Edward Snowden reveals the 21th Centurys' Global Big Brother

They say:

If you don't have anything to hide, there is no need to fear.

But listen to an old Chinese wisdom:

Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words.
Take care of your Words because they will become Actions.
Take care of your Actions because they will become Habits.
Take care of your Habits because they will form your Character.
Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny,
And your Destiny will be your Life…

They want to deprive you from your own Life at its very origin: Thoughts. They want you to fear from even thinking because your Thoughts will become Words and then you will be doomed. You will have either to stop thinking or shut-up. Otherwise, a red flag (*) will pop-up next to your name and they will be after you. Just if your Thoughts aren't consistent with their criteria. They want to deprive you from your Words, from your Actions, from your Habits, from your Character, from your Destiny, from your Life. They want to take everything from you and you will get nothing in return.

They use the Mafia methods of extortion; they sell you protection from themselves.

* Ah, I love this metaphor with the red flag, it's so charming

 

Interesting. Do either of you have more details on just what the New Zeeland law allows thian I do? Which by the way is pretty much what I posted above? With the right safe guards it could at least IMO be reasonable. Without them it's a ways down that slippery slope. One of the serious problems with the US program is the lack of oversight. My understanding is that a judge has to allow the action but it's not clear that they are checking up on things to see if the intel agencies are interpreting the rulings too brodly or exceeding their mandate. There's also the question of whether or not the are really capable of judging the full impact of what the agencies are requesting.

 

Thus illustrating that you understand little. And what little you do understand results in you confusing the issues even more. You've pegged out the BS meter on this thread and are attempting to bend the needle.

 

Doing a bit of research into the New Zealand law I found:
http://rt.com/news/new-zealand-pass-spy-law-777/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/new-zealand-passes-spy-bill/4903500
http://www.lawsociety.org.nz/lawtalk/issue-823/expansion-of-gcsb-intelligence-gathering-instrusive

From the reading it doesn't appear to be anywhere near as broad a power as the NSA was granted but it is aimed at the actual contents.

 

@lwd
This post is hidden because you have chosen to ignore posts by lwd. View it anyway?

I won't bother anymore clicking link "View it anyway?".
You turned from pointles to tasteless posting. Good riddance.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/edward-snowden-nobel-peace-prize-94158.html

With the Nobel Prize, Snowden could settle in Russia and have a pleasant life there. It appears that now people seek refuge at east just like Solzhenitsyn who abandoned dreams about the Free West and returned to Russia in 1994.

 

Not a single one of my posts was pointless. As for tasteless I don't see that either. I'll take your ignoring my posts a rather good indicator that you finally realize that you are incapable of refuting any of my points (of course you've demonstrated that pretty clearly already).
I will continue to point out the flaws and fallacies in your posts. I've been doing that for others for the most part already, haveing given you up as a lost cause.

 

I suspect the acadamy is much more capable of rational thought than that of course some of their previous choices might bring that to question.

 

I second that, and that goes for everything I wrote as well.

It appears that this thread has reached the end of the line now that you've chosen to ignore lwd and I withdrew out of frustration dealing with your straw man tactics and personal attacks.

 

At Privacy International
Caroline Wilson in her article entittled:
"Schedule 7 and the detention of David Miranda"
states:

The calculated detention, interrogation, and search of David Miranda brings into sharp relief the draconian legal frameworks that define security and policing in the United Kingdom. These events highlight not only the imperilled state of privacy rights and free expression in Britain, but the breakdown of the democratic institutions that should be protecting individuals not only from terrorists, but from unrestrained government power.

I have bolded the word Draconian which I used just few pages before to which some complained. Indeed, there is no other word to describe violent reactions of US/UK governments in their hunt after Assange and Snowden. Mannings sentence is outrageous: he will rot until the end of his life in Gulag.

 

Manning's sentence is outrageous?

He could have received a maximum of 90 years. The prosecution was seeking 60 years. Manning was sentenced to 35 years. He was convicted on 19 of the 21 charges against him, this equals less than two years per charge. Manning will be 56 and a half when he/she gets out(less 3.5 years for time served). Rot in a gulag...far from it. At less than 2 years per charge he got off light.

Not to mention, that is if he serves all of his time, which is not likely - as he will be eligible for parole in 10 years.

"Outrageous" and "draconian" are most certainly two terms I would not use to describe his sentence.

 

Of course there is, indeed words like reasonable and constrained actually come to mind. Certainly violent is a complete misnomer and Draconian is almost as bad.

Outrageous describes your postings not his sentence, Takao dealt with this well, So I'll stop here.

 

Manning is technically a traitor, so in absolute terms the sentence is not that surprising, but compared to the fact that the people who started the black programmes and lied to the oversight commitees are still in power it is outrageous. Most of what he did was uncover official les, the issue here is whether we really want agoverements to be able to cover up questionable behaviour or foul ups by invoking secrecy, it the US lets Manning's sentence stand without doing anything about what he showed ..... well draw your own conclusions about a system where the crime is not killing bystanders but showing you did it.

Also consider that any foreign nationals that cooperated with NSA (or any other US agency) as just as much "traitors" as Manning so they deserve a similar treatment.
The only defence they could have is they where acting under unambiguous and legal orders, but in fact that would just move the responsibility up the chain of command until either the chain "breaks", with the higher lever denying any such order, or we get to the "political" level, and it would be really be fun having the politicians explain to the voters they authorized some of those actions. Up to now the spooks have usually been able to muddy the wates to the point where invoking "secrecy" could get them out of trouble, but the ice is getting thinner as a lot of voters are fed up with this lack of accountabiliy.

