On-Topic Edward Snowden: NSA Whistleblower Revealed, Interview

[Lostlover]

IN case you haven't notice, this is an on-topic thread Anyway, I'll leave it to the CE&P mods to clean this up, or next you'll go and whine that I'm silencing you No, nazi germany is not on topic here. Nor was this about the companies who were more or less forced to participate. Yet, you're still here grasping at straws.

LMAO. The thread is about Edward Snowden...then you should have never responded to Jack Springer's post. You only responded because you had to. Now, that I too have called you on it, you're suddenly interested in this thread being "On-Topic."

So obvious...

Now you want to clean this thread up. My goodness...funny how that worked out.

BTW, this thread is about Snowden, NSA AND government transparency. So, even the question about Nazi Germany is relevant.

Smooches!

I want posters to see this. Corny is asking for backup now to clean up an argument he lost.

 

[palbert]

.... We have our problems here in the USA -- but don't appreciate others from outside telling us what to do.

To the extent that the US meddles in their affairs, and according to Boundless Informant spies like gangbusters on all of us, your jingoism is ill founded. If anything they have more right to complain than we do. We are data gathering their affairs and communications after all.

 

[Corny]

Honey, I didn't even argue with you as you kept pointing out things that neither I nor anybody else said. But nice edit, just in time. Too bad I saw it before.

 

[ChickenGuy]

*wonders if Corny already regrets becoming a CE&P mod*

Talk about baptism of fire....

Why doesn't Germany finally releases papers on who and what companies totally supported Hitler and are still in power today.

Corny: tell the pot and kettle hello.

It's good to see you're backing off. Get off your high horse.

It's good to see you're backing down from being so self-righteous initially

So, even the question about Nazi Germany is relevant.

Smooches!

I want posters to see this. Corny is asking for backup now to clean up an argument he lost.

I'm completely on your side Corny, as obvious from my previous post - I'm just amused at how it SO quickly descended off-topic into name-calling and deflectional attacks on you.

And Lostlover you can send me all those change.org/moveon.org 'spam' about this subject - I'll gladly sign up to them even though I've never done such a thing before. This man is a hero of our time, and if there's something I can do to support him, I WILL.

 

[opinterph]

I'm just amused at how it SO quickly descended off-topic into name-calling and deflectional attacks on you.

Well, that’s a good synopsis of the problem here. The thread is On-Topic, which can allow a certain digression of related concepts; however – even a thread without the On-Topic designation should not include excessive baiting or personal remarks.

This sub-forum has some Guidelines listed at the top of the page as a “Sticky.” At least one member would do well to review the section titled, “Courtesy & Respect,” which begins with a statement that we should express our opinion about a person’s ideas – not about them personally.

I want posters to see this. Corny is asking for backup now to clean up an argument he lost.

Umm. Corny has all the tools he needs to clean the thread without anybody else’s assistance, but is responding to your ad hominem remarks as a gentleman. I will be happy to go back and clean the thread, but would rather that you simply correct your behavior. Please also take notice that this is an international forum and every member, regardless of wherever they may be situated, is welcome to add their remarks or opinions about any topic, including US politics.

This is an On-Topic thread.

​

 

[opinterph]

Last night I found an interesting article from Wired magazine that sheds light on the magnitude of the NSA’s program to collect, store, and analyze data of all kinds. The article was published on March 15th.

The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

 

[palbert]

US allies are now concerned about the scope of NSA spying, and whether their own agencies received information they could not have obtained by themselves under their existing laws.

U.S. law puts limits on the government's authority to snoop at home but virtually no restrictions on American spies eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, including in allied countries with which Washington shares intelligence.

That means Washington could provide friendly governments with virtually unlimited information about their own citizens' private communication on the Internet.

Britain's foreign secretary took to television on Sunday to reassure Britons that London's own spies had not circumvented laws restricting their own activity by obtaining information collected by Washington.

In Germany, sensitive to decades of snooping by East German Stasi secret police, the opposition said Chancellor Angela Merkel should do more to protect Germans from U.S. spying and demand answers when President Barack Obama visits this month.

In Australia, a government source said the U.S. revelations could make it more difficult to pass a law allowing the government to access Internet data at home.

And in New Zealand, the revelations could cause further embarrassment for a government already forced to admit that it had illegally spied on an Internet file-sharing tycoon who is fighting extradition to the United States for computer piracy.

