Edward Snowden: Hero or Traitor?

[TakeYouToTasker]

Ya' know what. I'm going to take the high road and attempt to reintroduce a touch of civility. We'll see if you're capable of matching.

 

With that said...

 

You've entirely misstated the concern. Obviously the govenment lacks the resources to comb the massive amounts of data it is gathering in real time, save the obvious applications of key word and phrase technology dumping postions of that data into different data bases, which will be further scrutinized.

 

To capture the real problem I'll allude to your IRS example. As we know, there are agents and actors in government who are willing to act in unscrupulous and even criminal ways in order to harm their political ememies. We also know that the proitections supposedly in place to protect individuals and their liberties are often undone by rogue actors or incompetants.

 

It someone really wanted to destroy or blackmail an individual using their life story, as told by theis data collection, they absolutely could. And if the IRS scandal coupled with the Snowden incident tell us anything, it's that this is a senario bound to play itself out.

[dayman]

It someone really wanted to destroy or blackmail an individual using their life story, as told by theis data collection, they absolutely could. And if the IRS scandal coupled with the Snowden incident tell us anything, it's that this is a senario bound to play itself out.

 

How could they do this though?

[GG]

Ya' know what. I'm going to take the high road and attempt to reintroduce a touch of civility. We'll see if you're capable of matching.

 

Was I the one who brought jackboots & dickish into this conversation? I wonder what your low road is like.

 

PS - If someone in government wanted to take it out on a rival, there are far more expedient methods than combing telecom traffic through the NSA. Just the basic fact that you have a life example that even the NSA doesn't act as if it's a monolith supports my point.

Edited July 1, 2013 by GG

[TakeYouToTasker]

Was I the one who brought jackboots & dickish into this conversation? I wonder what your low road is like.

Which was in response to something said by you. Regardless, I'll try another round of civility.

 

PS - If someone in government wanted to take it out on a rival, there are far more expedient methods than combing telecom traffic through the NSA. Just the basic fact that you have a life example that even the NSA doesn't act as if it's a monolith supports my point.

Not rivals. Political ememies amongst the citizenry.

 

Also, the bolded sentence doesn't make sense. Can you clarify?

[3rdnlng]

 

 

How could they do this though?

 

They find out that a certain number belongs to a bookie. They see I call it 7 times a week. They then listen in as I make my daily bets. Now this info can be sent to the proper authorities and I can either get myself in trouble or be forced to be a witness against someone I wouldn't want to testify against.

 

They could find out that two or three times a week you call up your dominatrix and make an appointment. They station someone outside her place and take pictures of you coming and going. They then use these pictures to blackmail you into voting a certain way on City Council.

 

From what came out of the NSA fiasco the analysts make the decision on who to listen in on. The warrants are just a formality.

[GG]

 

Also, the bolded sentence doesn't make sense. Can you clarify?

 

Your conspiracy theory is predicated on the NSA being a monolith - one and the same with whoever pulls the strings in the White House or behind the scenes. Snowden just blew that up, never mind that the same NSA activity has been going on through two separate Administrations with many leading characters changing places. So how is the conspiracy supposed to play out in act 3, unless there's an underlying force that's controlling all branches of government for its eventual goal of total global domination?

[TakeYouToTasker]

Your conspiracy theory is predicated on the NSA being a monolith - one and the same with whoever pulls the strings in the White House or behind the scenes. Snowden just blew that up, never mind that the same NSA activity has been going on through two separate Administrations with many leading characters changing places. So how is the conspiracy supposed to play out in act 3, unless there's an underlying force that's controlling all branches of government for its eventual goal of total global domination?

There is no conspiracy.

 

There is simply the fact that we are trusting the government to use the data they are collecting responsibly. They haven't demonstrated that they should be trusted in this regard. Quite the opposite, in fact.

[dayman]

Not sure if his new statement has been posted yet:

 

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

 

They find out that a certain number belongs to a bookie. They see I call it 7 times a week. They then listen in as I make my daily bets. Now this info can be sent to the proper authorities and I can either get myself in trouble or be forced to be a witness against someone I wouldn't want to testify against.

