Snowden and the Pulitzer

[Skeptic Ginger]

And I think it's naive to worry about the NSA over, say, the FBI, the TSA, or worst of all in my experience, the local police force.

Perhaps this is the root of the misconceptions about each other. I'm not particularly worried about the current NSA activity. But it was very disconcerting to see armed, uniformed, unidentified men standing with local police at a peaceful Iraq anti-war rally under Bush. It was disconcerting to read about Blackwater and the unaccountable actions some of their employees took policing New Orleans under a private contract after hurricane Katrina.

The NSA can spy all they want. Heck, marketers are certain to know more about me than the government does, and the marketers surely care more. I'm not involved with whistle blowing and I'm not worried about being falsely accused.

But we should still be very concerned. Citizens need to keep the government in check. What Manning and Snowden did is part of that process. There's no evidence I can see any anti-terrorist measures were thwarted.

And that's why I don't fully trust this argument. If the NSA listens to my phone calls, they'll discover nothing significant, and they'll move on. The cops? They just run up pointing guns at you and screaming contradictory orders and threats. Yes, you can say that collecting metadata is unconstitutional (although it's info already owned by a third party, and thus not private), But COINTELPRO is a poor example, given what Hoover and his thugs actually did.

No, it's not a poor example. It's an example of the history everyone should learn in high school because history forgotten is history repeated.

Look what just happened to this country.

Bill Moyers Buying the War

Rachel Maddow Why We Did It

It should never have happened. I watched it, arguing with the right wingers on this very forum that we were being lied to. Go look at my old posts. Yet there are still people in this thread who just can't believe Bush and Cheney lied. They must have just made a mistake. How gullible is that? Of course they lied. They knew exactly what they were doing creating a a PR campaign of smoke and mirrors to get the American (and the British, BTW, I doubt Blair's hands are completely clean given the Downing St Memo) public to support a war effort that really had to do with opening a large oil market.

Of course the government is capable of deception. Lot of good it did to know that when so many citizens were fooled again, willing to believe the government wouldn't possibly be invading Iraq for reasons other than WMDs. We entered a war we never should have yet again.

You're worried about terrorist attacks. That makes sense. But did you look at why 911 happened? Did you look past the sound bites? The Clinton admin warned the incoming Bush admin and they ignored the warnings. Remember the PDB? "Bin Laden determined to Strike in US"? Remember what Coleen Rowley had to say?

It wasn't that we didn't collect enough data. It was that people at the top did a lousy job.

Do people really not understand this? The spy game is not a game. Of course, they lie.

Yes, I am against warrentless wiretaps - and I did read the article you posted, but I didn't see any clear sign that an agent deciding to listen in on phone calls without warrents was considered acceptable by the NSA.

Of course they did. The NSA sought to get around the law, not follow it. They sought to gather information from the TelComs, claiming that was not information from individuals, therefore no one's privacy was infringed upon. Bush simply ignored the FISA court, claiming metadata was not covered information and used the 72 hour loophole, gathering the data first, getting permission later.

Are you claiming it's fine to spy on citizens as long as the NSA finds a loophole in the law that lets them?

Again, both Snowden and Manning released classified info to the public, and to non-US people specifically, of doings that were not at all illegal. They are not whistleblowers.

Snowden and Manning said, 'Look closer, don't take the government's word without any transparency or accountability.'

Anyone who thinks the days of Hoover and Nixon are long gone missed the whole GW Bush era.

 

[H'ethetheth]

If would be interesting to see someone show why what they are doing is wrong using direct evidence and without using the phrases "what if" and "they could".

a) A nuclear event could kill half a million instantly and cause trillions of damage eventually putting tens of millions into poverty worldwide

It would also be interesting to see someone demonstrate what terrorists do without using those words. So far terrorists have used very simple low tech methods and have managed to kill about 20000 peple in 40 years, worldwide. .

 

[Joey McGee]

a war effort that really had to do with opening a large oil market.

Just think, if anyone is ever able to prove this crank conspiracy theory, people will go to jail! Which will really be a slap in the face since the Chinese and others get the vast majority the new Iraq's oil.

 

[Joey McGee]

It would also be interesting to see someone demonstrate what terrorists do without using those words. So far terrorists have used very simple low tech methods and have managed to kill about 20000 peple in 40 years, worldwide.

