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

[Mark K]

Check out the Presidents statement today. I think the nut of it is that the scope of these new capabilities and vulnerabilities are so vast that they raise new questions.

Indeed.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Do they really raise new political questions about how we wish to be governed?

In part they do, but they needed help to make us ask those questions.

A hero's help.

Snowden's help.

 

[Rain Man]

Time to invite Snowden back to the US (he doesn't need a "pardon" because he didn't do anything wrong) and recognize him for his contribution to society everywhere, not just in the US.

He is a real hero, willing to sacrifice his personal safety and comfort, and future employability, so the truth can come out. Not many people of that calibre left.

If he doesn't like the US anymore, I'd like to invite him to move here to Canada. There's a certain prime minister who needs replacing up here.

dash

 

[Saorsa]

If damaging the ability of government to illegally collect data results in collateral damage to its ability to protect citizens, that's just like any other collateral damage. Too bad.

You set cars on fire in the 60s, didn't ya?

Shit before that, 130 foot bridge, cheap balsa glider, film can, carbide, water, pack of matches.

 

[Mark K]

Do they really raise new political questions about how we wish to be governed?

In part they do, but they needed help to make us ask those questions.

A hero's help.

Snowden's help.

Seems to me that question is fundamentally a part of all this, that and becoming dependent on the intertubes and modern conveniences. Snowden points to the risk of governmental abuse exclusively though.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

One thing for sure is that you can thank Snowden for the baby steps made by the president.

 

[Mark K]

Not much for a life in Russia.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I don't have to live in Russia, but I do get the benefits of Mr. Snowden's sacrifice. Those benefits may seem like "not much" to you, but are important to me.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

Mark would change his tune if it were Bush’s war on whistle blowers. But he’s a partisan jackass so WTF do you expect?

 

[GRUMPY]

Not much for a life in Russia.

Have you lived there?

 

[Mark K]

I don't have to live in Russia, but I do get the benefits of Mr. Snowden's sacrifice. Those benefits may seem like "not much" to you, but are important to me.

What did you get?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

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.

The answer to your question is the same as my answer to Mark's question. From the article:

President Obama is scheduled to announce on Friday what recommendations he is accepting from an advisory panel on changing N.S.A. practices. The panel agreed with Silicon Valley executives that some of the techniques developed by the agency to find flaws in computer systems undermine global confidence in a range of American-made information products like laptop computers and cloud services.

Embracing Silicon Valley’s critique of the N.S.A., the panel has recommended banning, except in extreme cases, the N.S.A. practice of exploiting flaws in common software to aid in American surveillance and cyberattacks. It also called for an end to government efforts to weaken publicly available encryption systems, and said the government should never develop secret ways into computer systems to exploit them, which sometimes include software implants.

The scope of these new capabilities and vulnerabilities are so vast that they raise new questions. The point of revealing them is to make us ask those questions.

We once had a thread about something the NSA was doing out in Utah. And nobody came.

 

[slatfatf]

I don't see Snowden as a hero, but I am still glad he leaked the info he did. I have real mixed emotions on a lot of this. On the one hand, I understand Jeff's point regarding sabotaging our surveilance capabilities in regards to foreign entities. On the other hand, the NSA has clearly been using much of their technology against us, and so I want to know what it's capabilities are, since anything they have in their toolchest may be used against us. I have lost all trust in the institution, and frankly in the govt itself. Having lost that trust, I am not satsified to hear that there is no evidence something has not been used against us yet. I am not satisfied with hearing "trust us". This is a serious problem for us, and I still don't think most people get how serious it is. Technology always moves in the direction of more powerful, less expensive, and more ubiquitous. These changes are not linear, they are exponential. That means that an expensive and limited capability like the usb/radio net tool, will in half a decade be commonplace and cheap to use against all of us. Just like two decades ago it would be unfathomable to think that the govt would have a permanent record of all of our emails, text messages, reading habits, and phone call histories, people today are discouting the possibility of the govt having listening devices and spyware installed in our refrigerators, cars, and toasters. People were wrong two decades ago, and they are wrong today. I fully realize that it makes me look crazy to say this, but that is only because I am saying it today and not five years from now, when everyone will just accept that it is the way things are. Basically, we are fucked unless we turn the ship around and soon.

 

[slatfatf]

I understand what you're saying but I disagree with the remedy. I don't think we need to blow up all of our spying capability because it might get used on us. Remember, WE are the gov't. If WE don't trust it, then its our own fault. And if we want to fix it, then we need to change the fundamental fabric of gov't and start putting people there who are public servants instead of power hungry fucktards. It CAN be done, it just takes us getting off our collective lazy asses to do it. The whole point of a representative gov't is that we send people we trust to watch over the NSA types so we don't have to disclose all our secrets to the world. I get Tom's point and I get yours.... but there are REAL bad guys out there plotting real harm to our nation. I am not willing to put that into the sunshine merely to appease the libertarian senses. Our liberties ARE extremely important. But you don't fix it by shooting the sheepdog when the sheepdog gets a little overzealous protecting the flock - you get a better shepard who is more involved in the process over overseeing the watchdog.

That trust is NOT going to return merely by destroying our capability. It will return only when we take WE THE PEOPLE seriously and take our gov't back and start demanding accountability from our public servants.

My take is that it is probably already too late. Most folks don't care, some do but have no ability to do anything through traditional poltical channels, the few who work outside of traditional channels are marginalized as crazies, extremists, traitors or terrorists. Do you honestly see any way to change things through elections in the next 4 years? Because if we are not past the point of no return now, we certainly will be in the next 5 to 10 years. At what point do we no longer have a form of govt worth defending?

 

[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.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

I was on the fence about Snowden before, but the more "revelations" that come out - io 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.

Sorry but Jeff has no balls...

 

[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.

 

[Mark K]

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.

 

[ramwel2010]

I was on the fence about Snowden before, but the more "revelations" that come out - io 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.

Sorry but Jeff has no balls...

I don't agree with Jeff on some issues, but he is one of very few people on this entire forum who I highly respect. I've met a lot of people through SA and while I have not met Jeff, I regard him as one of the more valued members of this online wasteland. He presents reasoned arguments and has shown himself capable of evolving views while remaining firm to his morals. Balls that clang, I say.

 

[tuk tuk Joe]

I was on the fence about Snowden before, but the more "revelations" that come out - io 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.

Sorry but Jeff has no balls...

I don't agree with Jeff on some issues, but he is one of very few people on this entire forum who I highly respect. I've met a lot of people through SA and while I have not met Jeff, I regard him as one of the more valued members of this online wasteland. He presents reasoned arguments and has shown himself capable of evolving views while remaining firm to his morals. Balls that clang, I say.

Thanks! FUK FUK Jo is an amusing clown. Clowns make me happy.

Don’t sweat it Jeff, my wife also has no balls and she’s fairly assertive. It’s not the end of the world after all...