Posted on 10/20/2014 9:43:45 PM PDT by TigerTown
The crown jewels of any intelligence organization are its sources and methods – the means by which information is obtained. I have no doubts that, thanks to Edward Snowden, Russia and China now have an extraordinary volume of data on NSAs sources and methods for collecting information from communications. That means they now know the weaknesses in their and other of our adversaries’ communications procedures and our strengths in exploiting them. And not just voice communications, but also radar, telemetry, missile and rocket command and response, military GPS locationing and weapons systems countermeasures. On far too many subjects, Russia and probably China know what we know about them and about ourselves.
This compromise puts at risk our troops on the ground, ships at sea, our air forces, our command and control, military alliances and, as we’ve seen recently, even our banking system. As if that wasn’t bad enough, to mitigate the damage, the United States will have to spend multiple billions of dollars to change our own military and financial systems to prevent what are now critical weaknesses in our national defense.
Edward Snowden stole thousands of highly classified digital documents from America’s most sensitive source of intelligence. He ran like the thief he is to not just any foreign country, but to our two greatest foreign national adversaries: China and Russia. He has publicized a miniscule number of those documents and no doubt provided to those two foreign powers information of critical national security. He has done this, I believe, as an agent of Vladimir Putin,
(Excerpt) Read more at radixnews.com ...
You’re the terrorists.
FU NSA and the other alphabet agencies.
Nope, can't see my way clear to justify a Chicago mob run criminal enterprise. If you promise to sell tickets to their execution, I'd like to get on the waiting list.
I think many Americans are having great difficulty determining who the bad guys really are. I can’t say I blame them.
This is a huge growing problem.
The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they traveled through the computer. Ships, motorcycles. With the circuits like freeways. I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see.
And then, one day... i got in.
The first thing to have done is to have granted Snowden immunity so that what he was holding back would not be distributed to America’s adversaries.
The second thing to have done is to have convened a federal commission to investigate how this monitoring of American citizens got so out of hand (don’t care about non-Americans as they are not covered by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights) and to come up with proposals for collecting intelligence data while preserving maxim liberties and rights to American citizens.
The third thing (to run concurrently with the second thing) to have done is to have rounded up all those who were caught up in subverting the US Constitution and put them on trial while allowing certain unclassified portions of the trial to be broadcast internationally. The broadcast would showcase how America deals with those who violate its citizens rights. Such a display would set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
Of course Snowden would have been compelled to turn over all that he had that had not yet been published or somehow disclosed. So the damage to national security could have been minimized. Instead the US government scared Snowden into running away.
Pure bull, Snowden had nothing to give Russia or China they didn’t already know.
The agent of Vladimir Putin is in the WH. Snowden exposed NSA and other agencies who see and treat all Americans as enemies of the state.
This isn't really the case — you see, the Constitution doesn't apply to citizens, it applies to the government.
You can see this clearly in the preamble to the Bill of Rights:
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.The first amendment, for example, further restricts the government, particularly congress, from enacting certain laws.
shall not be infringed— interestingly, this also restricts the taxation powers of the unamended Constitution, so even the BATFE's NFA Class III licensing/taxation scheme is illegitimate.
Since the Bill of Rights, properly understood, restricts the government's actions it is foolish to claim that non-citizens are exempt. For example, the sixth amendment provides that In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to […] be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation
— under your model the sixth does not apply to criminal prosecutions, but to citizens who are prosecuted.
Besides this, there is a terrible consequence to your model: all the government would need to do to strip you of all protections would be to declare that some action [perhaps the crime they are accusing you of] invalidates your citizenship.
Special case if you can’t tell the enemy from within from the enemy from without.
I believe Obama has done more to hurt this country than Snowden, seeings how Snowden is a creature of Obama’s administration.
I think this guy believes it. I also think Snowden deserves a full pardon and the Medal of Freedom. As for going to Russia and China, if I thought the CIA wanted me dead, any port in a storm. As I recall Ecuador was his first choice.
Which is precisely why Snowden has value providing intelligence-derived aid to countries like Russia and China - who stand to benefit from his information. Not only do those countries receive someone with secrets from their enemy(the United States), they also have someone that can advise and provide PR cover (via him and his helpers with the Guardian).
What Snowden and his supporters release to the public can be considered disinformation due to his lack of trustworthiness to keep a promise of secrecy. What they do should not be allowed to go unchecked or without trial, despite the current administration’s silent approval (since it helps other countries remove the US’s lead in intelligence-related activities).
If there’s any appropriate party/parties to issue awards, medals, “pardons”, or other forms of recognition towards Snowden and his fellow travellers at the Guardian, it would solely be the Russians and/or the Chinese. Any awards from the US are reserved solely for those that bring Snowden’s acts to an end.
NSA = the terrorists within
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