Are you telling me that you do not accept the security community's assessment of nuclear terror risk? You could start here.

http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/nuclearterrorism/

 

[H'ethetheth]

Are you telling me that you do not accept the security community's assessment of nuclear terror risk? You could start here.

http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/nuclearterrorism/

According to that article, the "more plausible way" for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons is to build one from scratch with weapons grade material. Compare the complexity of this with sending a handful of guys to flight school, and acquiring box cutters.

 

[Joey McGee]

According to that article, the "more plausible way" for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons is to build one from scratch with weapons grade material. Compare the complexity of this with sending a handful of guys to flight school, and acquiring box cutters.

I don't have the slightest idea what point you think you're making.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/17529/nuclear_terrorism_faq.html

In a 2005 poll of international security experts taken by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the median estimate of the chance of a nuclear attack in the next ten years was 29 percent — and a strong majority believed that it was more likely that terrorists would launch a nuclear attack than that a state would. Given the horrifying consequences of such an attack, even a 1 percent chance would be enough to call for rapid action to reduce the risk.

 

[H'ethetheth]

I don't have the slightest idea what point you think you're making.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/17529/nuclear_terrorism_faq.html

Okay, so did they get any terrorists that have come close in 9 of the 10 years after 2005? Has all the spying delivered any of these nuclear physicist terrorists capable of making a "suitcase nuke"? Is there any indication it was a close shave at some point? What about the next10 years? 60% chance?

 

[jimbob]

The price of freedom as you are construing is ... freedom.

And that is the most important cost, not the fraction of a percent of a departmental budget.

 

[Joey McGee]

Okay, so did they get any terrorists that have come close in 9 of the 10 years after 2005? Has all the spying delivered any of these nuclear physicist terrorists capable of making a "suitcase nuke"? Is there any indication it was a close shave at some point? What about the next10 years? 60% chance?

Are you trying to make a point? Are you telling me you're incapable of doing your own research? Or are you trying to cast doubt on the consensus of expert belief that it is a significant threat? Perhaps you could read the reports from the most recent nuclear summits and tell me why they are a bunch of kooks?

Nuclear Attack a Ticking Time Bomb, Experts Warn

Martin Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford and co-inventor of public key cryptography, estimates the odds at 1 percent per year going forward.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just think, if anyone is ever able to prove this crank conspiracy theory, people will go to jail! Which will really be a slap in the face since the Chinese and others get the vast majority the new Iraq's oil.

You confuse 'opening an oil resource' with, 'get the oil for a specific country or company'.

Of course I don't expect you to watch the Rachel Maddow special where the evidence was carefully laid out.

CNN: Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil

You miss the nuance in your effort to lump everything into the nutter CT category.

 

[Mumbles]

Apologies for this post, my keyboard is acting up...

Perhaps this is the root of the misconceptions about each other. I'm not particularly worried about the current NSA activity. But it was very disconcerting to see armed, uniformed, unidentified men standing with local police at a peaceful Iraq anti-war rally under Bush. It was disconcerting to read about Blackwater and the unaccountable actions some of their employees took policing New Orleans under a private contract after hurricane Katrina.

The NSA can spy all they want. Heck, marketers are certain to know more about me than the government does, and the marketers surely care more. I'm not involved with whistle blowing and I'm not worried about being falsely accused.

Hm. I can agree with most of that, and I'm happy to see an NSA detractor note the role of for-profit marketers, in particular. Thing is, I actually *am* worried about being falsely accused, or with being solely accused with a charge like "resisting arrest". And yes, I agree that it was shameful that private contractors had any involvement with policing. But I've also known multiple people who were tossed into jail, because they were walking down the street, or sitting on a porch, and some cop just ran up /;nd started freaking out. Hell, I got tossed behind bars as a teen, because I walked through a subway turnstile, and some guy started screaming that I had jumped it.

But we should still be very concerned. Citizens need to keep the government in check. What Manning and Snowden did is part of that process. There's no evidence I can see any anti-terrorist measures were thwarted.

And here's where we don't agree. As far as I know, everyone who gets a clearance, agrees to only reveal info to people with a clearance, and a "need to know". Breaking this code is a serious crime, and should only be done in cases of serious abuse.

I'll agree that Manning exposed videos of innocent people being killed, and I'm okay with that. Folks need to understand that when you vote for war, you're voting for innocent people getting killed, among other things. That's simply a part of what war is, as much as we try to ensure that innocents do not suffer at all. And sure, having the government store metadata is probably not so good, although it's far from the worst abuse happening in the US.

