so what do u guys feel about the actions of Edward Snowden ?

Don't like it that the US gov is reading my mails or my gov's mails and such. The whole fight terrorism is so 2000. To monitor the whole world cause of 2 terrorist attacks in 10 or so years seems like a really lame excuse.

i have no prob. with the gov't knowing who i call. If it keeps me and my family safer then go for it. now that the method is out it weakens our efforts to fight terrorism.
I say it was wrong.

The government is welcome to seek a warrant to search my e-mail or my phone records, but to do so without my explicit permission is a direct violation of my privacy provided I was utilizing my own resources to access these communication tools.

But I don't necessarily consider Snowden a "patrioit." I suspect he has a highly inflated sense of ego and I would say it's presumptuous of an individual to think they know how this stuff will unfold best. At the same time, I do think it's important that these unofficial activities be brought under scrutiny.

neither actually

But thats his argument isn't it? Congress had asked NSA, what are you guys doing. And they said nothing.
So Eddy decides that the congress, the general public both in the US and outside must know and have a say in it.
He is a criminal in overstepping - spamming that material out to every congressman/senator should have been enough.

But a patriot is a man who stands up and tries to fix the wrongs in his country. So patriot yes, but must take his punishment.

Right now every data assurance agreement, such as the US-EU Safe Harbour agreements are invalid. And that's big - the EU parliament wants the fine for breaching that agreement to be 2% of a companies annual worldwide turnover.
To put that into perspective, Microsoft's annual turnover of 16 billion would result in a fine of 320 million.

This.

Actually, Congress knew. They've known for a long time. They were the ones who wrote the bill that gave them the authority to do it. They've had oversight. We've had judges re-authorizing the measure every three months for years now. Snow is basically a traitor or an idiot. Usually those are one and the same.

Please show me sources that prove Congress knew exactly how far these agencies have gone into monitoring information. And you can't have judges in secret courts renewing authorization of such a program and have it declared "constitutional". It just doesn't work that way.

he is a patriot.

"those who would surrender essential liberties for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." Benjamin Franklin

Saying "congress knew" is extremely uninformed. Certain people in congress knew -- such as those on the select intelligence committees, perhaps. But that freshman tea party rep who just got there, he wasn't going to be informed.

IMHO, the entire FISA court system has now been called into question. Yes, they were authorizing the VZW program. And on what grounds? Who are those judges? Who appointed them? Why did they think blanket "capture it all" techniques were the best option on the table?

The whole thing (FISA and PRISM) disgusts me. Combine this with what we are doing with UAV's (drones) around the world, in secret, in violation of many international laws and soveriegnties... We are setting ourselves up for massive problems.

Oh joy, we stopped a crazy guy from blowing himself up... and made 1/2 of the world hate us in the process and the other 1/2 simply note that we aren't a nation of laws anymore. Win!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/...n-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

That had 8k sigs this morning and 28k sigs as of this post.

I think that he is a whistleblower and as such, should be accorded all the protections of the law that can be applied in his case.

I think that the Government of the U.S. has too many secrets and not enough transparency. More than any government should have anyway.

The U.S. Government needs to closely follow the constitution. If it fails to do this, it will become a hostile enemy of the people!

Ok, I have concluded that most of you have an opinion and you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Read the Iran-Contra scandal declassified documents. The government operating outside the control of the public government pretty much voids a democratic nation. Whistle blowing is appropriate when the government is violating signed treaties or the constitution.

hees a patriot....you dumb serfs will regret the govt having all your info when they cypress your bank account.

Agreed, more or less.

Traitor is an anagram of Ratriot

and norom is an anagram of moron. I wish it could have been a palindrome, but it is what it is.

It's now up to 43,659 signatures...

Walby: I think that is the first time I've heard "cypress" used as a verb, but I like it.

petitions on the internet as about as useful as a poop flavored popsicle

You can at least throw a poop-flavored popsicle at someone.

My thinking on this has evolved. Prior to the IRS scandal I believed that government is inefficient, wasteful, unfairly favors some over others, and corrupt in the sense that it is used for personal gain. I didn't think it was malevolent. Post IRS, I was wrong about the latter. I do not want this kind of power in the hands of a regime I trust only slightly more than Manuel Noriega's regime. Therefore Snowden is a patriot.

Really? Where?

Snowden and Bradly Manning should both be put up against a wall and shot. They knew the rules, they chose to violate their oaths and break them, simple treason.

Asking a government not to listen is like asking a frog not to hop. The only funny part of this story is the look of shock and righteous indignation on the faces of so many people that obviously knew better.

archaic i categorically disagree.

they should be hanged.

Archaic, are you Canadian or something? I present to you the 4th Amendment of the Constitution:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

Snowden and Manning are different. Manning just did an indiscriminate data dump to WikiLeaks. Snowden was selective about what he revealed only revealing enough to bring awareness to unconstitutional government activity to a legitimate journalist.

Manning's offense was clearly worse than Snowden. Snowden disclosed the existence of an unconstitutional program via an NSA Powerpoint. Manning leaked detailed communications which related to specific and sometimes ongoing operations including names, positions, relations, etc. of people working in the field, sometimes in secrecy to support our national interests.

