The way Manning's trial has been handled and the way Snowdon's actions are being responded to make the truth obvious. There's a lot more shady business to be revealed and the U.S. government is scared as hell. They're absolutely desperate to discourage further would-be whistle-blowers. Obama just got caught in a rather public lie too. It doesn't sound like these Senators were briefed on PRISM before Tuesday even though Obama said, "every member of Congress has been briefed on this program". Honestly, if Americans will impeach a president for lying about his extra-curricular cigar-related activities, how can they let something like this slide?
Because he is black and we have lost the will to have open discussions about anyone of that race. We have gone to far in that we now give people too much special treatment for their gender or color of their skin.
Sadly if we had true equality this guy would be roasted....
we've had 4 years of people running around claiming that Obama wasn't born in the US and that he's a secret Muslim sleeper agent based on him being black. The claim that he isn't scrutinized because of his race is indefensible.
The reason Obama gets a pass is the same reason GWB got a pass on privacy invasions. Its seen as part of the WoT so people tend to give the government the benefit of the doubt. In general I think the populace is willing to give the government a lot of latitude when they see something as part of a 'war' effort.
Although I don't agree with the statement made, there does seem to be a large number of people who immediately use the race card on anyone that criticizes President Obama. Not that there aren't people who deserve the racist label, but everyone can't be racist for simply disagreeing with the man.
I agree with your WoT statement and polls tend to back it up.
I agree that those claims weren't credible. I struggle to see how the fact that absurd and derogatory claims got play in the press for 4 years supports your claim that Obama gets special treatment because of his color. Seems more like evidence against what you're claiming.
What concerns me most about this whole situation isn't even the surveillance, though I think that's pretty abhorrent. It's the fact that something so stupendous has been done without any kind of public debate - despite the fact that anyone with two brain cells to rub together can't help but see would at least be a strongly polarizing issue.
From this article it sounds like there hasn't even been much of a secret debate. If they won't consult the people about such an explosive issue, the least they could do is consult their elected representatives. Instead, they just did it, and now they want to sweep it all under the rug and tell us "we thought really hard about it and we decided it was OK - and after all, TERR'ISTS!". I have a sinking feeling that it'll work, though, and that this debate will not really happen anyway since most people don't seem to care.
From what we've been told, Greenwald has a giant cache of classified documents, and the people who actually know say this is the tip of the iceberg. I highly doubt he's shown all his cards yet, if only to milk this story as long as possible. Personally, my money is on another bombshell this Friday.
There was an extensive public debate about the Patriot act at the time of its passage, and the security proponents won. It's past time that we had another one, but anyone over about the age of 30 who wasn't aware of this wasn't paying attention.
It was opportunistically passed 45 days after 9/11. Very few Americans were in an even semi-rational position to understand or debate the nature of the Patriot Act. The only public discussion was a small minority of people thinking about the future implications, and the other radical majority that was reacting based on fear / emotion (and the lawmakers that passed it were counting on that, otherwise they would have waited a lot longer to pass it).
True, but so what? that's how things are in a democracy. I keep pointing out that a great many people simply do not share the concerns of privacy and civil liberties advocates, and people keep responding that the public is too uneducated or doesn't really understand. The reality is that a lot of people understand the implications just fine but they simply don't agree with the minority viewpoint. So they're foolish and short-sighted, but it'll be a cold day in hell before that changes.
> True, but so what? that's how things are in a democracy.
Using fear and emotion of a recent disaster to push an otherwise controversial law really has nothing to do with democracy. Any type of government would use this technique because it's so easy.
And you should demand your government to be better than that. I know I do. Even if you don't believe they'll listen (fair enough), the moment you stop complaining and bitching about it, is the moment you're saying "well, okay then, if you persist, I give up".
Additionally, I expect human beings to be bound by more than just laws or constitutions, but also by ethics, a will to stand up for what's right and against what's wrong. That's why governments and corporations are not persons. But you are, and as soon as you say "I'm okay with this because it's legal/constitutional", without being able to argue why it is also right (in your opinion, we can still disagree about this, but that's another matter entirely), you fail that test.