But a lot of what I've heard from the two is completely reasonable, and not at all an abuse of law, and that's where I have an issue. Sorry, but there are some operations that should not be told to the public. Does the federal government classify too much? well, probably yes. Is it reasonable to ensure that some info never makes to the public? Also, yes.

No, it's not a poor example. It's an example of the history everyone should learn in high school because history forgotten is history repeated.

Look what just happened to this country.

Bill Moyers Buying the War

Rachel Maddow Why We Did It

It should never have happened. I watched it, arguing with the right wingers on this very forum that we were being lied to. Go look at my old posts. Yet there are still people in this thread who just can't believe Bush and Cheney lied. They must have just made a mistake. How gullible is that? Of course they lied. They knew exactly what they were doing creating a a PR campaign of smoke and mirrors to get the American (and the British, BTW, I doubt Blair's hands are completely clean given the Downing St Memo) public to support a war effort that really had to do with opening a large oil market.

For reference, I never said that COINTELPRO or the manipulation of intelligence leading to the Iraq war were okay. Neither one was. And I also argued on other forums that the Iraq war was a fool's errand - partly because it was clear that they had no WMDs aimed at the US, and partly because it was clear that it would stretch the US military to it's limit for no real reason.

You're worried about terrorist attacks. That makes sense. But did you look at why 911 happened? Did you look past the sound bites? The Clinton admin warned the incoming Bush admin and they ignored the warnings. Remember the PDB? "Bin Laden determined to Strike in US"? Remember what Coleen Rowley had to say?

It wasn't that we didn't collect enough data. It was that people at the top did a lousy job.

Actually, I'm not that concerned about terrorism. Rather, I view spying on other governments to be a fundamental part of any country. I'm honestly not offended when news comes out that another country is spying on the US.

Of course they did. The NSA sought to get around the law, not follow it. They sought to gather information from the TelComs, claiming that was not information from individuals, therefore no one's privacy was infringed upon. Bush simply ignored the FISA court, claiming metadata was not covered information and used the 72 hour loophole, gathering the data first, getting permission later.

Are you claiming it's fine to spy on citizens as long as the NSA finds a loophole in the law that lets them?

I would, If I worked for them.

Snowden and Manning said, 'Look closer, don't take the government's word without any transparency or accountability.'

Anyone who thinks the days of Hoover and Nixon are long gone missed the whole GW Bush era.

That isn't the argument, or at least not mine. Again, the argument is that people that go against their word need to ensure that they do so for specific reasons, and not just dump a bunch of documents into the public without reviewing them.

Also, tossing softball questions to Vladimir Putin after dumping said documents and running off to Russia is also a bad idea. Just saying.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
Hm. I can agree with most of that, and I'm happy to see an NSA detractor note the role of for-profit marketers, in particular. Thing is, I actually *am* worried about being falsely accused, or with being solely accused with a charge like "resisting arrest". And yes, I agree that it was shameful that private contractors had any involvement with policing. But I've also known multiple people who were tossed into jail, because they were walking down the street, or sitting on a porch, and some cop just ran up /;nd started freaking out. Hell, I got tossed behind bars as a teen, because I walked through a subway turnstile, and some guy started screaming that I had jumped it.

Police have serious problems in various local areas, certainly Albuquerque is the most recent example. At the same time, these departments are accountable. It's up to the public to speak up and insist on corrections.

With Blackwater, they were not accountable. They were hidden from accountability behind corporate lawyers and contract language. They were not required to identify themselves as employees of Blackwater, no badges, no IDs, just black uniforms and guns.

... And here's where we don't agree. As far as I know, everyone who gets a clearance, agrees to only reveal info to people with a clearance, and a "need to know". Breaking this code is a serious crime, and should only be done in cases of serious abuse.

I'll agree that Manning exposed videos of innocent people being killed, and I'm okay with that. Folks need to understand that when you vote for war, you're voting for innocent people getting killed, among other things. That's simply a part of what war is, as much as we try to ensure that innocents do not suffer at all. And sure, having the government store metadata is probably not so good, although it's far from the worst abuse happening in the US.

But a lot of what I've heard from the two is completely reasonable, and not at all an abuse of law, and that's where I have an issue. Sorry, but there are some operations that should not be told to the public. Does the federal government classify too much? well, probably yes. Is it reasonable to ensure that some info never makes to the public? Also, yes.

So you don't agree an employee who sees serious wrongdoing should ever speak up?

There are things that should have been disclosed and things that shouldn't have been disclosed.

The ultimate responsibility falls with the administrators who chose to hide things they shouldn't have, not the whistleblowers who disclosed the wrongdoing. If the disclosures included things that were not at issue, that's a separate issue and should be treated as such.

