as whistleblowing protections only apply to uncovering illegal activities, abuse and similar misconduct.
But who'd want one's security apparatus to be incentivised to follow the rules, right?
> Pardoned or shot dead, makes little difference now
Law is built on precedent. This is how a two-hundred year old law about papers in one's house was used to try and pry open an iPhone. It is also why people get rightly indignant about seemingly small things.
In the specific context of the data Snowden exfiltrated, you are correct - a pardon changes little. But for the next Snowden? Or the political climate surrounding his "treason" versus "whistleblowing"? Totally different.
yeah, its what it does for the next Snowden that's most important here-- but that's why I suggested actual legal reform is necessary.
How can a pardon set a precedent? Its an act of an executive, not a court? It would be up to whoever is the president when the next Snowden occurs to grant clemence or no at their total executive discretion, no? So how's that a precedent? And how comforting it would be to the next Snowden that his life is at the whim of the current president to grant or take should he go through with a leak.
Or am I misunderstanding how the US legal system works?
I have to grant you're completely right about the political climate though. No legislative change will happen w/o a wide perception that the party at fault is the NSA here, and Snowden's action heroic and justified and hence worthy of legal protection. And a pardon would help in establishing that.
I'm really amazed how negatively he's percieved in the US apparently.
I believe your interpretation on the pardon "precedent" is correct - legally no precedent is really set. A presidential pardon is basically an act of mercy, not a legal opinion.
However, as a social precedent, it may give the next Snowden a more favorable outlook with the public, which in turn would make sympathy from lawmakers less risky.
Or maybe nothing at all. But you are right, legally probably wouldn't do much
One could take the position (not mine) that the NSA's "business as usual" was appropriate, that Snowden was mistaken in his adjudging it something that needed leaking, but that he was operating in good faith, honestly - mistakenly - believed it needed disclosure, and honestly believed internal channels would be ineffective at best. If we're going to have a massive secret surveillance apparatus, of course we need to encourage people in-the-know to blow the whistle if they suspect it is being misused.
Pardoning is already a good step. It's acknowledging that leaders don't know whether he did something right or wrong, and that it's up for the citizen to decide. It may change the mind of many citizen who currently view him as a traitor. Articles will have to defend their position (such as "E.S, that we view as a traitor") rather than be credited with government force (currently written as "E.S., a traitor that is the world's most wanted criminal").
But I was wondering: Isn't Obama at risk if he pardons him? Wouldn't he be interrupted if he started a speech about Snowden? That's been the #1 interest of his most powerful agencies during his mandate, of course they've thought about the risk that Obama pardons him. He could try to secure the pardon beforehand, by sending the pardon papers to Snowden, but in which kind of letterbox would he post it given NSA's and FBI's reach on communications? He could try to communicate with journalists, but do we still have journalists left after Hillary's body count? etc.
It would make sense, though, in a twisted way - it would send the message "Nothing you did has had any consequence whatsoever, and to show you how little we care, we are not even sending you to jail for it".
I think that they'd prefer to send the message of "Nothing you did has any consequence whatsoever, but you're still an exile for life." It could deter future whistleblowers from following his example.
As ineffective as the outrage has been, the NSA and US government definitely would have preferred that the issue never came up to begin with.
Lying to Congress isn't a crime? Hmm. I've clearly been misled.
Please consider finding something else to do with your time and/or career. You're helping bad people do bad things, the full scope of which won't become apparent until it's far too late.
Whatever your opinion on the actual Snowden case - I think pardoning someone is seen to active condone whistle-blowing within the miltary / intelligence community, which I can't see the Government wanting to do.
They should be condoning it. For that, a lot of things would have to change first though, like, for example, the community has to come to the realization that the (supposed) ends do not justify the means and that it's therefore the right thing to do to whistle-blow about them. They also need to realize that the internal mechanisms to whistle-blow are "not effective", to say the least.
The internal mechanisms actually work, if you use them. Snowden has admitted in subsequent interviews to not even trying to report through any channel. Something most people that are not government don't realize about whistleblowing is that your options are not just your boss. We can report to any supervisor (given the proper clearance), a branch specifically designed for whistleblowing (including a 24 hour 1-800 number), or to any member of Congress. Do you really think all 600+ members of Congress would have turned him away? Being the Senator or Representative that brought that info forward would have guaranteed re-election... But instead, he handed thousands of pages of classified info over to a news organization and trusted them to sort through it (when he had probably never read through it in full). Now, he is begging for a pardon because it has been hinted that his stay in Russia will be up next year (when his status expires) since he decided to speak out against Putin.
>The internal mechanisms actually work, if you use them.
Seems there are numerous examples of people going through proper channels and then getting retaliation[1]. Also, Snowden was a contractor, so was not covered under the whistleblower protection act as government employees are, so could not talk to members of Congress.
Thomas Drake complained internally to the designated authorities: to his bosses, the NSA Inspector General, the Defense Department Inspector General, and both the House and Senate Congressional intelligence committees, was labeled a troublemaker and then charged with (of all things): willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.
> Do you really think all 600+ members of Congress would have turned him away? Being the Senator or Representative that brought that info forward would have guaranteed re-election...
What about all the members of Congress that already knew about it? Why doesn't the same logic apply to them? that's 20+ members from both sides of aisle. At the end of the day, the proper channels have no obligation to do anything, it can go up the chain and decided things are better left unchanged, public non-the-wiser.
You think every IT person in the government should have the ability to disclose any Top Secret programs based only on their own personal opinions about their legality?
They (the three-letter agencies) could always try not breaking the law. See if that cuts down on the number of employees looking to sell them down the river.
I cannot sign this. I'm happy there is a debate over our privacy, and the information has come to light, but I still believe this man to be a traitor and he should be punished. A pardon is out of the question.
When I read this, it always makes me wonder what is going through your mind: Being a traitor does not mean someone is wrong or deserving of punishment. The implication is that a person's country is always right, and also that if he had been a Russian spy, he would have been a patriot. No. Right and wrong are not governed by national borders and laws.
> When I read this, it always makes me wonder what is going through your mind
I don't think Snowden was right. He was, in fact, wrong as a matter of the law and the Constitution. His concerns were misplaced. Okay, that's fine. But then, rather than doing the honourable thing and resigning — and keeping his oath — he betrayed his oath, he betrayed the trust placed in him, stole information he had no right to access in the first place and fled, first to Communist China and then to Neostalinist Russia (rather neatly giving the lie to his claims to care about human rights: the one government harvests organs from religious dissidents and the other detonated bombs in apartment buildings in order to solidify political power).
I am thoroughly convinced that a) not all Snowden has alleged is true; b) that which is alleged and true is legal and constitutional; and c) that which is both alleged and true is not something so immoral that despite being legal and constitutional it should be avoided anyway. Moreover, I am convinced that his behaviour meets the standard for treason.
What would you say is the point of having the power to pardon if doing something illegal is never justifiable, or if our justice system is infallible?
If our laws are ever unjust, or our justice system ever fallible, the argument "it was illegal" cannot be used to justify whether something was moral. US law is a terrible basis for morality and that's a super weak argument.
Treason is the systemic and illegal invasion of the rights hundreds of millions of Americans, corrupt government officials quashing all means of accountability, lying under oath to congress, intentionally misleading congress and the American people, and refusing to enforce any sort of due process of law when it's been discovered that people were doing highly illegal things.
Our justice system is not infallible, the OP never claimed that. And so, that's why we have pardons. It's pretty straightforward, if you don't misrepresent his argument.
> Treason is the systemic and illegal invasion of the rights hundreds of millions of Americans, corrupt government officials quashing all means of accountability, lying under oath to congress, intentionally misleading congress and the American people, and refusing to enforce any sort of due process of law when it's been discovered that people were doing highly illegal things.
I'm sorry, but really really wanting those things to be treasonous does not make them treason.
Your gut is not the US Code. The US Code has no provisions that cause things to become treason by chaining enough increasingly emphasizing adjectives together.
If you argued this in court, you would lose.
For my part: I don't like that Snowden took incredibly serious (forget illegal) actions that served to cast aspersions on both the one and only meaningful US cybersecurity institution and the legitimacy of the United States government as a whole, and is now being harbored by Putin. Are people not seeing what has happened since? Russia is overtly inserting themselves into our domestic politics, and for the political feasibility of doing so, they should be (and by harboring a fugitive, absolutely are) thanking one Edward Joseph Snowden.
They're leveraging Assange as another mouthpiece, although there they get to hide behind being "Random Joe Public" donating to wikileaks. (And if you provide cover noise by doing so yourself: Stop. You're being played.)