Governments and corporations are just agglomerations of persons, who act with varying ethical standards. Treating them as monolithic entities leads on astray into all sorts of fallacies.
As for my own ethical position, I think the US needs a constitutional amendment that creates an explicit right to privacy, rather than an inferred one. But I also think the head of the executive branch is bound to serve conflicting imperatives regarding defensive issues, and that it's foolish to expect government actors to tie their hands hands in fulfilling that mandate.
It sounds like this congressman is begging for another leak.
I smell blood. And a republican president in 2016. It looks like this is going to be Obama's big theme for his second term. Like LBJ, he inherited a shitty situation and made it much worse, and thus lost out for credit on all of his domestic work.
We'll see, but I don't see any easy out for Obama. Ironically the only thing saving him is that the conservatives really love these policies, and the liberals, who should be at his throat for this, really can't because he's part of their club. Lucky duck.
> I smell blood. And a republican president in 2016.
The Republicans haven't shown any sign of fixing the structural problems in their party that prevented them from offering an electable candidate in 2012. If they don't do that first, they won't do any better in 2016.
As John Huntsman noted in one of the early GOP debates: "Listen, when you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call into question the science of evolution, all I'm saying is that, in order for the Republican Party to win, we can't run from science". Unfortunately for the GOP, their nomination process almost guarantees that people like Huntsman, who believe that running from science is the wrong approach, are out early.
The Republicans need to get the Tea Party to split off and form a third party, and then run moderate Republicans. They would then be able to run candidates who don't want to fuck the environment, massively cut science budgets, ignore climate change, put all our energy eggs in the oil basket, cut aid to the poor, and so on. This would give them candidates that align better with the majority (and more important with the directions the majority is trending). They could more than make up for the loss of the Tea Party people, I think, by getting independents and picking up some moderate Democrats.
I really hope this issue sticks around long enough to be the theme of Obama's second term -- not because I want it to ruin his legacy, but because it's a big enough issue that it needs to not go away.
Same here. This needs to be the issue of the next elections. Just like they discussed the economy/jobs 50% of the time in debates, I want this to replace that in the next elections.
Now, good luck with the TV networks actually pushing for that. Knowing them, they'd rather discuss irrelevant things that that.
>>The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.
>According to the LWV, they pulled out because "the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated 'behind closed doors' ... [with] 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation. Most objectionable to the League...were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings.... [including] control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues."
Yeah, I think if it were going to go away it would have done so over the weekend. The fact that it didn't - that in fact major news media still had significant stories and editorials about it - means it's here to stay.
Which is good. It's about damn time we decided to admit this to ourselves - I can't believe it's taken this long, honestly.
This has got to be mostly because of which party is in the white house right now. I think the numbers would be more than flipped if we had a Republican president.
Agreed. Looking at a 2006 Gallup poll regarding warrantless wiretapping, it was 80%/16% Republicans, 42%/53% Independents, and 27%/69% Democrats (approve/disapprove).
Yeah, because if the foreign Muslim, communist, probably Martian, Obama says it, it has to be evil, and against god and nature.
Obama could introduce a right to cash, oxygen and water bill and the nut job Republicans would oppose it. Frankly, I'm surprised that Rep. approval is 32%.
I think that LBJ is a great comparison. Remember that LBJ won by painting Goldwater as an unhinged warmonger. similarly, the Obama of 2006 talked again and again about protecting civil liberties and limiting executive power.
And he's trying to do just that. He's tried to push through a great many domestic programs, he's asking congress to close up the post 9/11 authorizations he uses to justify the drone strikes, he's tried to get out of afghanistan and iraq...
But then he doubles down on Bush's immigration policy, surveillance, tightens up on whistleblowers... And it's blowing up in his face and I don't know that history will be any kinder to Obama than it was to Nixon or LBJ, with the way this story is playing out.
