Snowden is an a*hole

If secretly recording people's correspondence isn't spying, then what would you consider spying?
Also, what about this:
spy
/spī/
Noun
A person who secretly collects and reports information
A person who keeps close and secret watch on the actions and words of another or others

You do not have a right to be free from fear I'm sorry. There is a reason for that; fear is irrational, and people fear irrational things. The founders opted for freedom over safety, because they recognized that one is infinitely more valuable than the other.

It's sad so many people don't understand that liberty and security are often on opposite ends of the spectrum, with privacy being on the same side as liberty. What you're describing is the reasoning behind every police state ever; sacrificing liberty and privacy for safety.

This is what happens when you create a hostile environment for legitimate whistleblowers. Maybe if they didn't try to silence everyone that spoke up, this type of thing wouldn't happen.

So baseless speculation then? I asked how you personally were in danger and you give me some maybes and mights and assumptions.
If you have to treat everyone like a criminal, then the terrorists have already won. They succeeded in turning a very free and open society into a police state.

Sure. My privacy was violated, my 4th amendment rights were violated, and if the information were ever used in any sort of case, my 5th amendment would be violated. There are also considerations for the common law standard of innocent until proven guilty.

It only seems absurd because you are moving the goalpost. You claimed someone is incapable of understanding something unless they have credentials in an area. I demonstrated that this is obviously false using an example.

To me he did. He went public with unconstitutional activity being carried out by the state in the name of national security. Before you ask; 4th amendment.
The people who wrote the document were not all lawyers, so I don't know why you assume one has to be a lawyer to understand it. Are you claiming that a large portion of the founders did not understand the constitution themselves?

Yes. This is about a definition of what constitutes money laundering, not popular opinion. Judges, like everyone else, can be swayed by more than just the law. If you look at the definition of money laundering, you will see how absurd your position is. Think about the way the Mexican cartels do it; do you need a judge to tell you what you already know? When they buy off their local judges, does that somehow make laundering not a crime anymore?

No, I'm depending on myself. I applaud Snowden for getting the information out there so we can make our own decisions. If you would rather blindly follow the state that's fine, but don't expect me to do the same.

Pervasive spying and data collection? What we've been talking about the whole time.

This is where we differ. I would choose freedom over safety almost every time. If you have no freedom, then what exactly are you protecting or keeping safe? If we have to treat every American citizen as a criminal or a suspect, then we have already lost anything worth protecting.

 

When you run out of "bad guys", the current "good guys" become the new target for continuity of fiscal preservation. It doesn't take much intellect to look at communist countries in the 1970's and 1980's for blatant examples.

 

Naw, you are just paranoid. You'll be fine. If you are that scared don't use the Internet or make cell phone calls.

 

So you see an end game? The NSA will declare one day "Hey guys, we've killed every last bad A-rab. We all now need to find jobs flipping burgers."

 

There is no end game. It's just life. It evolves.

 

Correct. It evolves into corrupt communism. Poland and the USSR are obvious examples. Fink out your neighbor for a fee (even if it is a lie, you still get the fee).

 

He is clearly a copy of Assange, a helper (because he get so much attention and is allowed to speak via the mass media) Leaking means a self exposing system, this sets anger in people, many start to fight this and listen to 'opposition' politicians. Another revolutionary act in a time with only revlolutionary politics (only problem causing)

 

No, that's just you making things up.

 

I'm not talking about all his IT-guy buddies, I'm talking about the strategic planners, lawyers, federal judges, and agency directors who knew about this program. Especially the lawyers and judges - their job is to think about privacy law. If they aren't co-conspirators, how would you describe them?

How's that any different from public opinion (where Snowden thinks this will be resolved), where groupthink drives our economy into doing everything from buying iPhones to inflating housing prices.