What Snowden's actions predictably precipitated is incredibly ominous. I don't care how much pseudo-"Orwellian" surveillance was going on (that - do people not get this? - was not being abused. There were no mass arrests of people who arranged drug buys on facebook, or via gmail or whatever. Nobody knew it was happening prior to Snowden's actions - which is actually not true at all, anyone paying attention (raises hand) knew since the Room 641a disclosures in, what, 2006? Snowden was merely a far-more willing talking head - but I digress. The point is: if a whistleblower had to tell you they were reading every last email, clearly they weren't exactly doing a lot with that capability!). That does not in any way compare to giving an actual dictator of an an actual authoritarian party and government an unprecedented and dangerous level of leverage and influence and dirt on our democracy. Hell no, go directly to jail, do not collect $200, there doesn't need to be any detente with Moscow until Snowden is extradited.
A pardon? Give me a break. As far as I'm concerned, this petition is an instrument of the Kremlin, meant to further extend their ill intent into our country. No.
"He was, in fact, wrong as a matter of the law and the Constitution."
Was he? The Constitution provides us right to basic privacy against searches without warrants and due process for executive action. NSA was violating one with surveillance tech and other with parallel construction. Congress is supposed to hold executive branch accountable but was throwing away GAO's reports on abuses. Executive Branch was supposed to tell Americans truth about how they were approaching the surveillance issue and its affectiveness. They lied about both. They also had FBI raid the houses of those who used internal channels to complain about actual corruption like Trailblazer & ignoring Constitution. Finally, the judicial system that's supposed to hold other two in account was (a) provided with disinformation and (b) told in Jewel case that it had no business making rulings on the topic. So, Congress and Executive were corrupt in this case with Judicial powerless.
Only thing left in Constitution is leaks (First Amendment) with a follow-up of jury nullification, Presidential pardon, or selective application of 2nd Amendment. Leaks while in hiding hoping for first two is nicer than number three. I agree with critics that he shouldn't have leaked foreign ops and maybe should get less leniency for that. However, the whole first paragraph of my reply is guilt across the board esp in Congress and Executive branch. He shouldn't be tried unless they are for the crimes he revealed. He should also get leniency for bringing the domestic abuses to our attention. Binney et al, who played it responsibly, should get full immunity plus their paychecks for their service.
"Moreover, I am convinced that his behaviour meets the standard for treason."
Treason is killing 6,000+ Americans, maiming more, and costing us trillions in liabilities by use of disinformation to start a war for political purposes. That's straight-up murdering us. Snowden did a mix of whistleblowing on domestic stuff Alexander/Clapper lied about under oath, whistleblowing on key foreign stuff that could've damaged us due to stupidity of politicians, and a traitor on foreign, operational stuff that's the whole point of NSA's existence (as in: legitimate). So, he's a mixed bag with worst result being they get less automated spying on some groups. (shrugs)
Note: I also don't fully trust him as his statements changed a few times, he's a trained spy, and he conned his coworkers for their passwords. He's sneaky when he thinks it's justified for his mission. My calculations above are strictly based on statements/actions of corrupt government vs specific things he leaked. He looks like a saint compared to them, esp in terms of innocent blood on hands.
Laws change. The constitution gets amended. There's such a thing as a "positive" defense - guilty, but with a reasonable cause. A jury can even technically nullify a law if they feel it's the right thing to do.
Unveiling a trove of illegal projects being undertaken by our government against our wishes would fall into this category in my mind.
I wish it were so. But I'm thinking it may be impossible to forgive. Prosecutors may resort the the Supreme Court too. If someone technically guilty of treason is found anything but guilty by a lower court, I don't see the Supreme Court having any alternative but to overturn it. But what do I know.
How about this? We can try Snowden if we similarly convict all government heads guilty of perjury or damage to the United States. Bush and Obama Administrations will have a lot of people in line. So will Congress. So many people with so many trials that Snowden might get lucky and hit statute of limitations. Congress and Presidential candidates won't because they take bribes or perform fraud on a regular basis. ;)
Funnier thing about many of the Snowden opponents on TV is they can't stand that he leaked our capabilities to media for responsible disclosure but are fine with U.S. military leaking similar things to media on daily basis just to brag about what they can do. If revelation denies ability to use tool, then the U.S. military chiefs deserve longer sentences for giving enemies even more details. Especially drone feeds that send stuff unencrypted which terrorists already intercept with cheap equipment. Talk about aiding and abetting the enemy during live operations. ;)
If you believe he revealed this information for the purpose of debate, so the people can be made aware and have a choice/opinion in the matter, then you have to admit that he has acted on behalf of the country. It is unquestionable that he betrayed the government, but the distinction between government and country is an important one.
Appreciate you putting the unpopular opinion.
How id he a traitor. What did he gain from this? Stop. right there what ever you think he gained is nothing compared to what he lost. I don't think he should be publicly pardoned because it would send the wrong message to copy cat idiots but I would not call him a trator
Just last night on the radio they were talking about Manning ending a hunger strike and getting some medical attention and having the surgery suggested by her psych doctor.
I'm for a pardon for Snowden, but not Manning. Snowden released info on a deeply classified and unethical program, targeted to dismantle the programs in question. Manning carte blanche released TONS of data about TONS of things, trusting only Wikileaks to filter out sensitive data.
Basically, yes. Also, the evidence shows that he didn't one day "see something wrong and decided to report it" as the narrative claims. He quit a job on one contract to take another job (which he lied about his experience to get) and then stole information from there before releasing it all roughly 6 months after he was hired. Some reports I have seen estimate that roughly 90% of the information he released was from while he was working at Dell (the previous job) on a DoD contract (I was still DoD at the time so it was of "interest" to us what he released). Additionally, there are 0 records of him trying to report it through any channel and he has said in some interviews that he chose to go public "rather than" report it because he thought nothing would be done. By the way, contrary to the narrative, he didn't have one or two channels that ignored him (had he used them), he could have actually gone to any Senator or Representative with the information and still been protected (probably moreso since Congress would have been behind him).
Plus, as someone who held a clearance in the DoD (former interrogator), I will say it can be hard (especially for someone like those journalists who never held a clearance) to tell what can directly hurt someone else. Handing off NSA program documents could have potentially put the lives of CIA and NSA agents and sources around the world...but we would never know. Even the families of those people wouldn't know. All they would know is that their family member didn't come home.
Yeah, the narrative that he tried to follow the rules to get the "egregious" programs stopped is almost entirely false. He may have made one off-the-record attempt with a superior. He also once emailed someone that a test he took had a wrong answer in regards to Executive Orders being able to override laws, and that email got forwarded around until it hit an NSA lawyer and they stated that he was correct. EOs and laws carry the same weight, but EOs cannot override laws. And that was what he's referring to in a fair amount of his interviews.
Really? I was under the impression that he followed through some fairly extensive inquiries. I'll have to do some more research, but if what you say is true, then I might have to reevaluate my position again. If he didn't even attempt the proper channels, then my pardon 'offer' is off the table again.
I actually agree with you there. If you browse some of my older comment history, I made that exact point that he trusted a foreign journalist team to filter sensitive NOFORN and SAP information. However, I believe the net good that has come out of that disclosure, and the "I'm doing this to expose deep government malfeasance" as opposed to "The government sucks here's all the data" warrants the difference in treatment.
Edit: That being said, if we ever do get evidence that China or Russia did manage to get that data during his trip there, I'd change my tune immediately. That would be high treason, at least if it was intentional.
" That being said, if we ever do get evidence that China or Russia did manage to get that data during his trip there, I'd change my tune immediately. That would be high treason, at least if it was intentional."
I guess you'll be changing your tune when you find out China and Russia read the papers containing all the TS/SCI and ECI leaks. They definitely have the information. ;)
Basically same thing Snowden did except he leaked to fewer people who were a bit more reliable. The problems were two fold:
1. A pile of unredacted, classified, and legitimate operations in the hand of foreigners which included at least two being targeted by them. They should've never had this information. He could have cherry-picked it to whistleblowing stuff during time he organized all of it but didn't. I'd have done the opposite to protect legit ops and sources.
2. He put all that at risk of foreign agencies, esp in Russia or China, getting it given their hackers are badass while reporters' IT groups are... average. After seeing Citizenfour, I was pretty confident his stuff could've been grabbed multiple times if he didn't have the element of surprise. It was also clear his tradecraft was weak vs what I read about in espionage non-fiction. I bet the journalists more so.
So, definitely parallels to Manning. I expected it from Manning over Snowden given Manning was a stressed-out youth going through an identity crisis in a war zone whereas Snowden was a trained spy claiming moral high ground in general and aiming to protect decent people. I'm not letting him off on dumping the foreign stuff. Especially while many of the targets do the same shit to us with local, legal protections for their own spies doing it. He needs to own up to that.
I have mixed feelings about Manning. What did she release that made this country "better". Snowdon's leaks were controlled, and focused. The content has had a meaningful impact.
The journalists' leaks were (arguably, I think I'd agree though) controlled and focussed. Snowden gave them the entire lot and handed judgement over to them.
Chelsea Manning needs it more, and in my opinion is just as much deserving of a pardon. I wish Manning was getting more attention and pressure for a pardon.