> The briefing was meant to convince lawmakers that the surveillance programs are legal and necessary in fighting counterterrorism
First, I don't think you want to fight counterterrorism, but, rather, terrorism?
And second, what's with this business of "legal and necessary"? It doesn't matter if it's "necessary", it doesn't matter if it's really really super useful, it doesn't matter if it's very efficient. The only thing that matters -- that should matter, in a democracy -- is whether it's legal and constitutional.
The moment you let "efficiency" step over legality you let the beast loose, and the results are drone killings and surveillance programs.
Drone killings are a hundred million times worse than surveillance, BTW, and somehow make less of a scandal.
Necessity plays a large role in determining whether something is legal.
Many court opinions about a law or government action hinge on whether there is a compelling state interest in the result. When balancing what a government does against rights defined by the bill of rights, you need to show that there is a good reason for the government to do what it's doing beyond simply denying the people their guaranteed rights.
For example, you may have laws about having a parade without a permit. Now, if you took an extreme view on the first amendment, you might say this abridged the rights of the people to peaceably assemble and speak their mind. However, there is a compelling state interest in controlling access to the roads that are shared by everyone; if anyone could parade at any time, it would screw up traffic. So governments are allowed to require a parade permit, as long as the requirements for obtaining one are content-neutral and don't single out any particular groups.
Likewise, whether the spying is legal does depend on whether it's necessary. The fourth amendment clearly says "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." Whether the search is reasonable plays a large role in whether it's legal. Thus, necessity is important, as well as being legal in the sense of having followed the letter of the law (gone through the appropriate warrant process, as outlined by the various laws and regulations that control it).
>And second, what's with this business of "legal and necessary"? It doesn't matter if it's "necessary", it doesn't matter if it's really really super useful, it doesn't matter if it's very efficient. The only thing that matters -- that should matter, in a democracy -- is whether it's legal and constitutional.
Well, no. The Constitution is not the be-all and end-all of governance, nor does it forbid all possible onerous behaviours. The position of the USG is that what the NSA engages in is constitutional. Even if that were the case, that wouldn't make it a good idea--unless it were necessary. You could implement a 1000% tax on beer and it would be perfectly legal and constitutional, but would also need to be somehow necessary in order for it to be justifiable.
Even if what the NSA is doing is deemed constitutional, that doesn't mean it's right or a good idea. In order for that to be the case, it'd also have to have a strong claim of necessity.
That's what I meant. First we need to see if it's legal, and THEN whether it's useful / serves any kind of purpose with any kind of efficiency.
The problem is, "necessity" or "usefulness" are used as substitutes for legality.
"Well, it's not, technically, one hundred percent legal, but look at how well it works in fighting [terrorism|pedophilia|some other big cause that gets people all worked up without actually threatening anyone in any statistically meaningful way]".
> "Well, it's not, technically, one hundred percent legal, but look at how well it works in fighting [terrorism|pedophilia|some other big cause that gets people all worked up without actually threatening anyone in any statistically meaningful way]"
Uh, paedophillia is statistically significant. The wider issue of child abuse (physical, emotional, sexual abuse or neglect) means that about 5 children a day die in the US from abuse-related causes.
Numbers are difficult, but over 3 million reports (for over 6 million children) are made every year in the US, and about 9% will be for sexual abuse. (And about 90% of those will be where a child knows the offender in some way.)
Very many people are harmed, sometimes severely, by paedophiles.
Please don't ever place paedophilia in the same category as 'nonsense boogeymen' like terrorism.
I don't think anyone is trying to minimize the heinousness of child abuse. I think the point being made is that just because a particularly technique may be effective against a particular crime, doesn't mean that technique is morally or legally right.
We could castrate everyone even accused of pedophilia and that would probably discourage some amount of child sexual abuse, but clearly that wouldn't be right. Similarly, we could forcibly commit everyone with a history of mental illness in mental institutions and maybe that would've prevented Sandy Hook, Aurora, and most recently the Santa Monica shooting. Yet, that wouldn't be right.