Not to say there weren't very interesting things in the wikileaks that were also violations of signed treaties, but its one thing to say "hey look, here is their own documentation that they have an illegal program" and "hey look, here are the detailed exchanges of hundreds of individuals by name, date, place, etc."

He's a criminal; from a legal standpoint it's not really a question. He betrayed his country and government and it was wrong.

So I am against what he did.

Remember that what the U.S. Government has been doing isn't illegal. It probably should be, but it's not; so he wasn't simply bringing illegal activity to light, he was disclosing sensitive classified information which is something that we cannot allow, no matter how good the intentions.

Now that doesn't mean I agree with the Government's actions; I generally agree with what John Oliver said: "Nobody's saying you did anything illegal, we just think it's weird that you didn't have to."

The government didn't violate that. First they got permission; just as police can search your house with a warrant.

More importantly though; they didn't search or invade your property at all. All your calls go through phone lines and switchboards. All your emails go through similar things and through servers. They don't need to search your house for listen to your calls. They can get you on the phone line, the switchboard on your street/block, at the servers, etc. They aren't allowed to go in your home to look at your computer; but they can intercept it the second you hit send; they're crafty like that.

not a patriot... but he isn't a traitor

If truth is your enemy, then you are on the wrong side.

The US government is on the wrong side.

The legality of what the US government is doing is highly questionable. The Supreme Court did not say it was Constitutional, it dismissed the initial suit due to lack of standing because no one had evidence they were being spied upon. Now that there is evidence I'd imagine this will move quickly back to the USSC. I certainly think wiretapping everyone and going on a fishing expedition violates the 4th amendment quite egregiously.

Also the question of whether he is a criminal is also in doubt. Can it be a crime to report unconstitutional government behavior? I'm not sure that it can.

Snowden is a human patriot, not a US patriot IMO.

We now have the means to build the tools to implement the worst tyranny in the history of the world. Please stop working on perfecting those tools US :P

The worst part is that the terrorists win :( They hate democracy and freedom and all that it stands for, and they made us violate and compromise with it :(

http://youtu.be/CQzj-Ha0lu0
Lee Camp's latest in his Moment Of Clarity series

tldr.

he was probably an Earth player

It doesn't though. The fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizures. In the past that would be enough; but the fourth amendment only protects you and your property. Every street as a switchboard on it that directs calls automatically; that's not your property. That's government property so the fourth amendment does protect search and seizures of that, which means your calls can be monitored.

Think of it like mail; the government can't go into your house to look at your mail. But if you send something in the mail they can open it up and check if they feel there's a reasonable chance that there's anthrax inside of it.

What they did may very well be a violation of the US Constitution. Laws get passed and then struck down as unconstitutional almost every year. Also, we have no "real" oversight here, IMHO. They went to FISA to get approval for the "program", which is a dragnet collecting a TON of crap. What happens after that??? Who gets access and use of that information AFTER the "approval"? Who oversees that? Oh wait, we don't know because it is all secret...

Like it or not, this came out right alongside the IRS scandal. Nobody should need that case to know that sometimes people in positions of power abuse that power. Not just "top people" but even low-level people who suddenly find themselves with more than they should have.

Do you remember the Choicepoint scandal? I HAD ACCESS TO THAT DATABASE!!! I was just a low-level wireless data sales guy at the time selling to law enforcement so they gave me access to the database on my Blackberry so I could go "show and tell" to Police Chiefs to get them to buy it. I could run any person in America and pull up a ton of info. And that was WAY LESS info than we are talking about here.

Have you watched this video? The actual interview with Snowden? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P_0iaCgKLk

He says "I sitting at my desk as an analyst (a contractor) had the authority to run a wiretap on anyone"... Once the tool and data "exist", the potential abuse of that system is so so so so easy... This guy had the same moment I had with the Choicepoint system -- suddenly I realized I had WAY more access than I should have had and nobody was thinking twice about it. I was supposed to just "do my job" and go "sell" this awesome data to law enforcement. We were encouraged to run live real-time queries on random people in the room during the demo because the fear it caused would always make them "want" the tool, no matter how scary it was.

"I think its important to understand that you can't have 100 percent security and then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society." - Barack Obama

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin

Jon Stewart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvi4R9ntk6I

The government doesn't own any of those switches. Those are private company owned switches built on local and state government right of ways. Those private companies are not willingly giving up this data.

In your example you correctly state the government can open mail under REASONABLE SUSPICION. The government cannot track ALL mail indiscriminately and decide who was doing what based on that practice, which is what they are doing here.

Traitor. I hope we find him and execute him.