I disagree that Manning deserves a pardon, because she was significantly more (read completely) careless. Not only about the content of what was released, but the manner in which it was released. Comparing Manning's actions to Snowden's is naive at best.
I don't think carelessness is the difference between 35 years in prison and a pardon.
Yes, she was less careful and less precise and made more mistakes. She was younger than Snowden, more scared than Snowden, not thinking as straight as Snowden, perhaps even not as smart as Snowden (who appears to really be a genius of some kind). Snowden also had the benefit of learning from and being inspired by her mistakes. But her motivation was the same and 'crime' was more or less the same. And she's stuck in prison being denied medical care she needs, while Snowden is living a more or less free (compared to military prison!) life in exile.
Manning needs a pardon or commutation, she did what she did for us, same as Snowden.
Your downvote was not deserved. This is a complicated, new and so far un-absorbed issue. We all struggle a bit with it, in different ways and with different parts of it.
Carelessness matters a great deal! The risks/damage to the security of the country are tied to the care of what and to whom things are revealed. Its the same reason Hillary should be tried, she was ignorant and careless w/ secure information.
for example blindly releasing/disclosing/leaking documents to the public can endanger in field operatives.
Vs a reporter should be smart enough to redact the sensitive bits and report in a general enough way as to not endanger any specific person (in the field).
I know it could. Can you come up with one single instance of that? Can you compare that instance with the Valery Plame leak and the leniency afforded to Scooter Libby? Any evidence Manning had control (and, therefore, responsibility) over the release?
I'm kinda suspicious of this site -- none of the ACLU, HRW , Amnesty International links work at the bottom. And none of those organizations use whoisguard.
I'm in agreement. Despite what I might think about their cause (I support their cause), I can't get a bead on who actually is behind the site. The site is constructed in a very non-transparent way, a very scammy feel to it.
I have found that the ACLU links from their site to the Pardon Snowden site. Interestingly, Human Rights Watch does not link to the site, but seems to have their own petition (maybe connected?) and that's as far as I went.
Even with that bit of confirmation that this site is legit. I am not that promiscuous with my information.
I know that I'm putting my name on a dissenters list, but isn't that kind of the point? I hate how it's become this casual reality that the government is always working behind the scenes to further its own interests, often regardless of the actual benefit to the average citizen. Today's political climate is like the fever that our society is enduring to effect change. Honestly, I'm not sure why Obama would not do this. I mean, I know why everyone thinks he wouldn't but the sense that there is something to lose, as though the favor of all these Washington back scratchers was worth anything, seems really just like an illusion. Obama doesn't seem to me like an insider. He seems to me just like a guy I'd have a beer with who has a solid head on his shoulders. I believe there's a part of him that would just love to do this and believes it is right. I guess we'll see what happens.
Whether or not Snowden get's pardoned depends on one thing and one thing only: Whether Obama wants it as part of his legacy.
Either way it's not going to happen till after the election and most likely not till the end of his term in January. I'd expect it to be more likely for him to be pardoned if Trump is elected as otherwise Clinton, by association, would be dogged with "granting quarter to an enemy of the state".
25% seems very generous for Obama. He's been very pro-intelligence community from inauguration until now (at least that we know of). But I'd agree he's definitely the only potential hope.
> I think Trump is in favour of Snowden being executed, isn't he?
I'm not sure but I can imagine him saying that at some point. Still, I'd put him at non-zero because he doesn't have the same political baggage that Clinton would worry about.
The cynic in me is happy Snowden is in Russia and not in Yemen, Obama would probably just sanction a drone strike and take him out otherwise. Fortunately for Snowden, not all collateral damage is create (with) equal (access to a nuclear arsenal).
After the Snowden thing blew up, Obama made an angry rant about wanting to punish whistleblowers to the utmost extent the law allows. Obama isn't a good guy, and he seems to like all the power he's got. At least, that's what I heard when he went off on Snowden. There wasn't enough nuance in Obama's speech for me to grant him any national security leeway - he was just grumpy and lashing out because he was getting challenged on his policies.
In general, Obama had a bad run because he did a pretty bad job, so his legacy is shot. Clinton is no small part of his failures with the Benghazi incident, Libya in general, Egypt, Ukraine, and the asinine "Russia reset". Clinton's campaign is disintegrating, so I think she'll fade before the election.
Trump is a complete mystery. He could be a totalitarian, using Obama's extra-constitutional maneuvers as a springboard to dominate the people. Or, he could be a populist and flop around whichever way the wind blows - he could pardon Snowden just to placate the mob and get some short-term bump in approval ratings - or just as easily put a hit on the guy to get the same.
When Trump is not adjusting his message for an audience, I get the sense he thinks he can govern like a big city boss does. In the best case scenario, I envision Trump will be unable to govern because capitol hill won't respond to his small ball policies, belligerence, and whining. Congress will just plow forward with their profligate debt spending and toss him a policy bone from time to time.
Looking forward to donating when they accept bitcoin. I have no expectation he'll be pardoned, but the other important thing here is that there's a documented movement for it. History will show that people wanted this and Obama and Hillary/Trump refused it. It will be more difficult for blind patriotic bias to weasel its way into the history books.
History is written by the victor. There was a large number of people who did not want the US to secede from Britain (including John Adams) but the history books (as given to the normal population) show us a proud group of united patriots who struck out against their oppressors...
More recently, the "greatest generation" signed up for WWII in droves, right? Actually over 50% were drafted with another estimated 100,000 Americans injuring themselves or fleeing the country to avoid the draft...
These digital signatures are the equivalent of chain letters, send this to 100 people and your wish will come true.
If we as a people want to make change, we should use the net to organize people to make change in the real world not the digital world. Make time, get in the streets, protest, actually pick up the phone and call your politicians, write to them, write to the government. Overwhelm them so much that they are forced to say yes.
Presidents and politicians wish to be loved, they are like Emperors, they want to appease the people. If they people make plenty of noise, they cave.
As someone who has done strategy for NGOs for years... the petition doesn't make change, of course not. It makes a mailing list with consistency bias in the NGO's favor. Once you've signed a useless petition, you are MUCH more likely to do the next thing they ask of you. Tell a friend, donate money, call a politician, attend a rally, whatever. It is a very important tool, but it is a gateway tool.
Pardoning Snowden would still leave too many unanswered questions. If he's innocent, then a trial would clear the air.
Otherwise, future IT workers will believe mass exporting SharePoint/file servers as leverage is acceptable.
While "rule of least privilege" is a good default access control policy; Gov and corporate IT departments are now over compensating their sharing policies due to the precedence Snowden has set.
"Pardoning Snowden would still leave too many unanswered questions. If he's innocent, then a trial would clear the air."
That's not true given it's Espionage Act. The ridiculous setup of that Act essentially says he can be hit with highest charges, not provide anything classified for his defense, have released entirely legitimate stuff, and still get convicted due to technicality of the law. Plus, our legal system is an adversarial one not designed to bring out truth: prosecutors aim for convictions while attempting to dismiss anything that undermines it.
Best way to get truth, like him or not, is a pardon where he can say anything with immunity. If he's bad and ego-heavy, he'll slip up eventually. He already does on some things while enjoying the interviews too much. ;)
Its the first petition that I find worth signing. I did it through Amnesty Intl as I dont live in the US. Only with an email address I dont know how credible the petition is, I wanted to prove that I'm standing up and supporting him. We either die all together like Maya, or we win.
I didnt understand where the money from donations go, but I could donate also for the right cause.
I'd say the database building is the only important part. The single social action is very unlikely to make an impact, but if they can continue to build a contingent of very interested participants, they can continue to push for their desired outcome.
I think there also needs to be a 'Protect all whistle blowers' petition also. A petition to pardon Snowden is a noble goal (IMHO), but there are deep rooted issues which are not addressed by simply pardoning one individual. I wonder why there is no, 'Pardon Chelsea Manning' petition also? Could it be related to transgender issues?
Why does the site need a Donate button shoved in my face. Auto opt-in to mail list is also selected. Also for a petition do they really need my home address and rest of the details? Shouldn't name and email suffice.
Happy to sign the petition but not at this site. Is there a way I can send a letter myself to the president?
I can understand why an address might be necessary to coorberate that some random signer from the internet matches to an physical US address.
But after I signed, it presented a donate page. I don't want to give them money since they have my addresses. They would have been more likely to get my money if they provided an anonymous donation portal.
Snowden will not get pardoned, because (1) exposing illegal domestic spying was only a part of what he leaked, and (2) he admits that he specifically took the job with the intent to get information about NSA hacking of foreign computers to release to journalists in those foreign countries. See this comment someone posted on Reddit for details with links to sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/52k179/edward_sno...
Edward Snowden went to the press with revelations because he was aware of the experience of previous whistleblowers.