In short, the ends don't justify the means. Usurping constitutional rights because it would make it more convenient to fight terrorism is the worst possible path we could take in dealing with the threat of terrorism.
Terrorism is real, too. The problem is that terrorism, like child abuse and pornography, is used as an excuse to grant the government wide-ranging powers vastly disproportionate to the scale of the problem, and quickly misused for other purposes (eg: piracy).
Child abuse is not happening on the internet or mobile phone though, but usually at home. No internet surveillance is going to change any of it. You'd have to start installing cameras in every child's living rooms.
But, the part you quoted said "legal and necessary". They were trying to convince Congress of both, because both are necessary for the surveillance to be acceptable.
They weren't saying that they were trying to convince Congress that it was "legal or necessary", which is what you seem to be complaining about.
The drone killings are happening elsewhere, so of course less of a scandal. The surveillance will give the supposed ally Europeans a taste of being a Middle East enemy and possibly change their perspective on a few things.
First, the big 'thing' is the secrecy. Why is it a secret? Because it will damage the operation, pure and simple, and the operation is justified, necessary for public protection and the sake of the greater good.
So, we have 'to keep secrets' being applied here, as a dominant principle, because to not do so is unsafe, irresponsible, bad policy, practice, americans will get killed, and so on.
But I would wager that the people making these statements aren't the ones who put themselves into the position of being killed because of associationg with, or killing for, The Country. People need to be reminded, in this big 'secrecy debate' that secrets can be kept, whether a person is dead or alive, but only the LIVING tell the truth for the greater good.
Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that way of parsing it... like "fight the good fight"...? Interesting how language can be interpreted in so many different ways... Kind of like the law I guess... ;-)
If I had paid attention in junior high civics class, I might expect a member of Congress to correct egregious abuses of government power, once they had been admitted by the actual abusive government officials. As in, I might have thought she would take action, rather than obliquely wondering about who might step forward next. If she doesn't have the power to fix this, who the hell does?
Remember the part of this whole equation where a government with access to all of this kind of information could use it in ways to convince or discourage its people to act however they wanted?
Hahaha, like I said I didn't pay attention, but I seriously doubt the stars-and-stripes gang at my local public school had ever even heard of public choice theory, let alone taught it.
I personally hope they out the amount of government paid shills on the internet and any documentation as to their directive, such as how they 'slide' topics off of popular social media sites or comment to quell a rising storm.
To that end, when are we going to get some more reputable people in Washington? Why has it become the chore of the least of us to represent all of us? Where are all the upstanding citizens that these jobs should be filled with, rather than the lowest common denominator that's proliferated our house and senate to this day?
I've run through all the possibilities I could think of, regarding solutions to this mess, and the one that seems to come closest to reality is that we need to start pushing for the formation of a new party. Only by the formation of a new group, who has not yet been subjugated by the money powers that be, will we be able to get out of this mess. These revelations are our best chance to get such an initiative started, as those in a position of power are either too cowardly or too bought to do so themselves.
I've run through all the possibilities I could think of, regarding solutions to this mess, and the one that seems to come closest to reality is that we need to start pushing for the formation of a new party.
We already have plenty of alternative parties. Depending on your political leanings, they may or may not be appropriate to you, but there are groups like the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party, Worker's World Party, Prohibition Party, Pirate Party, etc. Hell, there's even a "Modern Whig Party".[1]
But a big part of the problem is the mechanism by which we elect representatives to our government. Most of the US uses single member district, "first past the post" (FPTP) voting[2], which has a side-effect of tending to create a "two party system"[3].
There are various initiatives around to push for the use of other voting systems which are more favorable to 3rd parties, like Approval Voting[4], Condorcet methods[5], Range voting[6], etc., but guess who typically sets the standards for how elections are conducted? Yeah, officials (mostly Democrats and Republicans) elected under the existing system! Talk about a "chicken or the egg" problem. But this is one of the first things that needs to be attacked, if we want a less corrupt, and more responsive government.