In Britain, which has forged the closest intelligence ties with Washington as the main U.S. battlefield ally in Iraq and Afghanistan, politicians asked whether access to data collected by Washington allowed London's own eavesdropping service GCHQ to evade limits on its own snooping powers.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-snooping-revelations-cause-trouble-allies-181404781.html

Canada's Privacy Commissioner will also launch a probe of the implications for Canada.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/canadian-spy-watchdog-aware-cses-data-mining-least-18040127html

All of the above countries, except Germany, are members of the Five Eyes:

The United Kingdom – United States of America Agreement (UKUSA is a multilateral agreement for cooperation in signals intelligence among the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The alliance of intelligence operations is also known as Five Eyes. .... This was a secret treaty, allegedly so secret that it was kept secret from the Australian Prime Ministers until 1973.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

I don't believe the text of the governing treaty was released until 2010.

Who knows who got what and how it was used?

I would say that other countries' citizens have every right to questions on these programs.

 

[Lostlover]

Like I said... MOST AMERICANS DON'T QUESTION THE NSA'S DOING. 56% of Americans agree with the NSA's work. Is it then a stretch to say that most Americans believe he's a criminal?

http://www.people-press.org/2013/06...ne-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/

I'm stuck on this guy, but nonetheless, I hope the government gets his ass. The BBC has an article called "The Rise of the Nerd." Well, it should be called "The Rise of the Narcissistic Nerd."

 

[Lostlover]

That you are an American believing that you can speak on behalf of other Americans is correct....in reality you are not able to speak on behalf of other Americans....here lies your dilemma in assuming that other Americans do not care that Snowden exposed the NSAs monitoring of United States citizens when using the telephone or the Internet. Snowden proves that at least one American does care.

άνθρωπος transliterates into English - man or human being.

Here: Most Americans Agree with Me. [Text: Removed] I am speaking for most Americans.

 

[Lostlover]

And Lostlover you can send me all those change.org/moveon.org 'spam' about this subject - I'll gladly sign up to them even though I've never done such a thing before. This man is a hero of our time, and if there's something I can do to support him, I WILL.

A) I don't think you've spoken on your own government's assistance to NSA on this matter [Text: Removed] and

B) Most Americans are fine with the NSA tracking e-mail recipients and phone call logs and

C) [Text: Removed]

 

[palbert]

@ Lostlover: Actually the Pew/WaPo polling you link to shows that on monitoring emails 52% disapprove while 45% approve.

But a clear majority favor investigating terrorism over privacy intrusions.

 

[hotatlboi]

Agree, Manning and this guy are completely different.

Manning stole classified information, this guy did not.

Agree Jack. I'm not sure why so many people on this forum have trouble understanding what a whistleblower is.

This guy released very limited information that was directly related to a specific act by the government that he is alleging may have been illegal. That is what a whistleblower is.

Manning released huge volumes of data on everything he could access from the classified networks he had access to just because he could.

 

[Telstra]

Expert says China won't get involved in this case because it has too much to loose:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-extradition-nsa-whistleblower-video

 

[Lostlover]

@ Lostlover: Actually the Pew/WaPo polling you link to shows that on monitoring emails 52% disapprove while 45% approve.

But a clear majority favor investigating terrorism over privacy intrusions.

Right. And the key difference between the two polls there are the words "track" and "monitor." NSA doesn't "monitor" e-mails or phone calls. They track them. That number you referenced is inaccurate because "monitor" is a loaded word.

 

[ChickenGuy]

A) I don't think you've spoken on your own government's assistance to NSA on this matter [Quoted Text: Removed] and

A) I know that Foreign Secretary William Hague gave a glib and unconvincing defence of the whole policy and that both he and the Prime Minister and doing everything to continue the U.K.'s sycophantic brown-nosing and pandering to whatever the United States wants us to do and

B) Most Americans are fine with the NSA tracking e-mail recipients and phone call logs and

B) That shows precisely how uneducated, kept in the dark, and instinctively driven by fear above all else that the uniformed reactionary minions that populate your country actually allow themselves to perceive and

C) [Quoted Text: Removed]

C) [Text: Removed]

As they say in U.S. - 'Good Day, Sir'.

 

[Lostlover]

@ Lostlover: Actually the Pew/WaPo polling you link to shows that on monitoring emails 52% disapprove while 45% approve.

But a clear majority favor investigating terrorism over privacy intrusions.

Right. And the key difference between the two polls there are the words "track" and "monitor." NSA doesn't "monitor" e-mails or phone calls. They track them. That number you referenced is inaccurate because "monitor" is a loaded word.