Drake, Binney, Wiebe, Loomis, Roark followed the official channels and reported their concerns within the system. There was intense retaliation against them. They were arreested, fired and charged with crimes that could put them into jail for the rest of their lives.
It did not stop there. John Crane who worked as assistant inspector general of the DoD was supervising the whistleblower unit as well as handling all whistleblower allegations. He faced retaliation after taking them seriously.
None of those people were put in jail for the rest of their lives. Binney, Wiebe, Loomis, and Roark were never arrested, let alone charged, let alone "with crimes that could put them into jail for the rest of their lives". Drake was charged --- he was believed to be the source for the NYT's blockbuster story on NSA surveillance --- but those charges were dropped.
>None of those people were put in jail for the rest of their lives.
Prosecutors tried hard to build a case to put them into into prison. They received punitive treatment and bullying, their houses were raided.
They raided Drake's house after he anonymously contacted DoD IG. Someone leaked this confidential information to DoJ. He faced 35 years of imprisonment.
The judge in the case had some harsh words against government. https://fas.org/sgp/jud/drake/071511-transcript.pdf
That's not what you said. We could further litigate your revised summary of what happens to NSA whistleblowers, and I'd be happy to do so, but first I'd like to know that we're not just playing Calvinball.
So I think my objection to this narrative is clearer if we put it back into context.
What we're really debating is whether someone like Snowden had the means to appropriately handle the issues he discovered through official channels. The narrative on places like HN is that by raising issues and escalating them, perhaps beyond NSA, and NSA's IG, all the way to Senate Intelligence, someone like Snowden would face retaliation.
Here, I think, I have two points to raise:
* First, if by retaliation we mean "termination", it's hard to fit that into the actual Snowden story. Snowden took the Booz job in the first place in order to gain access to this information and route it to the people he thought needed it. His only reason to be there was to do the thing we're saying he'd get fired for. That's not a real deterrent.
* Second, if we look at actual prosecutions --- or even FBI investigations, like what happened to Binney and Roark --- they're tied up with news leaks. It's hard, I think, to find a case of an NSA whistleblower who faced law enforcement retaliation for escalating concerns to the NSA IG or Senate committees. Where you see the DOJ go ape-shit is when NSA secrets wind up on the front page of the New York Times. Indeed, that's what happened to Roark and Binney and Loomis! They got caught up in an investigation into an NYT story that was launched at the (direct!) behest of George Bush.
"they're tied up with news leaks. It's hard, I think, to find a case of an NSA whistleblower who faced law enforcement retaliation for escalating concerns to the NSA IG or Senate committees."
I agree with this. The natural follow-up is, "Are there any examples of those doing internal whistleblowing on programs endorsed as much as these by Executive and Congressional groups getting results that Snowden leaks have gotten?" It usually business as usual with occasional fine or scathing report that I've seen. I doubt a leak-less version of Snowden would get new bills in, jurisdictions changed for major companies, all kinds of privacy startups, etc.
I'd be interested in example you have where similar things came from internal links. You didn't claim you did but I'm asking just in case.
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked. That is why I accepted that position about three months ago."
"If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."
That says he accepted because he wanted access. Not because he wanted to leak the data. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone would find it interesting or fulfilling work to get access to machines on such a big scale. It's prestigious if nothing else.
It's possible he meant for the purpose of leaking data, but it's wrong to assert it only due to your assumptions.
He also made no effort to disclose or inform internally - it's pretty cut and dry. Even if the President personally wanted to, it's simply not a precedent any administration can afford to set.
It is in fact correct. You have an outdated claim by Snowden which is not supported by any evidence, this year NSA released emails of his 'internal' communications with FOIA and it was discussed (here on HN [0]). As far as documented evidence his only attempt to raise an issue internally was emailing legal counsel regarding a 'test question' - this is laughable.
> Got to suggest, emails may not be the way he would communicate concerns. Especially knowing what he did about how email is not private.
If you want whistle-blower protections, you need to go through official channels and document document document. I am not saying the US has good protections (obviously it doesn't) - but we have to admit that Snowden isn't the model of someone that tried to go through the proper channels.
If you want to disappear without a trace, just use email inside NSA to criticize the NSA and suggest you might be a whistleblower. To get protection, you have to survive first.
"After extensive investigation, including interviews with his former NSA supervisors and co-workers, we have not found any evidence to support Mr. Snowden’s contention that he brought these matters to anyone’s attention."
In a he-said-she-said against the NSA, given the information released and the NSA's history of telling the truth to the public (including Congress), I'm inclined to side with Snowden on this one.
The NSA has nothing to gain, and more to lose, if they say that he did follow proper procedures.
I don't agree with Snowden's actions completely, but, on the whole, he acted in good faith.
I think the mass dump was a little ill advised, and he maybe could have thrown his lot in with slightly more responsible journalists who could have arbitrated what would be useful for the public to know a little more judiciously (I like Greenwald, but he can be unreasonable sometimes). However, on the whole I think it was for the good. I think its important to remember that he didn't have a lot of time to act once he started down this road, so I'm sure some hasty decisions were made.
No, he mass-dumped domestic and foreign operations... including those used on highest-value targets... onto foreign journalists intent to publish best of it. That either equivalent to what Manning did or pretty close. They latter published lots of this with real consequences for NSA's SIGINT. He also didn't have to.
I think Snowden is a true patriot for revealing what our government was doing against us. That said, a full pardon isn't going to happen.
What they should be shooting for is a fair trial. One that isn't being prosecuted under the Espionage act which would allow his lawyers to use the "for the common good" defense. Under the espionage act it severely limits his affirmative defense options.
And you think that pardonning him is suddenly make everything okay with his former bosses? I'm pretty sure there are people in high places that feel they've been made a fool of by what he did.
If he gets back on US soil, he'll suddenly disappear at a convenient time when the entire country is too busy with other stuff (eg. post-election, superbowl, christmas, some war).
What a nut! That's certainly a kind of explainer on why it was better when the nation was run by the people's elected representatives rather than unaccountable unhinged spooks.
I didn't read everything, because the universe is still young, but randomly clicking got to this [0] in which this self-proclaimed expert, in stereotypical fashion, veers wildly between claiming secret knowledge that proves him right, claiming that everything important that Snowden released was already well-known, claiming that Snowden's releases harmed USA, and an idiosyncratic form of definite-article-based hermeneutics.
That's nutty. Like, Payday-bar-nutty. Greenwald was like, "is this dude serious or just off meds?" Although I do support the elision of the definite article before proper acronyms that signify organizations of questionable ethics.
I don't think a Twitter back-and-forth means much of anything. Go read five or ten of Schindler's articles on his site, then tell me that he's candy-bar-nutty.
I mean, good grief, he's not only a former NSA counterintelligence officer, he's a published World War I historian, former Naval Reserve officer, and a professor at the War College. He may be biased (and you certainly are!), but by no means is he a nut. What is nutty is to call him one, and with your having done that, I can't take you seriously.
I think that people who have domain expertise about classified information are different from people claiming "secret knowledge." He overstates his case in some circumstances, and I think that there were positive effects of the publicization of some of of the Snowden data, but it's also tough to dispute, I think, that his releases also harmed the United States. I'm happy to expand on this if you need.
Those inside the national security apparatus often seem to have difficulty differentiating harm to national security apparatchiks from harm to the nation itself. Many of us outside, don't have that difficulty. As Greenwald tweeted, "My sources are the documents and - I know this is shocking - people who don't work for the US Govt"
Also, the big idea that the releases revealed nothing previously unknown directly contradicts the big idea that the releases harmed USA. The spooks can't get their story straight, because they're out of practice. Previously, why would they ever have given a shit what the public thought? They got to pretend they were "inside", and occasionally drafted memos to the effect of "my word, chums, perhaps we might go in for a bit less of the horrible invasions of privacy and horrible wastes of the public purse?", with which memos the real insiders would wipe their asses. Ain't no deception like self-deception.
> Those inside the national security apparatus often seem to have difficulty differentiating harm to national security apparatchiks from harm to the nation itself.
Are you an American? I think it's is relevant to this conversation. Because if you're not, I couldn't care less what you think about this. From a non-American's perspective, it's an internal matter. You don't like America spying on other nations? I have news for you: your nation does the same thing. Espionage is the second-oldest profession. If you don't like what the NSA does in foreign SIGINT, take the plank out of your own eye first. (And then enjoy the few years your nation has left before its newfound weakness allows it to be destroyed.)
If you are an American, then I implore you to cast off your leftist, anti-American shackles and think for yourself. No nation is perfect, and there are plenty of problems in our government--that's the whole point of America to begin with, to compartmentalize and restrain government so it can't abuse the People! But this idea that America is now the source of evil in the world is a false narrative; plainly, a lie.
It's unacceptable for the DNI to lie to the People and to Congress, and it's unacceptable for any agency of the government to violate the law, of which the Constitution is the highest. However, that does not change the fact that Snowden's actions did harm American interests abroad and endanger the lives of American men and women working in harm's way.