Part of the problem, as your post itself demonstrates, is an excess of choice: once we've decided we need something better than plurality voting (PV, aka FPTP), we have to pick a system. It becomes an engineering decision, and a rather subtle one at that. I've long been partial to Approval Voting, but I have to admit it has a clear disadvantage in actual use relative to PV: because the total number of votes is no longer bounded by the total number of voters, it gets much harder to detect fraud.
The point is, first, the relative merits of the various alternatives to PV are debatable (and debated), and second, considerations apply beyond the mathematical properties of the systems.
This is why, though I detest PV, I have little hope that a consensus will emerge as to the best alternative -- at least not without a lot of experimentation.
Personally, I have fallen in love with run-off elections (not sure the specific name) as used for electing the mayor in Chicago.
Basically, there is an officially non-partisan election in which anyone qualified can be on the ballot. The vote is held, with everyone able to vote for one person on the list. If there is a single winner (50%+1) then that person is declared the winner and the election if over. If no-one gets a majority of the votes the top 2 candidates face off in a run-off election about 2 months later.
This allows everyone to vote for their preferred candidate in the general election without 'wasting' their vote, but ensures that the eventual winner was chosen by at least 50% of their constituents.
There's obviously some tweaks that can be made (for one, it doesn't need to be non-partisan) but I think it does a very effective job at avoiding some of the party politics and the pandering to the base for the primary then moving to the center you see in many elections.
If there is strong public interest in changing systems, then there will be strong political pressure on those in office to work towards alternate systems. With this, is is reasonable to think that, after a process of debate, we will converge enough to one solution that we can pass it, both with the direct supporters and people who support it because it is better than nothing.
I think part of the problem (as in any new party) is defining the initial set of ideas to push for. What are you advocating this party's main concern is? Cleaning up the reputability of elected officials? That's a systemic problem that I'm not so sure a new party could fix.
I think the real action here is just getting one good, honest person to oust a current "low hanging fruit" politician. It needs to be more surgical, and convey a message that any one of you could be removed if the general population really wants to so get your shit together.
So while on the one hand Congress, NSA, etc. are denying what Snowden is claiming; on the other hand, they're calling him a traitor and guilty of treason.
If he's lying, _how_ can he be guilty of "treason"? Don't you have to reveal some classified (and truthful) info to be guilty of treason?
No, you have to wage war against the United States or provide aid and comfort to its enemies. Revealing true classified information, per se, is neither necessary or sufficient for treason (one of the reason for the Espionage Act and other laws criminalizing revealing secret defense info is that those acts often won't meet the Constitutional standard for treason.)
There are two aspects to Snowden's leak: the 41 slide (and other documents) which are hard evidence of what the government is doing and his statements about what the government is doing. It is possible for the second set of claims to be inaccurate because a sysadmin wouldn't be able to understand the intelligence aspects of what the NSA does. Even if this part is inaccurate, it's possible to prosecute him for the leak of the slides which the government appears to be admitting are accurate.
So while the White House and the NSA are saying the claims so far from Snowden are overblown and hyped up, Congress is saying there's far more going on than has even been reported yet.
You're a freaking congressperson sworn to represent the people of the united states.
If something bad is being done, it's YOUR responsibility to "step up" not someone else's.
BTW what the hell is with the NSA calling it the "Black Star" - is that some sick joke about the death star destroying worlds? So the rebels took out the death star with the exhaust port - does that mean the Black Star can be taken offline by the A/C units?
What she heard at the briefing would be illegal for her to divulge.
By telling us that 1) Snowdon is true, 2) Snowdon was a very small cog and doesn't realise the extent of it all, she's going further than all others at that briefing, and hopefully encouraging more whistleblowers to step up (and ruin their own lives).
> Yes, but it has an exception for treason and felonies
There are two separate parts:
1. While they are attending a session they can't be arrested, and
2. They can't be held accountable in any other forum based on the content of any speech or debate in either House.
The exception for for treason, felonies, and "breach of peace" applies to the first; the second, is an absolute, unqualified immunity, and, as applied by the Supreme Court, applies to all "legislative acts", which includes quite a bit that is not physically on the floor during a general session of the House.