It's interesting that Yahoo fought the court order to participate back in 2008 (following the appropriate measures) on Fourth Amendment grounds and lost. I appreciate what they did, but the outcome only reinforces my conviction that this program is not a violation of anyone's rights. Call me crazy for trusting the lawyers and judges whose job it is to understand the nuances of legal authorities and Constitutional law over the conscience of a security-guard-turned-IT-guy. He obviously discounts their opinions.

I agree with that. But what if you go to the cops AND a series of lawyers and every time they say OK, we understand your concern, but in fact no crime is being committed? Going to the press means you are indicting not only the criminal, but the cops and the judges, too.

That security guard was doing his job, which is more than I can say for Snowden. And he had more faith in the legal process than in a survey of public opinion.

Time will tell. But just because he's convicted by his delusions of paranoia does not mean what he did was right.

The point is that the government "totally" investigated Watergate before the press got involved.

 

A) Bull(*)(*)(*)(*). You're only saying that because the actual text disproves your argument so you want a secret court ruling that ignores the 4th to back you up.
B) Because it wouldn't amount to jack (*)(*)(*)(*) and you know it because the government would never willingly give up that kind of power

 

In other words, the constitution is just something you wipe your ass with.

 

Snowden is a patriot and when Cuba becomes a refuge for allegedly free Americans you know it's time for the US to just off itself. I hate America and wish it would dissolve.

Hopefully someday some pissed off Millennials will be like the Castro brothers and Che, making the nation inhospitable for the wealthy. They're all better than every brain dead bozo since Teddy Roosevelt who has hegemonic heckhole where the wrong are not punished and people suffer.

 

Snowden is a Patriot and you hate America and wishes it dissolves? I don't think "patriot" means what you think it means.

 

Snowden he is work for China, purpose is make US government embarrassed, I give American suggestion to deal with China or Chinese, you don't need talk/negotiation/discuss/asking anything to China government or chinese, only tell them what you want and what is their consequence, if they still keep gangster, punch them directly than they will begging you.

 

Police states are created to control the populace. This has nothing to do with that.

Please share how you've been treated like a criminal. For some reason they left me out, no one has treated me like a criminal.

"So baseless speculation then? I asked [in what way was your freedom possibly affected] and you give me some maybes and mights and assumptions."

I am addressing this specific case, where the legality of this program has been established multiple times by credentialed judges and legislators. I'm only pointing out how weak it is to consider the IT-guy's judgment over all of theirs.

So the bottom line is that you think this IT-guy and the average person are better at interpreting the Fourth Amendment than judges and lawyers whose job is to understand U.S. and Constitutional law. We will have to disagree there.

Are you claiming the Constitution is equally understood by anyone who reads it? Or even that the founders all had equal understanding of what was written?

Except that this isn't about money laundering, it's about something more complex and nuanced.

Again, Snowden made the judgment call that the public should decide this program, but who is he to make that decision? Why don't we rely on the public to decide all programs? Why don't we rely on the public to set our budget? And approve all laws? Maybe people in government should stop making decisions and should "ask the audience" for everything?

We will also have to disagree that collecting data over public IT infrastructure constitutes "intrusion." Again, if they were pulling it off people's home computers and home networks, I'd call that intrusion.

I'd say that we are like most Americans in that we value liberty above all. Where we differ is that I consider some level of security to be essential to liberty - otherwise we wouldn't bother having police or military forces - and I consider privacy less crucial (though not irrelevant). If I read you right, you consider privacy more important than security, which I believe ultimately undermines freedom.

 

A) A secret court ruling specifically considering the Fourth Amendment from 2008 already backs me up.

B) What you don't understand is that our government is not a unified construct. It's always at odds with itself, keeping itself in check, and accusing itself of either violating the rights of the people or failing in its responsibility to keep the people safe. Sometimes one side of the government wins and sometimes the other side wins. But your claim that "the government would never willingly give up that kind of power" is false, unprovable, and rooted in paranoia.

