Snowden; In hindsight it looks clear he is/was a whistle blower

[Pertinacious Tom]

But if they hadn't been revealed, there would not have been anything to undermine global confidence in American companies in the first place. Chicken or the egg.....

And my point being that Snowden went from an almost whistleblower when he revealed the level of information collected on US citizens to a traitor when he basically just data dumped all the rest of it to the press. He essentially did a Bradley Manning when he went beyond abuses of US citizens by the NSA and started revealing some of our most sensitive foreign collection information. If he had stopped at just the NSA collection of phone metadata and email archiving...... he might have been seen as an actual WB. Revealing that we listen in on Merkel's cell phone and are able to see inside Chinese and Iranian computer networks does NOT serve America's interests and are not things that American citizens need to know about much less ask questions about.

You DO see the difference, right?

"...government efforts to weaken publicly available encryption systems..." undermine confidence and you can't keep that kind of thing secret from cryptogeeks.

When was this "data dump" you're talking about? My impression is that he has not released "all the rest" of what he has.

Upset that our intelligence system puts a lot of effort into cracking codes? Shirley, you can't be serious.

Imagine I was talking about that aspect!

"...government efforts to weaken publicly available encryption systems..." do not stop with just cracking codes.

Were you busy spinning for Al Gore's Clipper Chip back in the day?

The problem here is the same as it was back then: when (not if) word gets around that electronics "Made In USA" translates to "Transmits to NSA" we'll have some trouble selling them around the world.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

NOTA is an option.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

That's too bad, because it's something that should be on every ballot:

None Of The Above.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Are we talking about the global electronics biz or elections?

If the former, people will simply go around us, much like Phil Zimmerman (another criminal/hero) went around the Clipper Chip by unleashing Pretty Good Privacy on the world.

If the latter, both would be disqualified from seeking that office in the special election to follow. Also, we'd all LOAO at them.

 

[GRUMPY]

So what happens when NOTA wins???

Please review the last Aussie National election. A heap of donkey votes got up. Not quite NOTA but not any of those guys sort of thing

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

Hmmm - Tom may have hit on something w/the "NOTA". If that translates into an overall vote of "no confidence", and we get to then have a "retention vote", to decide which of the reprobates might get to stay - that would be a pretty big stick with which the citizens could beat the electorate back into submission.

He's still wrong on Snowden.

 

[Mark K]

A general election that results in a NOTA might "feel good", but it is clear evidence we are not a people fit for a democratic republic, which is a big step below actual democracy. Evidence we have become either so poorly educated or so childish, so spoiled and self indulgent, that individuals who are well educated, honest, and intelligent can no longer be enticed to seek office. That we have only ambitious self-serving clowns or demented ideologues to pick from...

.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

Apparently according to obumma and jeff "girl with no balls" "truth is treason”….

 

[A guy in the Chesapeake]

A general election that results in a NOTA might "feel good", but it is clear evidence we are not a people fit for a democratic republic, which is a big step below actual democracy. Evidence we have become either so poorly educated or so childish, so spoiled and self indulgent, that individuals who are well educated, honest, and intelligent can no longer be enticed to seek office. That we have only ambitious self-serving clowns or demented ideologues to pick from...

.

Mark - as much as I wish I could, I can't disagree with a single thing you said.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

It might provide a choice for people in gerrymandered districts where there is (in practice if not in fact) one candidate, who is a buffoon.

 

[slatfatf]

A general election that results in a NOTA might "feel good", but it is clear evidence we are not a people fit for a democratic republic, which is a big step below actual democracy. Evidence we have become either so poorly educated or so childish, so spoiled and self indulgent, that individuals who are well educated, honest, and intelligent can no longer be enticed to seek office. That we have only ambitious self-serving clowns or demented ideologues to pick from...

.

When we have elections where less than half the people bother to vote, we already have NOTA.

 

[Mark K]

It might provide a choice for people in gerrymandered districts where there is (in practice if not in fact) one candidate, who is a buffoon.

If we can't find anybody who will run promising to fix that...hell, are we even looking for anyone??

Stomping our feet and yelling "NO!" may be fine for small children, but for a democratic republic it doesn't get-r-done. "No to what? What do you want?" they will ask..Ever try to sift something intelligible from 300 million people yelling? Obama is crafty, he's handed this off to Congress to see if they can sift out what kind of intelligence service they want. It's what the Constitution says should be making laws after all. The President is limited to executing them, in theory. Perhaps what we have now is what they want. It's different from what you hear in the press. Sweet baby Jesus, the press is telling us that Obama is listening to "all our phone calls" with everybody testifying in Congressional hearings who is read into the system swearing under oath that isn't happening.

Let's see if we, the People, have put folks into Congress who are capable of doing more than yelling "NO!".

 

[ramwel2010]

I was on the fence about Snowden before, but the more "revelations" that come out - the more I'm convinced he is a traitor and should be in jail.