Even if there was a part of Snowden that thought he was whistleblowing on domestic violations (which looks increasingly unlikely, especially given that he didn't even try to use the existing whistleblower apparatus), his actions were not solely that. He has defected to Russia, which is posturing itself as an enemy of the U.S., and he is now cooperating with their intelligence agencies. Even if he did expose illegal domestic activities, he also committed treason.
I think maybe we should re-think the method of whistleblowing -- I think the best way in the current climate would be to leak to congress first, if nobody responds, hold a press conference (from Russia) -- and let them know the nature of evidence you have, and that you want whistleblower protection and then you'll go before congress and divulge the full nature... -- everyone in government should at least be able to see the nature, then they can leak/share whatever won't hurt national sec interests, --but it'll still get a lot of the issues out front and center... --though I still support Snowden in a big way--if it were me--something like that would be better, and provide less liability.
But they could definitely use a government whistleblower protection mechanism... But good luck with that.
Seeing mostly downvotes for those not in agreement with the herd.
I, too, do not support a pardon. He should stand trial, and if he in fact broke laws should pay the penalty. I wouldn't want to set a legal precedent that it's OK to join one of our intelligence agencies and leak information.
In the case of Ford's pardon of Nixon, the pardon covered "any crimes he might have committed against the United States while president," as Wikipedia currently has it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_Richard_Nixon
As the entry goes on to state, that was controversial, but it worked. So it should be able to work in a case like this as well.
Maybe it's still news to some people that there's plenty of precedent for that? For every Litvinenko there is 100s or 1000s that died in more subtle ways.
I think there have been one such campaign at least in the past few years. But I totally agree, there should be continuous campaigns till he gets one, and by then if he is not pardoned, it will be a big embarrassment to the US government.
That's a great idea. He did break the law, but he alerted this country to things that we need to be aware of. I fully support a pardon for him and will sign it.
I'd like to sign the petition. I generally try not to think too much about implications of free opinion actions, to avoid these worries stop me from voicing my opinions. In these case also I'm not an US citizen so it is somewhat easier to do. But looks like only US citizens are allowd to sign this. Do you think that the signature of a non US citizen worths something?
Pfft, the form itself has mandatory fields, but doesn't seem to check the veracity of any of them... just put your name, put random content in any of the fields you're uncomfortable giving information for, choose California and 90210 as the ZIP and it'll let you submit.
How do you know this guy (and the whole set of characters and institutions that he legitimizes -- Greenwald, Omidyar & co, Washington Post, Guardian, the Intercept, the 'blessed' crypto, etc.) -- are on the up and up?
Everything about this story, its central "hero", and the cast of characters of the show, smells imo.
What's your point? Regardless of the personalities involved, I don't think anyone has refuted the facts of the leaked documents. Yes, humans are human and nobody is a perfect angel or robot ... but what does that have to do with the facts of what was released?
* NSA spies on foreign governments. Isn't that their job?
* NSA spies on Americans, & has compromised infrastructure. Your first assumption here is that the ruling elite won't want you to know that. Have you ever considered they wanted you to know without official acknowledgement? Go find an oldhand AT&T geek and ask them about the telephony and NSA.
> Regardless of the personalities involved
You would have a point if Snowden had released the material to non-corporate actors (how about UN's human rights commission) and wasn't on the talking head [1] road show pontificating on various matters. If the actor is false then the road show is a cause for concern, don't you agree?
Another point to be made is that while they say that "much has changed due to his actions" not all has been positive. Several court cases came out after this affirming the idea that you have no "reasonable expectation of privacy" for any internet-facing machine. In fact, the District Court in Virginia this month said that the FBI had the legal right to install malware on the computer of someone who visited a child pornography site. The ruling basically stated that in the modern era of technology, the general consensus is that no public-facing technology is safe from exploitation, so by using it (it being a computer), he acknowledged the risk that everything he did would be made available for observation from a 3rd party (whether a company or the government).
Google won a case a few years ago to the same effect. They were sued for scanning a private business' e-mail traffic and using it to target advertising. That court also ruled that if it was unencrypted communication, moving across "public" lines, then it was fair game for anyone who could intercept it.
The information and claims provided have been substantially and independently verified and/or attested to, including by those who are clamouring for Snowden's punishment, trial, and/or execution.
Would donating to the ACLU be more effective in affecting real pressure?
Just like subscribing to Linux Journal, or running a tor node, if you sign this petition your information will end up on a list of "person to keep tabs on".
Everyone seems to forget that Snowden didn't just leak information about domestic spying, but also about unquestionably legitimate spying on foreign countries. There's no way he gets a pardon for that.
Absolutely questionable. There's a concept called "human rights" and just because the US has failed to force unaccountable government agencies into acting in a humane and moral manner doesn't mean that what they're doing is justified. Invasions of privacy on foreign people on such a granular level is abhorrent and that fact hat it's not illegal doesn't mean Snowden did anything wrong by disclosing it.
Privacy rights for foreigners do not exist under US law. The US cannot allow people with security clearances to just ignore the law, determine what is right and wrong, and take matters into their own hands. How our government treats people in other countries is a matter for the President and Congress, the elected representatives of the American people.
Basic rights for a lot of people, even our own citizens, do not exist under US law. Even our own prisoners are denied pretty basic rights (solitary confinement for literally years at a time, sometimes over a decade). Felons who have served their time are denied basic rights (voting) in some states. People have spent over a decade in prison without any sort of due process (from contempt of court, being ordered to do something they couldn't).
The lack of a law forbidding something is not justification for it being acceptable behavior.
>The US cannot allow people... take matters into their own hands
That we have a (flawed) systemic and protected whistleblower system says that the government itself disagrees with you. And save your breath if you're going to try to argue Snowden should have used that system - it wasn't available to him despite people trying to argue otherwise.
You're totally misunderstanding the whistleblowing system. It exists to uncover activity that is illegal under US law, not for people to make moral statements about what the law should be. What the law should be is a matter for our elected representatives.
I'm not sure what your point about contempt of court is. Yes, of course you can be held indefinitely until you comply with a court order. Otherwise, a court order wouldn't mean anything.
Doesn't pardoning assume convicting him first? Or does it mean there won't be open trial? I think an open and media covered trial will be more valuable to the public. Not sure about himself.
No. Addressed multiple times in this thread. Notably: Nixon pardoned by Ford, and Vietname War draft-dodgers pardoned by Carter, without necessity of prior convictions.
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
2. There are no secret courts in the US capable of in absentia trials.[1]
3. Your attacking those who are correcting your factual misapprehensions doesn't play well here. Please don't do that.
________________________________
Notes:
1. If a defendant takes off during the pretrial phase, however, he may be able to elude an in absentia conviction. In the 1993 case Crosby v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that federal law "prohibits the trial in absentia of a defendant who is not present at the beginning of trial."
I am not attacking anyone, simply clarifying the implicit assumptions of people who believe that Snowden needs a pardon. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has introduced jurisdictions that goes outside of the usual process of law, notably publicity; people who oppose that trend in government tend to assume that Snowden has been convicted using such an extraordinary measure. Whether that is possible within the current law framework seems irrelevant to both those claiming for his head, and Snowden himself.
FISA is all flavours of horrible. But what it doesn't do is provide a venue for convictions. Only (and I grit my teeth and clench my gut when I write that) approval of surveillance requests.
In a no-contest, no-appeal, rubber-stamp, kangaroo court, yes.
But only surveillance orders.
And, my error, it was whamlastxmas who went full tinfoilhattery on us, not you. The inability to see up/down thread when responding to an HN comment is a bit crippling. I apologise for my third point, that doesn't apply to you.
Your clarification that some other people might think Snowden's already been convicted (by a court which cannot convict, no less) might have legs, though I've seen no particular evidence of it. The strictures against in abstentia convictions make it little more than a myth, and it probably shouldn't be offered without noting that it violates numerous elements of US statutory and case law.
It's pretty shitty to throw the term "tinfoil hat" in an argument, especially so when discussing Snowden. It's also pretty silly to make the assumption that there hasn't been some sort of secret equivalent of conviction given everything we've learned about how opaque our government is.
You're simply wrong. FISA courts exist because Congress created them and gave them jurisdiction. There is no such thing as a secret conviction under US law. There is no such thing as a secret criminal trial, where the accused has no opportunity to defend themselves, under US law. Does not exist period.
Just like there's no such thing as domestic mass surveillance under US law? And who said he was tried in our criminal court system? If it's a matter of "national security" all due process flies out the window.
My point is there is literally no way for you to know and claiming people are wrong and dismissing them with "tin foil" arguments is shitty.