But whistleblowers are between a rock and a hard place, aren't they?

......I would, If I worked for them.

Then what's the point of the law (a Constitutional right BTW, against unreasonable searches and seizures)? If all that matters is finding a technical way around a law, then why not just bag the 4th Amendment altogether?

 

[Joey McGee]

You confuse 'opening an oil resource' with, 'get the oil for a specific country or company'.

I think you're just confused.

Of course I don't expect you to watch the Rachel Maddow special where the evidence was carefully laid out.

Wish I had that 30 minutes of my life back. So because we didn't invade North Korea over WMD that's evidence the Iraq War Resolution is irrelevant? Moronic.

CNN: Why the war in Iraq was fought for Big Oil

That's an opinion article, not a CNN article, which you imply using the format "CNN: Kooky Conspiracy Crap"

I stopped reading when they said that oil was the central goal of the war because Greenspan said Iraq was "largely about oil". What was he really talking about?

he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy
...
As for Iraq, Greenspan said that at the time of the invasion, he believed, like Bush, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something." While he was "reasonably sure he did not have an atomic weapon," he added, "my view was that if we do nothing, eventually he would gain control of a weapon."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601287.html

You miss the nuance in your effort to lump everything into the nutter CT category.

To me it's no different than someone telling me there are subtle or nuanced views to their theology. There is still no evidence for it, no matter how respectable they try and make it sound, no matter how many "mainstream" people accept it, it's still stupid. Good luck getting that new 9/11 investigation, I mean, those war crimes indictments.

Now, is this the best you have in trying to defend Snowden? You'd rather argue about oil and Iraq than make a coherent case involving the facts and Snowden's actions? His actions are justified because the government is guilty of war crimes in Iraq? Why is the Iraq war the number one source of derails? It's pretty hard to make the US into the bad guys when they are such good people and have so many justifications right? Except for... Iraq!

 

[jimbob]

I've realised ETA: one reason why I thought a lot of the content was common knowledge.

Charles Stross was alluding to some of the practices in a Lovecraftian spy thriller from 2004 -The Atrocity Archives.

My colleagues in GCHQ listen in on domestic US
phone calls, compile logs, and pass them across the
desk to their NSA liaisons—who are forbidden by charter
from spying on domestic US territory. In return, the NSA
Echelon listening posts give GCHQ a plausibly deniable
way of monitoring every phone conversation in western
Europe—after all, they're not actually listening; they're
just reading transcripts prepared by someone else,
aren't they? But in the twilight world of occult
intelligence, we aren't allowed to cooperate overtly. I
don't have a liaison here, any more than I'd have one in
Kabul or Belgrade: I'm technically an illegal, albeit on a
tourist visa. Any nasty reality excursions are strictly my
problem.

 

[Dragoonster]

Are you telling me that you do not accept the security community's assessment of nuclear terror risk? You could start here.

heh, the "security community". I guess you mean the Chicken Little community.

In a 2005 poll of international security experts taken by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the median estimate of the chance of a nuclear attack in the next ten years was 29 percent — and a strong majority believed that it was more likely that terrorists would launch a nuclear attack than that a state would. Given the horrifying consequences of such an attack, even a 1 percent chance would be enough to call for rapid action to reduce the risk.

And again "international security experts" as referencing a poll taken by a GOP hawk.

BTW. "Given the horrifying chance". 18,000 people a year die RIGHT NOW in this country from drunk driving, for one domestic reality. Way, way, way more than any terrorist attack has ever done. Do you think the NSA/FBI/US military should be investing trillions of dollars to deal with this? If not, why not? Are you concerned with actual criminal deaths, or not? Do you think the full weight of the Nation should be pointed against a huge source of deaths, or not?

3000 people die from a foreign terrorist attack: "Oh, let's spend trillions on stopping this from happening ever again!"

216,000 people die from drunk driving over the same time period: "...."

 

[Mumbles]

Police have serious problems in various local areas, certainly Albuquerque is the most recent example. At the same time, these departments are accountable. It's up to the public to speak up and insist on corrections.

With Blackwater, they were not accountable. They were hidden from accountability behind corporate lawyers and contract language. They were not required to identify themselves as employees of Blackwater, no badges, no IDs, just black uniforms and guns.

And on that, we agree. Actually, I despise the idea of private industry doing any sort of real police work - and I include private prisons in that, especially given how much power money has on politics.

