General Category > General Discussion

How do you feel about Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks?

(1/4) > >>

Liberal_Spy:
Do you support what he did? How do you think we should handle what we have learned about the NSA? Do you believe Edward Snowden should be pardoned as a whistle blower?

Rapunzel:

--- Quote from: Liberal_Spy on October 12, 2013, 09:14:07 pm ---Do you support what he did? How do you think we should handle what we have learned about the NSA? Do you believe Edward Snowden should be pardoned as a whistle blower?

--- End quote ---

I actually have mixed feelings about him, but I am actually glad he outed what they are doing.  I don't support government spying on it's people and collecting all our keystrokes, phone calls and who knows what else. 

Liberal_Spy:

--- Quote from: Rapunzel on October 12, 2013, 09:23:51 pm ---and who knows what else.

--- End quote ---

Thanks to Snowden, we now know the NSA:

Had James Clapper lie under oath to us - on camera - to Congress to hide the domestic spying programs Occured in March, revealed in June.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350699/clappers-lie-charles-c-w-cooke

-Warrantlessly accesses records of every phone call that routes through the US thousands of times a day

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/nsa-broke-rules-call-tracking-96571.html

-Steals your private data from every major web company (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al) via PRISM and pays them millions for it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid

-Pays major US telecommunications providers (AT&T, Verizon, et al) between $278,000,000-$394,000,000 annually to provide secret access to all US fiber and cellular networks (in violation of the 4th amendment).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-paying-us-companies-for-access-to-communications-networks/2013/08/29/5641a4b6-10c2-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html

-Intentionally weakened the encryption standards we rely on, put backdoors into critical software, and break the crypto on our private communications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

-NSA employees use these powers to spy on their US citizen lovers via LOVEINT, and only get caught if they self-confess. Though this is a felony, none were ever been charged with a crime.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24/loveint-when-nsa-officers-use-their-spying-power-on-love-interests/

-Lied to us again, claiming they never perform economic espionage (whoops!) before a new leak revealed that they do all the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras

-Made over fifteen thousand false certifications to the secret FISA court, leading a judge to rule they "frequently and systemically violated" court orders in a manner "directly contrary to the sworn attestations of several executive branch officials," that 90% of their searches were unlawful, and that they "repeatedly misled the court."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/nsa-violated-court-rules-data-documents

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/09/10/five-revelations-from-new-nsa-documents/?mod=e2tw


And they spend $75,000,000,000.00 of your tax money each year to do this to you.

ABX:
1. There is no need to pardon because he hasn't been convicted of anything.
2. As a private contractor, he is protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act. That act does not exclude whistleblowing on federal agencies.
3. He probably could have done it a better way, such as going to a liberty oriented Congressman.
4. Much of what he said isn't news. Programs like Echelon have been known for decades. It is just a matter of exposing to the public how extensive it is.  Its big impact, which is a positive thing, is making people aware of how important privacy issues are.
5. Some like to compare Snowden and Manning. They are very different circumstances. Manning was a uniformed soldier who 'leaked' actionable intelligence. That isn't whistleblowing. There is a certain chain of command and process for addressing what you feel is illegalities or problems in the military. He directly violated his oath and in any other time, he would probably be hung for treason. Snowden was a private citizen contractor and what he 'leaked' was not actionable intelligence.

Rapunzel:
Hmmm actually here on TBR we knew Clapper lied WHEN HE LIED.  This is what I mean about looking beneath the surface on issues...  A lot of what Snowden revealed was not a huge shock to us here... more like confirmation of what we had already been discussing.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page