What is the point in revealing this sort of national capability? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?_r=0

We basically just told the Chinese, Iranians and anyone else how to defeat our surveillance.

Sorry Jeff, But you can't pin the fault for this on Snowden. The US government gave up this information when they decided to abuse the technology available to them and cast aside the laws our Nation was founded on. If not Snowden, eventually somebody would have blown the whistle on this. I would hope any citizen in a position to shed light on government abuse, yourself included, would have the balls to do the same.

There is a difference between blowing the whistle on abuses of US citizens. If he had stopped there, he would have somewhat held the moral high ground. But you don't go around telling the world about our capabilities against foreign nations and who's leaders we are listening in on phone calls. That sort of thing crosses all lines.

And using the excuse that someone would have eventually done it is lame. I suppose by that logic, I could have revealed nuke secrets or operational secrets while I was active duty because someone would have eventually done that, right? No sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

Were the nuke secrets in violation of the US Constitution?

 

[Battlecheese]

It might provide a choice for people in gerrymandered districts where there is (in practice if not in fact) one candidate, who is a buffoon.

So.... Provide an alternative?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

It might provide a choice for people in gerrymandered districts where there is (in practice if not in fact) one candidate, who is a buffoon.

So.... Provide an alternative?

That would be the demand enforced by NOTA. Provide an alternative. We, the voters, are tired of this fossilized incumbent who is protected by gerrymandering from any Duopoly competition and by ballot access and campaign finance laws from outside challengers.

With term limits, it should not be needed too often, but why not have one more check on career pols?

 

[Battlecheese]

That would be the demand enforced by NOTA. Provide an alternative. We, the voters, are tired of this fossilized incumbent who is protected by gerrymandering from any Duopoly competition and by ballot access and campaign finance laws from outside challengers.

Excuses.

 

[Happy Jack]

There is a difference between blowing the whistle on abuses of US citizens. If he had stopped there, he would have somewhat held the moral high ground. But you don't go around telling the world about our capabilities against foreign nations and who's leaders we are listening in on phone calls. That sort of thing crosses all lines.
And using the excuse that someone would have eventually done it is lame. I suppose by that logic, I could have revealed nuke secrets or operational secrets while I was active duty because someone would have eventually done that, right? No sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

Were the nuke secrets in violation of the US Constitution?

Was listening in to the German president's cell phone calls in violation of the constitution?

No, just boring.

 

[Happy Jack]

The last Satellite I contracted on was German and even though it was scientific and non military they insisted on communication via PGP with 4096 bit keys and a product similar to the Zimmerman Phone or Z-Phone

http://zfoneproject.com/index.html

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Hmmm - Tom may have hit on something w/the "NOTA". If that translates into an overall vote of "no confidence", and we get to then have a "retention vote", to decide which of the reprobates might get to stay - that would be a pretty big stick with which the citizens could beat the electorate back into submission.

He's still wrong on Snowden.

That may be, but you still can't answer my question:

... The only other mechanism we have is to address their enforcement actions when those actions appear to exceed the boundaries of authority that have been accepted by the voting populace.

...

...

Re the bolded bit, actions that never appear would seem to be exempt from that kind of control. If we don't know about those enforcement actions, how are we to know they exceed the boundaries?

...

We know they did exceed those boundaries because when he found out about stuff the NSA was doing without telling him, the FISA court chief judge found those things unconstitutional.

But we also would not ever have known without Snowden.

He seems to me to be crucial to the kind of control you say you want.

 

[ramwel2010]

There is a difference between blowing the whistle on abuses of US citizens. If he had stopped there, he would have somewhat held the moral high ground. But you don't go around telling the world about our capabilities against foreign nations and who's leaders we are listening in on phone calls. That sort of thing crosses all lines.
And using the excuse that someone would have eventually done it is lame. I suppose by that logic, I could have revealed nuke secrets or operational secrets while I was active duty because someone would have eventually done that, right? No sorry, that dog doesn't hunt.

Were the nuke secrets in violation of the US Constitution?

Was listening in to the German president's cell phone calls in violation of the constitution?

C'mon, Jeff. Trying to deflect the conversation in different direction doesn't alter my point.

The latest revelation on the Dishfire program shows that the NSA has been collecting data far beyond metadata including millions of text messages, financial transaction data, passwords, geolocation data, missed call and roaming alerts and anything else they can mine from users cell phones across the globe, including from Americans, all without warrants or oversight.

The more of this that gets released, the clearer it becomes that our government is out of control and can no longer be trusted to follow the law. Prior to the Snowden leaks I would have passed this kind of activity off as tinfoil hat idiocy. Not any more. The tinfoil hat crowd doesn't look so stupid these days. Every time our government claims they're not doing something, we find out a week later that they were lying to us. I'm pretty fucking fed up with that.