So you don't agree an employee who sees serious wrongdoing should ever speak up?

I'm pretty sure I said the opposite of that.

There are things that should have been disclosed and things that shouldn't have been disclosed.

The ultimate responsibility falls with the administrators who chose to hide things they shouldn't have, not the whistleblowers who disclosed the wrongdoing. If the disclosures included things that were not at issue, that's a separate issue and should be treated as such.

I reject this. The ultimate responsibility falls on the person doing the disclosing. In fact, I'm sure that Manning and Snowden agreed to this, when they received their clearances.

But whistleblowers are between a rock and a hard place, aren't they?

Yes, they are, particularly in cases where whistleblowing carries legal penalties, as is the case with classified data. That does not change the fact that they promised to not disclose data, nor their moral obligation to leak genuine abuses despite said promise. And that's my point - Ellsberg was, in the end, very thoughtful about what he did. Manning was an idiot who just grabbed documents and dumped them into the public, and Snowden was apparently an angry Ron Paul supporter who acted out of ill-considered spite, which explains why he was at one point blathering about how the US might send a (slow, easy to spot on radar) Predator drone into Russian airspace to kill him.

Then what's the point of the law (a Constitutional right BTW, against unreasonable searches and seizures)? If all that matters is finding a technical way around a law, then why not just bag the 4th Amendment altogether?

The point is, of course, to restrain the government, and the people they hire. Of course, we're not very good at following the 4th anyway...

 

[Joey McGee]

heh, the "security community". I guess you mean the Chicken Little community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGzfx6YC0uw

And again "international security experts" as referencing a poll taken by a GOP hawk.

So what? Do you a) think he recruited the experts from a Republican donor list? b) That you can find a consensus, or significant percentage of experts who say that nuclear terrorism is not a significant threat? Go ahead and come up with a real response?

Is this how you're honestly handwaving away the threat of nuclear terror? That's incredibly stupid.

BTW. "Given the horrifying chance". 18,000 people a year die RIGHT NOW in this country from drunk driving, for one domestic reality. Way, way, way more than any terrorist attack has ever done. Do you think the NSA/FBI/US military should be investing trillions of dollars to deal with this? If not, why not?

Because it's not their job or their mandate.

Are you concerned with actual criminal deaths, or not? Do you think the full weight of the Nation should be pointed against a huge source of deaths, or not?

I have already been over this... they do spend billions of dollars on patrols, check points, courts, laws, education programs etc. There is a huge government push to bring in driverless cars and get companies to work together on a standard so that we can end accidents forever. Should it be a stronger push? Sure but what are they supposed to do?

3000 people die from a foreign terrorist attack: "Oh, let's spend trillions on stopping this from happening ever again!"

I'm pretty sure this is a caricature of the logic behind intelligence programs and an inaccurate estimate of their cost.

216,000 people die from drunk driving over the same time period: "...."

This is not true. And it's disgusting that you're trying to make this argument to morally attack the people who are trying to protect the country with it.

Unbelievably hysterical and uninformed.

 

[The Norseman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGzfx6YC0uwSo what? Do you a) think he recruited the experts from a Republican donor list? b) That you can find a consensus, or significant percentage of experts who say that nuclear terrorism is not a significant threat? Go ahead and come up with a real response?

Is this how you're honestly handwaving away the threat of nuclear terror? That's incredibly stupid.Because it's not their job or their mandate.I have already been over this... they do spend billions of dollars on patrols, check points, courts, laws, education programs etc. There is a huge government push to bring in driverless cars and get companies to work together on a standard so that we can end accidents forever. Should it be a stronger push? Sure but what are they supposed to do?I'm pretty sure this is a caricature of the logic behind intelligence programs and an inaccurate estimate of their cost.This is not true. And it's disgusting that you're trying to make this argument to morally attack the people who are trying to protect the country with it.

Unbelievably hysterical and uninformed.

You can go ahead and back up your assertions any time now.

 

[Joey McGee]

You can go ahead and back up your assertions any time now.

What would like evidence for this time? Perhaps that the sky is really blue?

 

[The Norseman]

What would like evidence for this time? Perhaps that the sky is really blue?

I find it disheartening trying to interact with you because you're not that stupid. I think you know exactly what I mean -- it's the same stuff I asked you for before, though you dodged it by claiming that you're not an expert. Also, argument via YouTube is pretty pathetic for a JREF member with many years and thousands of posts worth of experience.

So far, since you're demanding evidence from everyone else, I think that you should be willing to back up your statements first without even being asked to.