 

They could find out that two or three times a week you call up your dominatrix and make an appointment. They station someone outside her place and take pictures of you coming and going. They then use these pictures to blackmail you into voting a certain way on City Council.

 

From what came out of the NSA fiasco the analysts make the decision on who to listen in on. The warrants are just a formality.

 

I know but I'm saying there is no evidence of this happening or that it could.

[Rob's House]

There's also a practical reason why this is far down the list of my worries. Imagine for a second how much traffic moves across the telecoms switches & routers every day. Now imagine the kind of processing power you would need to pick your number and conversation out of that haystack.

 

I used to take comfort in this, and if all they're doing is tracking phone traffic I'm not as concerned, but it appears that's not really the case. Also, I don't trust that they're not recording more than we know about. Where this gets scary is if they are recording all of this info in a massive database. If that's done then the process of picking that conversation, email, etc. out of the haystack is no longer so far-fetch. A targeted key word search could be quite effective for navigating that vast database just as Google conveniently takes you to the needle that is your chosen website in the haystack that is the internet. This doesn't concern you at all?

[dayman]

I used to take comfort in this, and if all they're doing is tracking phone traffic I'm not as concerned, but it appears that's not really the case. Also, I don't trust that they're not recording more than we know about. Where this gets scary is if they are recording all of this info in a massive database. If that's done then the process of picking that conversation, email, etc. out of the haystack is no longer so far-fetch. A targeted key word search could be quite effective for navigating that vast database just as Google conveniently takes you to the needle that is your chosen website in the haystack that is the internet. This doesn't concern you at all?

 

The answer is always a weighing of how likely you think it is this will be abused in all the ways anyone can imagine and how likely you think it is to help stop terrorist attacks.

[Rob's House]

The answer is always a weighing of how likely you think it is this will be abused in all the ways anyone can imagine and how likely you think it is to help stop terrorist attacks.

 

I agree, which is why I'm not fanatically jumping to one side of this equation, but I'm surprised how many people who are generally skeptical of central government power are taking a "nothing to see here" approach. The power that could be derived from that much info is staggering.

[dayman]

I agree, which is why I'm not fanatically jumping to one side of this equation, but I'm surprised how many people who are generally skeptical of central government power are taking a "nothing to see here" approach. The power that could be derived from that much info is staggering.

 

Contrary to what some sectors of the population have now convinced themselves...most Americans still expect that something like this is most likely to work towards its intended purpose as opposed to instill tyranny upon the daily lives of regular people. Discussion is healthy though.

Edited July 1, 2013 by SameOldBills

[4merper4mer]

 

It someone really wanted to destroy or blackmail an individual using their life story, as told by theis data collection, they absolutely could. And if the IRS scandal coupled with the Snowden incident tell us anything, it's that this is a senario bound to play itself out.

 

Is it really their life story? Once it has been told it is everyone's story right?

 

Let me know what you find out in Econ 201. You start in September right?

[GG]

 

 

I used to take comfort in this, and if all they're doing is tracking phone traffic I'm not as concerned, but it appears that's not really the case. Also, I don't trust that they're not recording more than we know about. Where this gets scary is if they are recording all of this info in a massive database. If that's done then the process of picking that conversation, email, etc. out of the haystack is no longer so far-fetch. A targeted key word search could be quite effective for navigating that vast database just as Google conveniently takes you to the needle that is your chosen website in the haystack that is the internet. This doesn't concern you at all?

 

The concern is way down the line for me. The one question that is not being explored is the - "Why?"

 

Why is the federal government running this program? Why is it cloaked in the secret courts? Why have all three branches signed off?

 

To be continued.

[TakeYouToTasker]

Is it really their life story? Once it has been told it is everyone's story right?

 

Let me know what you find out in Econ 201. You start in September right?