I wouldn't support NSA's "monitoring" of my phone calls and e-mails, but if you changed the word to "tracking," I'm game.

 

[evanrick]

29 year old hacker Edward Snowden behind NSA Leaks, Patriot Act now under bigger microscope

Intelligence employee Edward Snowden working in Hawaii fled to Hong Kong on May 20th and revealed his identity to the Guardian last week.

Snowden is the source of the NSA leaks that outlines the broad scope of its data mining operations around the world.

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

Now the politicians are chiming in, the chair of the intelligence committee Dianne Feinstein is asking for a review of NSA processes.

Other politicians are voicing their own skepticism of the data mining programs:

"If the seizure and surveillance of Americans' phone records – across the board and with little to no discrimination – is now considered a legitimate security precaution, there is literally no protection of any kind guaranteed anymore to American citizens," he said in an opinion piece for the Guardian. "In their actions, more outrageous and numerous by the day, this administration continues to treat the US constitution as a dead letter."
Two other senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been arguing for two years that the Patriot Act Congress voted on is different in material ways than the one the Obama administration is implementing.
There are classified official executive interpretations of Patriot Act, particularly its section 215 about business records, that Wyden and Udall say bear little resemblance to the text of the public law, because they lead to much, much broader government surveillance on American than Patriot's text authorizes on its face.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/patriot-act-nsa-surveillance-review

 

[frankfrank]

[I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO POST THIS, BECAUSE THE THREAD WAS CLOSED - "CLEANUP IN AISLE SEVEN!" - BUT THANKFULLY IT'S OPEN AGAIN. VERY IMPORTANT TOPIC. The greatest threat to liberty, freedom, and privacy that has ever been faced by Americans, by far. And, as such, my POST QUOTE FUNCTIONS are a little unorthodox, because a good deal of the HTML got lost, and it would take a lot of effort to go back and do it entirely properly.]

I have to say that I fully agree with Corny and ChickenGuy. I'm not sure about opinterph, as his role has mostly been to supply facts and links, and heroically try to save the thread from self-destruction.

Some people here see the negative comments from people outside the United States, to be anti-American. I don't, not at all, and I live in the MIDDLE of "America." My country is setting a very, very bad example - in contrast with the strong liberties and freedoms "we" are supposedly set up under. When your country does something that is very vile and bad, being patriotic in the most profound way possible is to "call them out" on what they're doing.

Quote Originally Posted by Ninja108
The hypocrisy will be shown on Faux news for the next week when they laud him as a hero. If this was under BUsh,they would demand he go to jail.

If that's the case, I will actually entirely agree with Faux Noise. Of course it won't be for the same reasons, because I am agreeing NOT out of the same roots as pervasive Obamahate, but because the TREASON is the fact that the United States has set up a police state which would make George Orwell's 1984 beam with spectacular pride.

I consider Snowden to be one of the greatest patriots that this world has ever known.

Quote Originally Posted by evanrick
the world needs more people like him, to say the government is not more important than its people or more powerful. terror is an excuse to revoke liberty as deficits are an excuse to revoke social contracts.

HEAR, HEAR!

Quote Originally Posted by Laufey
Ehhhmmm he was letting the public know something which was being kept away from them.

How the hell is that betrayal?

The US government is betraying it's people and it's important to speak out about it.

It's sad that the nation which the whole world looked up to in the past has sunk so low.

Likewise...hear, hear!!

Quote Originally Posted by palbert
Change.org petition seeking Iceland's accommodation of asylum for Snowden:

https://www.change.org/petitions/ice...edward-snowden

An email for your friends:

Enthusiastically signed...and I almost never, ever, sign ANY petitions about anything.

Quote Originally Posted by Telstra
Nah, i think Snowden prefer Hong Kong.
Many more things to do there ..... and Shanghai would be amazing for him when the dust settles down.

True, I understand HK or Shanghai to be an incredible metropolis with a lot of stuff going on. Never mind that nearly all of the stuff happens in Cantonese, which is a very difficult language to learn. (Of course, I assume that many of the "really cool things" in Reykjavik happen in Icelandic, which is supposed to be the most difficult European language perhaps second to Basque, so it's not like Snowden could get along entirely in English there either, LOL.)

I think of Snowden as a rather "worldly" and city/urban type of person, and living in an island nation of less than one-half million people could easily be conducive to "island fever" - with it being expensive to travel elsewhere.

OK, "expense" would be no object to him...but he is also not being allowed to travel because likely he would be picked up by America-friendly goons, eventually ending up in Guantanamo or an even-more-secret house of torture which is entirely off the radar...or killed in the process of being seized.