Just because you don't understand why it's not possible, doesn't mean that it is. A US citizen cannot be imprisoned without due process or being found in contempt of court (and in that case, only until the moment they comply with the court order). This is a basic premise of shelves upon shelves worth of Supreme Court decisions, and is guaranteed by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
Even without those amendments, what you suggest is not possible because Congress has passed no law establishing a body with the authority to imprison people in such a matter. And even then, only "Article III tribunals" (i.e. federal courts) have the authority to deprive civilians of liberty under federal law. "Article I tribunals" only have limited authority to decide civil matters, and to hear court-martials of servicemen.
You're also making totally false claims like:
>If it's a matter of "national security" all due process flies out the window.
There are multiple recent Supreme Court decisions directly contradicting that. For example, and very relevant to this exact discussion, the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Further, given that Snowden is not a combatant in any armed forces or insurgent group, he is not subject to any military jurisdiction. He can only be tried in US federal courts.
Where was the due process for Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16 year old American who was killed by a drone strike without any evidence of being involved as a combatant or part of an insurgent group? As far as I can tell, there was never any official comment by any government official about this despite countless inquiries. Never any accountability.
Hence my argument, due process is less relevant than ever these days. It is not at all out of the question for Snowden to be considered an enemy combatant, especially since we apply that same logic to any adult male in the vicinity of a drone target.
Even if pardoned how could he ever come back? Surely they will paint a target on his forehead and "oops" casualty of a car accident or maybe he magically gets cancer etc.
Snowden has become a pop culture icon for this generation. I don't know if it makes sense to punish him given the kind of debate he was able to create in the last few years.
They should add a simple 'Approve' or 'Like' button on the page.
On the website, I clicked on the 'TAKE ACTION' button and for about half a second I actually considered writing a "letter to the president"... but then I came to my senses and realized that I don't actually know ANY of these people.
I approve of the idea of Snowden and the idea of Obama pardoning him but this is all very abstract in my mind... Feels like writing a letter to Santa Claus.
Effectively, in that it's "tradition" for the president to issue a bunch of pardons right before leaving office, largely because it's the last chance to do so, partly because at that point it's too late for any political opponents to use it against him.
But the sitting president can issue pardons at any point during the presidency.
I think Obama should not just pardon Snowden, but nominate him to a position of NSA director.
Snowden is both a top professional and cares about our rights and freedoms. NSA is still needed (in some form) in the real world, and I would definitely feel safer if Snowden was at its controls.
One of the problems I see with this is that Snowden probably is an asset/agent of the Russian FSB at the moment. Quite possibly he already was one at the time of his defection.
Even with a official pardon, I highly doubt he could ever return to the US. At some point he might just disappear, or gets into a car crush or things like that. Accidents happen.
Just being nosy... here's the source of the page (post render) piped through sed 's/^[ \t]?//;s/></>\n<'|egrep '(form|input)'
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<input type="email" data-val="true" data-val-email="The * Email Address field is not a valid e-mail address." data-val-maxlength="The field * Email Address must be a string or array type with a maximum length of '250'." data-val-maxlength-max="250" data-val-required="The * Email Address field is required." id="EmailAddress" name="EmailAddress" value="">
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...So, AcluOptIn is being forced to false?
I guess we can give them the benefit of the doubt and presume that my http client information is being saved to prevent automated form submissions?
It's amusing or distressing to see that "socialist" has became such a bad word in the US. Basically, if you're for things such as public education or healthcare, you're also suspected of being some kind of Stalin supporter. Successful propaganda.
In principle, yes you are right. However, there is only so much hedging and differentiation I can put into a post without turning it into an essay.
What I wanted to say is "realsocialist" a la former Soviet Union or East Germany. I think part of the confusion is that I live in Germany, where socialist always means that kind of one-party authoritarian system. By this definition, e.g. Bernie Sanders would be a (left-wing) social democrat, but not a socialist.
I know for example in France, the middle-left-wing party calls themselves socialist... I believe they are slightly left of what you'd call "liberal" in the US.
How is the distinction hard to understand? Socialism is a system characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to capitalism, which is characterised by private ownership of the means of production. Both are ideologies.
You could have compared to Soviet or East Germany directly if you wanted to make a point about totalitarian regimes.
Also, I'm pretty sure Germans don't consider socialism to be an authoritarian ideology. Maybe you're confusing it with national socialism (nationalsozialismus => nazism).
> Socialism is a system characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to capitalism, which is characterised by private ownership of the means of production. Both are ideologies.
Historically, every attempt to build a socialistic society has led to tyranny. One can wonder, if this might be an inevitable consequence along the path to attempt socialism.
But we have managed to build several capitalistic societies which did not fall into tyranny (although some did).
There are the proper political science definitions and then there are the meanings on the ground (so to speak). Unfortunately, the latter are fluid depending on the country and don't always line up...
In the UK, the Labour part is moving back (rejoining?) it's old Socialist roots. The flawed but gracious and honourable leader of the party at present has been a socialist his entire career, but could hardly be called authoritarian.
Corbyn stands virtually no chance of being elected Prime Minister, however honourable and gracious he is. I doubt the Labour Party will survive in its current form much beyond the new few years. I think there's a schism coming between the more socialist Corbyn supporting group and a more centrist group.
What? Communist countries are ruled by a single communist party and do call themselves communist. As well as socialist. The terms have their differences, but "communist" is used.
If socialism isn't authoritarian, that means that people can opt out of social benefits, own their own property and things, and not have to pay taxes to cover others' social benefits, right? Without going to jail, right?
If not, then I guess we're talking about some form of authoritarianism.
To talk about "socialism" in a sense that doesn't break the non-aggression principle (necessary for non-authoritarianism), you need to think of volunteer communes. IOW, use pooled money (just think of it as a necessary evil) to buy 1,000 acres, build a master-planned community, and offer residency to people who pitched in to buy it, and then use socialism as the guiding ideology within that commune. If it doesn't work and people want to leave, they can leave.
That's a non-authoritarianism version of socialism. If you think there are others that exist in practice, I implore you to look into every true socialist country in history, including the currently failing state of Venezuela, wherefrom there is a mass exodus underway.
In which case every nation on earth is authoritarian, and the word has no more useful meaning when discussing governments than the observation that governments attempt to maintain a monopoly on use of force. Both are universal. Doesn't matter if you're suppressing fraud in a balls-out capital-dominated economy or offering healthcare in more mild social democracies, someone disagrees and the jackboots come out.
So now we've established that capitalism (the real thing, mostly practiced by large cartels), "capitalism" (the U.S. mixed economy), socialism (I'm not stepping in that one) and "socialism" (the mixed economies of western Europe) are all authoritarian. Can we move past this boring, useless debate point, please?
If capitalism isn't authoritarian, that means people can opt out of state application of property rights to land, right? Without going to jail or getting shot, right?
> If socialism isn't authoritarian, that means that people can opt out of social benefits and not have to pay taxes to cover them, right? Without going to jail, right?
The same argument goes for the US. All developed countries have taxes and most people agree that they are necessary. I Besides, I don't feel Sweden is more authoritarian than the US because it has higher tax rates or more public services.
Who said anything about the United States not being authoritarian?
This is the problem with these uninformed, emotionally-driven debates about ideologies; everybody thinks it's "me vs you", rather than trying to understand anything in depth.
In theory those are different. In practice though there hasn't been a single socialist country that hasn't at least devolved into authoritarianism or even has been so right from the start (Scandinavian Socialism and modern day German
Social Market Economy could be considered exceptions but I doubt these can really be considered socialist.).
People keep saying: "This isn't true socialism." Well, then true socialism seems to be nothing but a pipe dream that in reality can't be implemented and hence should either be revised or replaced by a better concept.
Not sure it’s a fair argument to exclude dozens of the wealthiest countries in the world because they own definition of socialism —that they practice— does not meet your imagined one.
The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.
> The definition is not complicated: have key industrial assets, notably transport infrastructure, owned by public authorities.
Many socialist ideologies reject the very idea of public authorities. Talking about them owned by the public would work better, but would exclude many other socialist ideologies.
E.g. Saint Simons original socialism involved a technocratic society where the actual key change was that people would be paid according to merit.
In Marxism too, that is the key defining aspect of socialism: Marxism sees the capitalist as not contributing work, but capital, and hence he's overpaid if measured by the merit of his work. (Marx was very clear on the distinction between socialism and communism as an end stage of a long period of development here: socialism would not involve full redistribution, but a process of redistribution by first levelling thing by paying people by merit, and then evening things out further by changing to pay based on need).
Public ownership in Marxism, is not a requirement per-se, but is seen as a consequence of the intent of giving everyone control over their own work and ensuring everyone is paid on merit.
This is the same in many other socialist ideologies, and hence you will also find distinctly socialist ideologies that accepts full private ownership, but instead e.g. relied on heavily progressive taxation as a means of reducing the difference.
You would be sort-of right that many socialist ideologies do share that characteristic, but it is not sufficient nor necessary in all instances.