Uh, nothing about that is true. Katz v. US says that the cops can't monitor your calls without a warrant. 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Indeed, it said that monitoring of calls must be "so narrowly circumscribed that a duly authorized magistrate, properly notified of the need for such investigation, specifically informed of the basis on which it was to proceed, and clearly apprised of the precise intrusion it would entail, could constitutionally have authorized, with appropriate safeguards, the very limited search and seizure" - which is hardly what the NSA was doing. id at 354-355. SCOTUS has held that you don't have a 4th Amend protection for WHO you call (Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)) but the substance of your call is protected. The metadata about your calls is separately protected by statute. You should also see US v. Warshak, 631 F.3d 266 (6th Cir. 2010), which addresses email monitoring.

Further, your comment about the mails is off too. In 1878, the SCOTUS said:

"No law of Congress can place in the hands of officials connected with the postal service any authority to invade the secrecy of letters and such sealed packages in the mail; and all regulations adopted as to mail matter of this kind must be in subordination to the great principle embodied in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution ... regulations excluding matter from the mail cannot be enforced in a way which would require or permit an examination into letters, or sealed packages subject to letter postage, without warrant, issued upon oath or affirmation, in the search for prohibited matter" Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, 733-755 (1878).

The gov't could track to whom you send your mail, but it couldn't open it at will.

Back on topic, I think that arguing about Snowden misses the larger point - the debate about whether the gov't can or should be doing what they're doing.

Arguing about Snowden is the topic of this thread. If you wish to turn this thread to arguing about whether or not the government should be doing what they're doing, create your own thread.

Patriot. The US is on the path back to the freedoms of the mid-1850's.

Technically the government owns practically everything; including the land those are on. But that's not really the point, the point is that you don't own it so the fourth amendment doesn't protect it for you.

Yes, reasonable suspicion; which for the case at hand means they need two things.

1) A 51% chance that the person they are monitoring is foreign. That's pretty easy to get, if they pushed it they could just say that American's only represent 4% of the world population so there's a 96% chance that the person online is a foreigner.

2) They need to make requests to the agency who oversees them. Easy enough since they requested over 1000 times last year and were never denied.


They didn't need to violate any laws; they just weakened the regulations to the point where they could justify it practically anytime.

Actually the NSA was doing that, and they're not police. In addition to that the fourth amendment only applies to American citizens in the United States; not to foreign persons oversees; to which they set up a regulation requiring only 51% certainty that the person they are monitoring is a foreigner, thus bypassing the fourth amendment protection anyways.


The government absolutely can open your mail if they have a reasonable belief that there is anthrax in it. Heck, reasonable belief of a crime in progress allows them to enter your house without a warrant. Reasonable belief in this case was specifically defined as a 51% chance that the person online is a foreigner. The U.S. only represents 4% of the population of the world; so that's easy to justify.


That's what I think you don't understand. You want this to be illegal; you want them to have violated the law. But they haven't. They need a reasonable belief or permission. They have both. They did it all legally and they've been doing it for years and we've known for years. They didn't need to violate the law to do it; they weakened it instead. They defined reasonable in such a way that they always have a reasonable belief and the people who need to ok their actions never say no.

That's just totally incorrect. I don't really feel like typing a long paragraph explaining all of the ways you are wrong at the moment but the major reason this was all kept so secret was primarily to prevent people from suing on Constitutional grounds or challenging the fact that they are being spied on in court.

Your 4% mathematical calculation doesn't even make any sense either considering they are monitoring domestic calls. That right there makes me question your overall intelligence.

Who's this rpottage fellow? What alliance does he play in?

I'm getting the feeling he's just a small-time troll.

Way to ad hom rather than actually addressing the issue.

Now you say it was kept secret; so allow me to post this from 2006:
http://yahoo.usatoday.com/...gton/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Then let me point out Warrentless Wiretapping approved by Bush Jr. and FISA which replaced it and loosened the rules.

Now allow me to point out that you and I are talking online in an international conversation so nothing on this is private for you.

Now let me point out that they're not just monitoring calls; they're monitoring emails and websites which is where the 4% calculation comes into effect.

Then let me point out that the story that broke in the Guardian Newspaper was about not the NSA listening in on calls but them collecting your call records which is a story that broke in 2006 (the link provided).

Then let me point out that the documents released do not say they have been listening and recording your calls.

Then let me point out that there's a difference in what's going on. I.E. that them collecting information on your calls is handled differently than on your emails. The information on your calls has been legal since 2001 under the warrantless wiretapping and doesn't require a warrant because of that. The emails is a program meant to monitor the internet actions of foreigners and they only require 51% certainty that the person is a foreigner. As that's online; that's where the 4% population comes into play.

Finally; let me call you a douche for ad hom attacking me on an issue you are unclear on; especially when your logic requires you to ignore the fact that the story broke 7 years ago.

anyone remember Room 641A ?

"Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency that commenced operations in 2003 and was exposed in 2006"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

its been pretty much out in the open for the last 20 years, across a lot of countries, except that noone saw or wanted to see the true scale of the operation

http://www.wired.com/...veries/news/2006/05/70908

http://www.wired.com/...03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1

for anyone that wants to learn from a TV programme a long time before current news

http://www.pbs.org/...ages/frontline/homefront/

"The NSA's Eavesdropping at AT&T" is well worth seeing as an intro to the subject

http://www.nytimes.com/...washington/23cnd-nsa.html