Hey, I get it. You're an anti-freed market corporatist. You believe scarcity for the sake of scarcity is a good thing. You believe people have the God given right to artificially create scarcity by preference of law rather than natural market forces after technology and abundance has freed the world from that scarcity.

 

You probably also think artificial financial entry barriers created by self-written industry regulation which serve to permanently protect market share are a great thing too... amirite????

Edited July 2, 2013 by TakeYouToTasker

[3rdnlng]

This is a subject that goes to the heart of what it is to be an American. GG, Rob, Tasker and any others I've missed, you all have good points. It's also a subject that will have a great bearing on the future of our country. So, it's worthy of a civil debate here, don't you think? Myself, I'm probably closest to Rob's position. I'd like to see a happy medium where our privacy is protected but we have the ability to get the bad guys first. Of course that has to be balanced against the relationship that our government has with the MSM where the vast majority of our populace still gets its information/direction from. Just the IRS scandal alone should have this entire country in an uproar. It's not. That has me worried about letting the government have one more iota of control over anything.

[Koko78]

I'm rather torn on this issue. On the one hand, I completely disagree with what the NSA was being allowed to do. I think it is a perversion of the 4th Amendment.

 

I agree with Benjamin Franklin when he wrote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." The libertarian in me is sickened by what our government has been doing.

 

On the other hand, I don't believe Snowden is any kind of hero for exposing it (though I will not condemn him for doing so). He still broke US law and violated the trust put in him when he was given his security clearance. He needs to answer for his crimes.

[DC Tom]

I'm rather torn on this issue. On the one hand, I completely disagree with what the NSA was being allowed to do. I think it is a perversion of the 4th Amendment.

 

I agree with Benjamin Franklin when he wrote, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." The libertarian in me is sickened by what our government has been doing.

 

On the other hand, I don't believe Snowden is any kind of hero for exposing it (though I will not condemn him for doing so). He still broke US law and violated the trust put in him when he was given his security clearance. He needs to answer for his crimes.

 

There's nothing "torn" about that. The two aren't mutually exclusive. The NSA's out of line, and Snowden's an attention whore masquerading as a defender of freedom (if he had the courage of his convictions, he'd own up to his decision and face the music. He's not heroic, and he's not a traitor. He's just a little boy.)

[4merper4mer]

Hey, I get it. You're an anti-freed market corporatist. You believe scarcity for the sake of scarcity is a good thing. You believe people have the God given right to artificially create scarcity by preference of law rather than natural market forces after technology and abundance has freed the world from that scarcity.

 

You probably also think artificial financial entry barriers created by self-written industry regulation which serve to permanently protect market share are a great thing too... amirite????

 

You're slightly off. I'd call myself:

 

anti- "add a 'd' to a proven concept",

 

act like a smartass and pretend that people will put extraordinary effort into developing new technologies/medicine/art when they know it will simply be stolen the day after it's release by slacking losers,

 

or listening to people that attended 6 weeks of econ 102 and were duped by commies using the term artificial scarcity.

 

Nowyouisrite

[TakeYouToTasker]

You're slightly off. I'd call myself:

 

anti- "add a 'd' to a proven concept",

 

act like a smartass and pretend that people will put extraordinary effort into developing new technologies/medicine/art when they know it will simply be stolen the day after it's release by slacking losers,

 

or listening to people that attended 6 weeks of econ 102 and were duped by commies using the term artificial scarcity.

 

Nowyouisrite

You're not familiar with the term freed markets, and you're trying to have this conversation with me. You're beyond laughable.

 

What will happen is the exact same thing that always happens: the business models will adapt. Stop being a backwards hack who believes business practices are static, and uneveloving.

 

As to your nonsense about scarcity: real physical scarcity is the entire reason a market driven price system evolved. Things available in great abundance, to the point of rendering them valueless or near valueless is a good thing for consumers. It allows us to focus our wealth on other things and in other areas. Creating artifical barriers to abundance is nothing short of morally bankrupt. It is anti-freed market in every sense of the word.