> they own definition of socialism —that they practice—
> The definition is not complicated:
I probably should have been clearer, but that definition was explicitly the one adopted by the socialist parties who alternatively lead a majority of European countries (the “dozen of the wealthiest country in the world”).
There are other definitions of socialism, but I prefer to see how people practice it.
By that definition France is a socialist country. I suppose you could say that to some extent but France isn't what one usually thinks of when it comes to real-world socialism. I think socialists in particular will argue against that notion.
Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.
> Even worse though: Most totalitarian countries fit that description, too.
Consider that Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto spent a whole chapter tearing into other socialist ideologies, ranging from ideologies they saw as reactionary and anti-democratic and even feudal, to utopian systems that were basically anarchist.
Socialist ideologies have historically spanned the spectrum from extreme libertarianism (the term libertarian was first used for a political system by a French anarcho-communist that was so anti-authority he criticised Proudhon - a prominent early anarchist - for not going far enough) to systems that basically argued for technocratic feudal systems with welfare.
Using the term without specifying more is meaningless if you are talking about a specific ideology or system rather than generally about systems with certain shared characteristics.
For the record, though, I agree with you that the definition in the comment you reply to doesn't make sense - it would exclude many prominent socialist ideologies.
I think many American Republicans would consider France to be socialist.
And would view many other countries as socialist, if they have things like national medical insurance and free college tuition. Except China. China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist, despite the pictures of Chairman Mao on the currency and at Tienanmen Square. And except Russia, whose authoritarianism is admired.
Talking perception here, not reality. The perception of people who used to be a marginal group of extremists but now have many people in positions of Governor, house of representatives, etc.
And unfortunately they now have a real shot at the White House in the personage of their tribal Duce (a pathological egomaniac whose politics are unclear and span all ends of the spectrum within any given time period).
> China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist
For the purposes of western companies with ties to China, they have capitalism - after all, allowing child labor in sweat shops is very capitalistic.
On the other hand the state controls a majority of enterprise assets even though the number of enterprises fully owned by the state is around 30%. And they also impose their will on privately owned companies, with the market not being free.
Indirectly it kind of is. The Government, owned by the people determines whether some companies continue to produce, or fail. Under natural capitalism Amtrak would have died years ago.
if you define success in terms of wealth (which is a decent way to do it for most people). But these 'wealthiest countries' are doing some pretty scary stuff in the world, and on massive scales which threaten the potential for future generations to even inhabit the planet comfortably without massive restrictions and compromises.
In practice any countries that tried going the socialist route were immediately sabotaged and undermined by capitalist countries, notably the United States. When you are threatened from outside, authoritarianism becomes easy to take hold.
There were plenty of authoritarian capitalist countries, even those deemed "successful", e.g. modern Singapore or South Korea, Argentina, and others during periods of 20th century.
And on the other hand, there are democratic non-authoritarian socialist countries like Bolivia or even Venezuela.
Whenever anyone from the US is involved, there is invariably some confusion between socialism as defined by Marxists and Leninists, and socialism as defined by social democrats. Most people in Europe mean social democracy when they talk about socialism, except when they talk historically, say, about the GDR.
You must always assume that a US citizen does not know that social democracy existed before communism was even invented, and that liberalism has right-wing and left-wing branches.
It is possible to roughly translate between the jargons, though:
US progressive leftists ~ EU democratic socialists
US libertarians ~ EU right wing nutcases, confused anarchists (ardent US libertarians) or slightly confused liberals (moderate US libertarians)
US liberals ~ EU anti-capitalist scum (it's what it means translated, but nobody says that in the EU, of course)
I could go on but prefer to stop here, because there will always be some smartass who thinks he knows better and doesn't realize that words are just words and it's the concepts that count anyway. I'm prepared to get downvoted by butthurt Americans.
"Socialist" is too general a descriptor, and has been deliberately ruined by overgeneralisation. The distinction should be between "Social Democrat" and "Communist". The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections.
> The former believe in normal multi-party states with free elections.
A whole lot of the people who consider themselves communist do too. In fact, the Bolsheviks murdered a huge number (tens of thousands is a very low end estimate) of communists who opposed them and who supported multi-party democracy.
Including a whole lot of communists who were members of the socialist parties that beat them in the elections to the constituent assembly shortly before their coup, but they also ended up murdering tens of thousands of members of their own party who opposed the authoritarian turn it took.
The original Bolshevik revolutionaries believed in democratic elections as well, they just saw the legitimate institution of government starting from the worker's councils (called soviets) that sprung up in workplaces around Russia during the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. This is why they called their system the soviet socialist republic, and why the prime government body was the supreme soviet.
What actually happened in practice was a bloody civil war made democracy of any kind impossible. And out of the ruins of that civil war "pragmatists" like Stalin rose, purged the former revolutionaries completely, and restored the authoritarianism of the tsarist era.
If you look at the Communist Party of the 1930s there are none of the original Bolshevik (and fellow travellers) cadre left. They were all brutally assassinated. The most prominent being Trotsky but there were dozens of similar cases.
The civil war first started after they had conducted their anti-democratic coup, though.
They got about 10% of the votes in the elections for the constituent assembly due to write the new constitution. They responded by overthrowing the Duma and calling off the assembly.
I agree with you that many of their members probably did support democracy - in fact, many of them lost their lives for holding on to that belief and resisting an increasing authoritarian leadership.
I didn't make the distinction mainly for simplicity because even if we draw a clear line and go all black and white and call every Bolshevik anti-democratic, the majority of socialist and communists in Russia were not Bolsheviks.
Part of the problem with the Bolsheviks, to me, stands with Lenins idea of the vanguard party, which was part of the issues surrounding the disagreement between Martov and Lenin that led to the split: With the idea that they made up a revolutionary vanguard, coupled with the fact that they were outlaws for a large part of their existence, they conditioned themselves to believe they "knew better" and that they would have support, and that anything indicating anything else was just another part of government or counter-revolutionary propaganda. Then with the creation of the Soviets following the February revolutons - standing against the Duma as an alternative seat of power -, they surrounded themselves with people who supported them, and this helped them legitimise to themselves the idea that they did actually have support.
When the constituent assembly elections provided evidence that showed they had pretty much no support outside of the big cities, it was easy for them to dismiss it as the result of "counter-revolutionary" activity etc.
The civil war certainly made it worse. It both provided good reason and an excuse to crack down on opposition. When parts of the opposition chose to fight on the other side because they had legitimate reasons to fear a party that had just conducted a coup, it just made it easier to crush them and write them off as traitors and counter-revolutionaries.
Everyone disagrees what socialism is. Is Nordic or German social democracy not socialism? Maybe it isn't. But what about all the millions people in those countries that proudly claim to be "socialists" but never ever want to abolish the free market or parliamentary democracy?
"Socialism" can either be a common name for ALL the ideologies that branched from the original throughout history, or it can be a specific ideology that is closer to what we today would call "Communism". It's not entirely clear which is meant, if someone says "socialism" or that they are "socialists".
My point is that they call themselves socialists but they are social democrats. They like free markets, democracy, and a progressive and redistributive tax system.
Those were all the cases where socialism was installed through some form of revolution or war. It's not specific just to socialism, basically any movement that has risen to the power by force will try to use that same force to stay in power (there are exceptions, of course, but rare).
I say pardon him at this point, you'd be better off having him in America than somewhere in Russia being forced to leak further info for continued asylum
Snowden hasn't leaked anything since 2013. This is kind of a trifling point but it's one that the US government has intentionally misconstrued in the past. Snowden handed off his documents to journalists in HK and hasn't released anything personally. He doesn't have the capacity to release new material because he doesn't possess any of it anymore.
Well he was a patsy so pardoning him reduces the risk he will blow true story of the most successful increase in intelligence gathering capacity since WWII... So there's that. Pardon him for sure. And never doubt he's a patriot. But he doesn't believe in openness. He helped usher in a new age of secrecy. I think that's a good thing. I also think people should actually know the real.
The story of Snowden being a patsy is going to come out. It will be even more entertaining than the snowdengate tale act 1. But it will probably come out in 20 years.
This implicitly assumes that Trump has any actual Russian loyalties. While it's a popular accusation to throw about, it hasn't exactly been demonstrated.
What has been demonstrated is that he admires the authoritarian strong-man style of their leader. That is worrying enough.
"The proper espionage term for Edward Snowden is defector, meaning an employee of an intelligence service who takes up residence in another country whose spies are not friends. Since 1917, every single Western intelligence defector to Moscow has cooperated with the Kremlin, on grounds of quid pro quo. There is no known case of a defector not collaborating with the KGB or its successors. If you want sanctuary, you will tell the Russians everything you know. That is how the spy game works.
Any Russian intelligence officer who wants sanctuary in the United States will be required to collaborate with American spy services, including extended debriefings by multiple intelligence agencies. Are we really supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin, former KGB colonel, is more charitable?"
