Posted on 06/14/2013 8:45:37 PM PDT by chessplayer
I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities:
"What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . . . I can't speak to what we learned in there, and I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg . . . . I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."
The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Enough. You're not even making sense now. Bye.
bump
Ping
Not nearly as much a traitor as those he exposes. The only real "secrets" he divulged was the scope of the data mining/collection that involved all of us citizens - it was no secret that we were using the methods on the enemy. His Nation is in the habit of betraying the People and he did us a service.
Excellent article and eye opening comments from a country with more video surveillance capacity than just about anywhere except casinos. George Orwell pegged it and I don’t think the toothpaste can be put back in the tube.
Greenwald previously wrote a good Guardian piece about the creepy Sully: “Andrew Sullivan, terrorism, and the art of distortion”
Sorry I have been very busy the last three weeks and unable to post much.
I want to open up the subject that has been sticking in my mind for a few weeks. Did Prism hack Romney’s get out the vote software ORCA. If so it would be bigger than all of these stories.
-——From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for Prism access may ‘task’ the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company’s staff”).-——
Tim McGee and Abby Schuto are depicted accessing the data every week
Hmmmm......good question!
I sent this off to a few friends we will see if it pops up in the press. I am having problems digging up old articles.
To everyone: history has certain ironies. The world established forever at Nuremberg, as a matter of law, that illegal acts don’t have authority as a defense. If that is true, then the converse is also true: “treason” cannot be attached when the exposed secret is an illegal activity. Conservatives and other patriots may not like this, or where it goes, but that debate is over. In fact, the American press has long sanctified this principle...Ellsberg was not a traitor, but a hero.
Listen to the very language: “is he a traitor, or a whistleblower?” Then the discussion ensues, but typically centered on the one thing that does not matter: motive. The media likes to personalize such things because it gives them fodder for filling their daily word-count quotas, but the breathless talk of who Snowdon is and what he wants and whether he is sane or not - matters not one whit. I don’t know if he is a “hero”, because that does go to motive, which does not interest me. I am interested in whether what he says is true or not.
We’ve created a type, a role - “whistleblower” - that actually means “someone who exposes illegal activity”. We created this role in popular culture first, mainly on the Left, as they romanticized corporate insiders who exposed evil capitalists - see “Silkwood”. Then we enshrined it in law, and for good or ill, that train is now running down the track.
So this debate will hinge on substance, not motive (as it should). Is Snowdon telling the truth, and if he is, is the Orwellian state he describes legal or illegal? If it is legal, he is a traitor. If it is not, he is not.
If I give away our codes to an enemy in wartime, that one is easy. But if I say to my fellow citizens “hey, your government is spying on you in ways you do not know and I believe you should know and have not authorized” - to equate these acts morally and legally is the dumbest confusion.
By the way, the only thing that gives any loyalty to the government any moral force at all is individual liberty. The State has no ethical claim on me except as an apparatus by which we protect our life, liberty, and property. So the moral basis for convicting me for exposing codes to a military enemy is that i am actually endangering your hearth and plow. And that works. But conservatives, go very slow before you extend that moral outrage to any leaker. In fact, I’ll go so far: any leak that endangers liberty is a crime against my fellow free people. Any leak that protects our mutual liberties is not a crime, no matter what may written in some black-letter statute somewhere. And this has nothing to do with motive.
Don’t confuse this with the Left version of it, which is as relativistic as mine admittedly might sound. The Left actually believes that any leak that furthers the progressive agenda is not a crime, and others are. This is very different, and deserves universal mockery. It is actually what induces all the talk about motive, because as you know, on the Left, the pure motive of the State hallows it. Not so with us: liberty is the objective, tangible touchstone of everything, and I think what makes my argument work where the Left bastardization does not.
This means every act of revealing government secrets has to be litigated as to substance. And if it is to be litigated, the substance can’t be secret. There is a real problem here that no-one knows how to solve and I’d suggest that once you serve on a Congressional intelligence oversight committee, no matter your party, you seem to take on the impulse to yell “traitor” quickly and before the litigation even begins. That might be because you understand just how important security clearances really are, or it might be because you understand there is no way in our legal system to litigate such events and you don’t want to have to write that law. Well, we are writing it.
Conservatives are typically strong patriots, many have been in the military, and value loyalty and discipline, and react viscerally to a violation of a security clearance and an oath. Even as I write this, on Freerepublic’s posting screen in front of me in red is this WWII admonition: “Loose lips sink ships”. I guarantee you that no such sentiment is enshrined at the Huffington Post.
But I’d urge you to go slow with your reflexive patriotism and consider whether this State is the same one that got into your moral DNA when you were younger. If there is an Orwellian state, it is not immoral to expose it. In fact, the only thing that will save you from the gulag is insiders who break some sort of oath and talk about it. Those who cherish individual liberty should go real, real slow before condemning a person for claiming to know secret ways your liberties are being stolen.
Here’s my point: when you stripped Goebbels of his Nuremberg defense, you gave Snowdon his defense.
I’d argue that the 4th Amendment in its original language and unadorned gives Americans all we need to protect ourselves from both the Orwellian state and from domestic terrorists. I’d urge conservatives to support the public, open litigation of the very notion that there can be secret surveillance of an American citizen apart from the probable cause and delineated subject matter that the Founders wrote into the simple language of the bill of rights.
If the NSA is doing what Snowdon describes, then it is a rogue, illegal State, and Snowdon is not a traitor.
Well stated.
Bookmarked
I urge others to read Post #51.
This is an excellent and well written post.
BULLSQUAT! Patriots don’t slither off to China!
Go salute your obbamma poster and pledge your allegiance to the Police State of America.
I’m leaning in that direction as well....if anything he’s a defector and stole intelligence to take with him. I do not in any sense see him as a Patriot.
Snowden does not fit the description of a Patriot no matter how it’s painted otherwise.
Motive has become a fulcrum upon which we balance actions and of course, that with which the path to hell is paved. So many acts begin well principled and intended but run off the rails in practice as to render motive inconsequential. The motives of our government, begun in an earnest effort, could easily mutate into a tool of oppression. (See the IRS and soon, Obamacare.)
Is it truth or information which is so valuable that it must be defended by a bodyguard of lies? Truth can be hidden by the shadows of law and morality and, the duplicity of many highlighted in the article, those more interested in agendas, is astounding though not surprising.
The earlier post describing how much Snowden has, “given up” in order to bring this information to light when he could have quietly sold it does lead me to believe he was acting on (motivated by) the side of individual liberty.
Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. May God bless you and preserve our nation.
Do you eat, sleep and drink stupid, stupid?
Are you sure you are an American?
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