As numerous commentators have pointed out, treason is a ridiculously high standard that has rarely been met. It has been misapplied so often by politicians using hyperbole that most people don't understand the meaning anymore.
It requires not just "aid and comfort" to the enemy, but also "adherence to the enemy" actively waging war against the United States, according to Supreme Court precedent. You cannot accidentally commit treason.
It's called civil disobedience. If a group of congresspeople decided to hold their own briefing with the press, not much could be done and they would be heroes.
Someone of color trying to attend a state university or even just sitting at the lunch counter with someone white 50 years ago was also very illegal in this country. Doesn't mean it was right no matter how many thought so at the time and all the arguments they gave for it to continue.
Assuming they are reading it from the floor of the House (or Senate), it does protect them from being prosecuted: "and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."
They would be subject to whatever punishments their fellow Representatives (or Senators) decided to impose (including possibly expulsion).
U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 6, Clause 1 [1] (emphasis added):
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.
The President is not above the law either. He might have the authority to declassify the material before he divulges it, but then he would have to be personally convinced that the material poses no possible threat to national security.
" Universal retention of provenance without commensurate universal commercial rights would lead to a police/ surveillance state. Universal commercial provenance can instead lead to a balanced future, where a middle class can thrive with proportional political clout, and where individuals can invent their own lives without being unduly manipulated by unseen operators of Siren Servers. " [1]
[1] - Lanier, Jaron (2013-03-07). Who Owns The Future?. Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.
>The briefing was meant to convince lawmakers that the surveillance programs are legal and necessary in fighting counterterrorism
The Government/NSA is now a terrorist group?
Are they fighting themselves?
Why not just use the secret surveillance system called PRISM to discover that the enemy has a secret surveillance system called PRISM?
According to the polls I'm not supposed to trust Congress, but I do think most of them know the content of their own minds better than Obama does. If a particular Representative was too dense to understand the first presentation, the officials should have dumbed it down and given it again. They report to Congress, not the other way around.
1) they are also listening to phone calls of Americans, despite what Obama said
2) she may be referring to the fact that NSA can spy on Americans without probable cause a week before deciding whether to ask FISC for a general warrant or not, like Mike Arrington said [2]
3) the "upstream" part of the slide [1] sounded very similar to that AT&T room from years ago, and they might be repeating that, with a slight twist
Steve Gibson from TWiT's Security Now had a theory yesterday [3] that they may be doing something similar now (which is why they also called it "prism"/cable splitter), but this time instead of getting all the data indiscriminately, they get the data from where Google, Microsoft and others are hooking up with the cable providers. This way they know exactly where it came from, so then they can go and use NSL's and FISA orders to get that data on that individual from Google and Microsoft.
Imagine if you had a meeting scheduled at a place and when you arrived with some unannounced parties it was already known who your compatriots were because of your last calls and proximity to those phones prior to arrival. Wouldn't that be crazy if that happened, just plain non-nonchalantly, without any kind of checks or restrictions or restraints.
People are going to be lulled back into complacency by the same people who have exhibited their absolute lack of trustworthiness. There is something seriously wrong with the human condition as exhibited by the apparent inherent trust placed in those who one should trust least. If one is willing to lie to Congress with assurance of impunity, why would one ever tell the truth about anything to anyone.
Hate to break it to people, America is under a dome of propaganda little different than that of most other autocratic regimes, we simply are far more sophisticated about it due to several unique circumstances. Ever wonder how one could believe the propaganda in dictatorial regimes of the past and present? Well, you are living it right now.
I heard rumors that many (if not all) citizens in the western world already have RFID chips in clothes, shoes, bags etc. so that everyone could be tracked right now.
I think that's not just a rumor. The question is not whether they use it but how far they have come yet.
RFID chips are almost invisible tiny low power circuits which send a unique digital code on request, and which work without battery via energy harvesting. RFID is the perfect tool for global surveillance.