I consider Snowden to be possibly the most prominent hero in the world who is currently alive. Some Americans in the thread kept saying this is strictly a United States issue. I DISAGREE ON THAT COMPLETELY. Anybody in any foreign country anywhere in the world who has ever communicated with an American person - other than PERHAPS via postal snail mail - has been swept up in this dragnet. Even North Korea would love to be able to emulate THIS degree of spying, if their technology was similarly developed, which it isn't.

Who posted the article from March? Opinterph? (I forgot to quote it here.) I'm talking about the article which says that the government is building that new superduper tracking centre which will look at EVERYTHING that we do.

There are a lot of Americans living in LaLaLand, thinking that such information mining is benign. I am NOT convinced it is benign, not at all.

I feel it is very possible that I am being surveilled more than merely a summary of specific events, because I travel 10 to 15 weeks per year, and THAT would very possibly "flag" my activities, because that amount of traveling is an EXTREME anomaly for Americans. Probably most people who think this sort of screening is entirely OK, are doing at least SOMETHING which could be investigated as an anomaly. What about people who contribute monies to left-wing or right-wing groups and think tanks on the Internet, via PayPal? I haven't seen PayPal on the list, but I would have no doubt it's happening there, too.

 

[cm98059]

1. Regarding the Pew/WaPo survey, 1004 People is not a majority of Americans. I can tell you flat out, that I was not included in that Survey.

2. I have had misgivings about the Patriot Act since it's creation, I have always felt that it would be very easy to overstep the boundaries and encroach upon the rights of Americans.

3. I for one do not want my government spying on me and my fellow citizens. I do not want my government collecting and storing my emails, phone calls, and even my posts to this forum to use at a later date, even though I am doing nothing wrong, I do not want my government spying on me. Or possibly, it is because I am doing nothing wrong that I do not want my government spying on me. In the United States, we used to have this concept of innocent until proven guilty, now our government collects data on it's own citizens. For what purpose, to look for possible criminal activity? To what end?

4. If it were me, the instant the interviews were over, before they had time to be aired, I would have taken the window of opportunity to get to safe haven, If he wanted to seek asylum in Iceland, that would have been a perfect window of opportunity to find an Icelandic Consulate or Embassy.

5. Our government has lied to us for years, decades even, Our government lies to each other. NSA has been lying to congress about what information it collects. Congress lies to the people about what the NSA tells them, and just about everything else too. I trust congress (democrat or Republican) as far as I can throw them.

6. Snowden is acting as a responsible American should.

7. Since it appears that every nation in the world including the United States has been targeted by the NSA, it is the right of every member of every nation to comment on this development. Currently, there is no person on the face of this planet who can or should feel certain that information about there activities has not been gathered.

8. We as Americans need to demand of our Elected Officials that these unlawful, unwarranted collections of information be ended immediately. And we need to demand that our elected officials ensure that these acts be done.

9. All of the billions of dollars that have funded this illegal act of spying against Americans could have been used for other purposes, like repaying the money that has been "borrowed" from Social Security, which would have ensured the viability of Social Security for many more years.

10. We as Americans need to demand that our elected officials investigate these allegations and when they are found to be true, the parties that have violated the constitution need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, And with it's track record, the trials should take place in Texas, and the convicted should be imprisoned in Arizona.

 

[JayHawk]

It isn't deplorable behavior. And it has been known for quite some time.

"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and Bell South...The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation, amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans, most of whom are not suspected of any crime." - USA Today, May 11, 2006.

At the time *crickets* but NOW it's all of the sudden HUGE SCANDALOUS NEWS!

http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

This is not new and it isn't really news.

While Snowden chose a single thing to release; I still think he should go to prison. He had deeper access than your average player as a Sys Ad but he also signed away his rights to divulge such things. This will go away once the media is done holding Obama's feet to the fire. Although, to be quite honest this hasn't really affected the white house at all so far.

In fact he has defenders from both sides of the aisle...

Democrats and Republicans Defend NSA Snooping

So wow weeee... two almost impossibly opposed Senators agree this is worthwhile as a program and legal. Hmmm. Weird... I wonder who elected those fuckers.... the stupid people. lol


SO here is a goofy question for all of you end of the world people... the government is getting this from private corporations. SO what you are saying is that it is ok for Apple or Google or ATT to track your every movement but not for the government to look for terrorist movements in that same pile. What a crock of shit.