 

That just about sums it up: a self-proclaimed America-hater who wishes America would dissolve is hailing Snowden as a patriot. Peas in a pod, I guess.

 

A) That court is not answerable to the people. It is not public, we don't know its decisions most of the time, and because its composed of the same people who want this kind of (*)(*)(*)(*) they approve this stuff 99% of the time, which they know a public court would not do. They are ignoring the 4th amendment - the only court that is allowed to change the interpretation of the constitution is the
supreme court when cases of conflict of interpretation come up. Therefore, the US Government is violating the 4th amendment but no one is doing anything about it.

B) That's only in theory. Because of various laws passed since WWII, the executive branch can basically do whatever it wants. They keep secrets from the legislature, as this whole NSA thing proves, and the legislature can't get rid of it because they themselves have a vested interest in keeping government power - the legislature has gone along with all the Executive's power grabs. Also, the judicial system cannot be used to challenge it because the evidence necessary to declare it unconstitutional can be legally kept secret by the executive branch by being declared a "state secret". And my claim is not unproven - when was the last time the US government down-sized itself? When did it ever give up control of something?

It doesn't.

 

Not directly. No federal judge is "answerable to the people." It was intentionally set up that way so the judges wouldn't base their decisions on public opinion.

B) That's only in theory. Because of various laws passed since WWII, the executive branch can basically do whatever it wants.[/quote]

Thank you for sharing your conspiracy-theory-laced dystopian opinion of how the U.S. government functions. Good luck being taken seriously outside of late night talk-radio shows.

What are you talking about? The Classified Information Procedures Act says you are full of (*)(*)(*)(*). Here's even an example of a circuit court overruling the President's request to withhold Top Secret evidence from a lawsuit.

The U.S. government will never down-size, but that doesn't mean it never limits itself or self-corrects.[/QUOTE]

 

More or less, although again, I think Snowden's motivations are a lot more coherent and admirable.

 

No, in other words we have to make reasonable changes to our interpretations of the Constitution that are aligned with the evolution of technology and innovation.

 

Most traitors do seem to have a well thought out and coherent reason for betraying their country. Manning seems to be an exception, and you might want to include Robert Hanssen as an exception as well. Just because their treason is coherent doesn't, in my mind, make it admirable.

 

No, the State Secrets Privilege says YOU are full of (*)(*)(*)(*). Google that - you'll find all the legitimate cases against government wrong-doing being thrown out because the evidence necessary was classified. THAT is bull(*)(*)(*)(*), that if the government decides the information that would prove them guilty of something would "compromise national security", you can't have it. Of course, you're not allowed to see the evidence, so even if it wouldn't compromise national security, you'd never know that.

Why is it you still trust the US government? How many times must it be proven they are pulling crap behind our backs without telling us? How many more Iran-Contras, Gulf of Tonkins, Iraq Wars, PATRIOT Acts, NSA domestic spy programs and abuses of the IRS need to be committed for you to admit the US government is corrupt and power-mad? Spying on citizens? Tapping phones? Spying on and sabotaging political opponents? Lying about the way the government runs? Lying to start wars? This is the kind of (*)(*)(*)(*) they pulled in Nazi Germany - hell, this is so over-bearing and controlling it's positively Stalin-esque.

This stuff used to be conspiracy theory but it's not anymore, and people like you who insist it is will be the people who allow America to become a full-blown fascist dictatorship; we're already well on the way there.

 

LOL, human nature does not change and technology does not change the constitution. Rights are still rights no matter if a new iPhone comes out or not.

 

Police states also TRACK their people. They demand "papers please" at any moment. A denizen of such a state is watched all the time for any reason.

because the state has done away with even the pretense of needing a cause to track me. They've done the same with you. It's a few steps away from the usual monitoring anklet, but not much. If you used your cell phone, the government knows exactly where you were and who you called. But whatever, treating people like suspects and tracking them even without evidence they committed a crime is exactly what the founders had in mind.