The big issue is not Manning, Snowden and Assange, it's what they showed, still looks like the attempt at moving the focus is working.

 

Agree Tos..the personalities should not be the issue...but while their defenders highlight them rather than the issue the authoriities are quite happy to go along with that line.

 

Actually under US law he isn't as is explained here
http://strategypage.com/on_point/20130731222342.aspx
The short of it:

Just what black programs and lieing to committees are you talking about? I don't see how this relates to Manning at all.
Certainly creating black programs is not a crime.

Not true. For instance some of those named in the documents from what I've heard were individuals in Iraq or Afghanistan that were helping both the US and their own national governments vs various terrorists. Of course I've seen little connection between the NSA and Manning in any case.

You are conflating a number of issues. With respect to Manning and Assange I strongly disagree. There was little in the material that they released that revealed serious issues with the US government at the same time their releases put peoples lives in danger and seriously impacted US diplomatic efforts.

With Snowden it's a bit more complicated. Certainly he has revealed information that points to the government over stepping its bounds. However the way in which he has done it and the additional information released that was unnecessary have colored the issue.

 

I was obviously referring to Snowden not Manning though the pattern of small lies, spin and omissions that emerges from the Manning files (assuming they are "raw data" and not a selection of damaging document filtered out a much bigger whole) does add up to "one big lie".

Of course not, it's the content of those black programmes that can be one and I assume under US law lying to the lawful oversight about those contents.

"from what I've heard" adds little of value to a discussion. We cannot afford to check every source (no time for it) but the details are important here (and talk of "national government" relative to current Iraq and especially Afghanistan is a bad joke). BTW what would you call a US citizen on the KGB payroll ?

As far as I'm concerned the Manning documents revealed an alarming lever level of misinformation attempts and "spin", up to you whether to consider that "serious" but IMO it is, democracy cannot function without a high degree of transparency and accountability,

 

I have to this point not tried to actually access the WikiLeaks material. One of the reasons is that some of it is or could still be considered classified. Since I have a clearance having such material on my computer could present a problem. I have read a fair amount of analysis by people I trust and I simply don't get that out of it. Convoluting Maning and Snowden isn't helping either. They are two totally separate incidents with different material and motives for the individuals, as well as the implications of what was revealed.

 

Snowden and Manning/Assange are different under most aspects but show a disturbing pattern of attemting to "gag the journalists and jail their sources" instead of doing something about the facts they report.

People not accessing the original materials and form a independent opinion is another pointer to the effectiveness of the climate of intimidation created around both cases. I didn't download the Manning documents, though I've seen extracts, (obviously besides the overpublished chopper attack on the journalists), for similar reasons to yours but it is not a good thing when you are discouraged to "look closely" for fear of retaliation. In my mind they are even more connected because though I had no "official knowledge" of prism at the time I chose not to dowload because I was pretty sure it was going to get tracked by a number of "aspiring big brothers".

 

I don't find the pattern disturbing at all. Both of them broke the rules and their oaths to reveal classified information. The system should work to contain the leakage as much as possible and take action against those that did so. Now people should also consider just what was revealed and what actions should be taken based on it but that shouldn't be an immediate action it should be one taken with due consideration. It could even include clemency if the actions were considered warranted but you simply can't have people just arbitrarily deciding on thier own that the public needs to know this information that has been determined to be classified.

Manning released a huge amount of information to Wikileaks. Initially they were redacting some of it (eliminating names for instance) then gave up on that effort. Assange even made some comments to the effect that collateral damage was acceptable. That alone made it so I could not support either of them and indeed support the efforts to bring them both to justice. Snowden's case is a bit less clear to me but legal action is still called for.

 

I have the exactly opposite view, agencies should not be allowed to arbitrarily "make policy" without both political oversight and public oversight, and if oversight is made ineffective by inaccurate reporting encouraging whistleblowers is the only solution I can think of.
The existence of an agency that is for all practical purposes unaccountable thanks to a combination of complex suject matter, a rather wide mandate (IIRC the details are still classified) and abundant use of secrecy to cover foul ups, seriously underrmines any US claim as "defenders of freedoms".

And if you believe they are not "making law" rather than just enforcing existing legislation have a look at this
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/08/lavabit-email-shut-down-edward-snowden
threatening people because, after being placed in a morally impossible position, (he had the choice of could either violating the law or his customer's trust) he decided to quit is way beyond what I believe is acceptable.

or this,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-and-the-nsa-2013-6
a bit strange the operator who resisted the legally very questiionable (looking at then existing legislation, no NSL at the ime) went belly up due to loss of goverment contracts.

The wide powers were always recognized as a risk but 9/11 created the emotional background for "anything goes"
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/27/magazine/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html

The NSA currently looks to be totally out of control, the Snowden case just highlighted this despite attemps to shift the attention to the individuals, Smowden chose to go publi with the data he had access to but how many of the roughly 4.000.000 people with top secret security clearances are actually using information for personal gain? there have been numerous cases of intel guys using the systems to spy on spouses or personal enemies ot other questionable goals (I don't know if it's illegal but it should be) without effective oversight we will never know.