"Now, the Kremlin has settled the issue once and for all by stating that Edward Snowden is indeed their man. In a remarkable interview this week, Franz Klintsevich, a senior Russian security official, explained the case matter-of-factly: “Let’s be frank. Snowden did share intelligence. This is what security services do. If there’s a possibility to get information, they will get it.”"
Trumps daughter pals with Putin's girlfriend. Just saying.
That's not my argument, and I don't claim she is. I'm trying to point out the parent's logic carries some implications that are worth exploring, to see if the logic is sound. (my opinion is that the logic is faulty)
I answered it by not answering like you did with Snowden being an Russian agent.
Chelsea hanging with Ivanka is not on the same level as Ivanka hanging with Putin's girlfriend Wendi Deng Murdoch.
Yes, Clinton has also ties to Russia, but not as close as Trump's and not a link to Putin like Paul Manafort. And Clinton having connections to Russia does not exclude Trump having it too. I just makes this election even worse.
And was it not strange that the DNC got hacked by Russian hackers just at the same time as the convention? I guess stars align just for Trump.
Oh, yeah I I don't view some opinion on "20commitee.com" as authoritative. Opinions differ. The only actionable part is Klintsevich's quote, which is also speculation.
If we're all popping crazy pills and pretending America is an Orwellian, Stalinist wet dream where people disappear for having dissenting political opinions, why not go all the way and just assume Russia is pulling all the strings?
Wait, Snowden is "on the wrong side of barricade" because someone supported him? Not supporting someone because someone else who you don't support is supporting him is not a valid argument in any situation.
We speak about soros person who is mention even in hillary leaked email person who make money from people suffering. And use this money to buy people/lobbing for own personal revenge.
> Why are so many hackers unwilling to learn the basics of civics?
ahem
The two probably-most-famous pardons in American history - Ford's pardon of Nixon and Carter's pardon of draft dodgers - affected unindicted individuals (Carter's included people who had been convicted, but also included plenty of individuals where no action had been taken). And those are not the only two examples.
It is legally possible for President Obama to pardon Snowden. You are simply factually incorrect as it comes to American governance.
Many of us did pay attention in school (and many of us researched carefully afterwards).
Both of those examples strike me as political rather than legal actions - that is, I question the legality but political considerations moot the issue - but your point is well made.
Can't tell if you're joking or not. But just in case you're not...
Osama Bin Laden was killed in May 2011. Snowden handed the NSA documents to journalists in May 2013. Needless to say, Bin Laden never saw the Snowden disclosures.
Snowden did not release the diplomatic cables. That was Manning via Wikileaks, and that happened in November 2010. Snowden didn't even dump his documents, he gave them to journalists.
Many good things have come from the Snowden disclosures, among them a much increased awareness of our digital privacy, and important conversations around privacy vs. security in the new century. But if you need concrete examples, the disclosures have also led to reforms like the USA Freedom Act.
If you're serious, please, go die somewhere. If you're trolling, I think you bit off too much here. The density of misinformation, while impressive in its own way, is too much to be believable.
Snowden didn't directly release anything; he relied upon the Media to apply filters to what should and shouldn't be public. And they've done a reasonable job at that.
> I can't name one good thing that has come from his whistleblowing.
You think there is absolutely no value whatsoever in awareness that particular mechanisms were going against your rights to privacy?
Pardoning Snowden implies he did something in violation of US law. If a pardon is a moral judgement at all, it is a judgement that what was done was not wrong.
But he didn't just leak information concerning his homeland. He actually leaked information about allies of his homeland e.g. the UK.
I'm pretty sure that alone will ensure he won't get pardoned. It could cause one of the biggest diplomatic incidents in history between the US and UK. Particularly with Theresa May as PM - who has been instrumental for years in building up the security services powers.
Snowden should be put on trial for committing treason. No matter how bad it is what he exposed. He broke the law[0]. What he exposed are policies of the United States by people put in power in a democracy and free country.
If you don't want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know. Go on the streets. Millions of poeple are not happy with what is going on, but literally nothing changed. Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.
When's the last time they've had to mobilize the National Guard because there was a protest? The entire American economy could collapse because of a giant banking scandal and people wouldn't even raise a fist in anger.
The only people that behaved in a treacherous fashion are the one that are spying on you because for them you're just a criminal by default.
Furthermore he didn't commit treason, he didn't spy for a 3rd party country. He revealed to the world the scope of NSA spying and did everybody a big favor. There is nothing democratic with secret laws and spying. Today you cannot say you don't know and deny reality. But you can choose to ignore it... until the system turns against you. Today if you accept PRISM you become a willing participent and a slave to that system.
What you don't understand is one day, an irresponsible administration will come to power and use all this system for its own personal gain. There is nothing stopping that right now. It's funny how people get all worked up by Facebook censoring some insignificant content when they directly collude with the government to hand over data. So does Google, Yahoo and all big tech companies in US.
I completely understand what is going wrong and I assume you do too by your vivid explanation. Yet, you spend all your energy explaining it to people on the internet. What I don't get is, why don't you funnel that energy into making change? Everybody understands what is wrong about being permanently spied on, yet nobody does something.
Whether Snowded committed treason cannot be stated in one sentence or even a paragraph - I made a minor edit. He should be put to trial because he evidently broke laws and employee contracts with government institutions.
I contribute to Mailvelope now and then. I encourage my friends to use encryption. I'm honestly not entirely sure what practical things people are supposed to do? This isn't something where you round up a bunch of volunteers to go do a beach cleanup.
You can use Mailvelope! Or GPG/PGP. Use it to sign your mail. And do so using PGP/MIME, not text. PGP/Mime uses an attachment for the signature, and doesn't mess up the text with ugly code. Then put a small signature at the end of your mail explaining what PGP is, linking to Wikipedia, and link to your public key. As you use HTML, do this in a small font, 50% grey, and it won't get in the way. I do this since two years.
I tried implementing PGP on Thunderbird about 5 years ago, it was difficult. I've set up a mail server, web servers, etc.. Setting up PGP was complicated.
I'm surprised that message signing isn't built in yet, why isn't it? It didn't seem so hard to implement as a default.
>What he exposed are policies of the United States by people put in power in a democracy and free country.
Voting politicians into office does not legitimize any and all potentially illegal and/or un-Constitutional activities they or Government agencies carry out.
> If you don't want that shit happening in your country, let the people in power know.
Isn't that the point of this petition?
> Sadly, American citizens and the West in general have been trained from a young age to be apathetic and those that have the audacity to fight back have been systematically beaten down. They rather create parallax websites with fancy countdowns than actually trying to change something.
Whereas you find it more productive to post brave internet messages about how other people should face off with the National Guard, while simultaneously arguing that "no matter how bad" a state behaves, someone who exposes that badness/illegality should be tried for treason.
I agree with you that he should stand trial. That's what we do in law-based democracies, however justified we consider the individual's actions. The best, but unlikely, outcome is that he is given a fair trial, and a fair sentence if he's found guilty. But there's the rub - there's no way he'll get either a fair trial or sentence (or indeed a pardon). Whistleblowers everywhere would be encouraged if they believed they'd get fair treatment after leaking state secrets.
So we'll continue with what we have. Some people saying he's completely innocent, others saying he's completely guilty, and he himself will probably spend the foreseeable future right where he is.
Treason has a specific two point definition in the US Constitution and it is hard to see how his actions rise to the criteria enumerated therein.
Personally, I think he should be criminally pardoned but left open to civil proceedings for breach of contract should his former employer seek to bring forward a suit.
I don't think he should be pardoned. He claims that it's because he helped the public see the sinister plot of our government and their internal spying. Ok, fine.
So, should we have pardoned Jack Ruby (if he were alive) for killing the guy that killed JFK? No.
Why does Snowden deserve any different treatment. He still release confidential information. It's not like what he did can just excuse that fact. He exposed US spying, internally, externally, around the globe. He didn't just focus on the US... No pardon. Doesn't deserve it.
Ruby protected nobody, and thwarted a possibly avenue of information on the Kennedy assassination.
Snowden has done a service to the world, revealing the threats they're under (through both the NSA and any other entity which could exploit the weaknesses they use), and promoted a great deal of relevant and useful information into the public discussion. As you've just conceded.
Snowden may have broken regulations, and may have broken laws. But he served both the US Constitution, and the cause of Justice. Regulations, laws, and the NSA, serve the Constitution and justice. A pardon is a means for correcting instances where laws fail to serve justice.
In this case, people were knowingly breaking the law and stamping "confidential" on the evidence.
You can't just go about breaking any law and cover your tracks by labeling it with something you paid $4.99 for on vistaprint ... what an absurd position to defend.
Because making public the knowledge that our government is illegally surveilling the entire population is in the public interest. He tried to stop violations from within, and when that was ineffective he used the only other recourse he had.
God, I hate how quickly you can get paranoid these days. A mode of thought I would expect in socialist countries, not the US...