Edward Snowden is a patriot

Politico ^

[chessplayer]

Does President Barack Obama think we’re stupid?

That’s the only conclusion possible after watching Friday’s bravura performance in which the president announced a set of proposals meant to bring more transparency to the National Security Agency — and claimed he would have done it anyway, even if Edward Snowden had never decided to leak thousands of highly sensitive documents to The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.

But even as he grudgingly admitted that the timing, at least, of his suggestions was a consequence of Snowden’s actions, the president declared, “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.” When you look at what has changed over the past two months, though, it’s hard not to wonder, “What could be more patriotic than what Snowden did?”

First, the results: More than a dozen bills have already been introduced to put a stop to the NSA’s mass phone record collection program and to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reinterpreted the Fourth Amendment in secret, creating a body of privacy law that the public has never read. A half-dozen new privacy lawsuits have been filed against the NSA. The Pentagon is undergoing an unprecedented secrecy audit. U.S. officials have been caught deceiving or lying to Congress. The list goes on.

[gaijin]

GREAT POST...!!

[pgkdan]

Russian and Putin are our enemy.

I know who my enemies are. I don't need you to tell me.

Obama is my enemy.
The Supreme Court that validates obama's corrupt, illegal regime, is my enemy.
Congress is my enemy.
The NSA is my enemy.
The Pentagon that has completely polluted and disgraced our armed services is my enemy.
The statist, globalist, anti-American democrat party is my enemy.
The weak kneed, go along-get along, hey, me too GOP is my enemy.

[NVDave]

They are allowed to do so with a warrant.

What they’re doing now is vacuuming everything that is electronic communication and putting it into storage. Now, the way the mechanism works, they get a “warrant” (which we can go into later, because the secret court is now being found out to be nothing but a rubber stamp) and sort through their huge store of data to see what you’ve already said, and place a tap on what you’re doing now to see what you’re going to say.

For starters, this brings up ex post facto Constitutional issues.

For others, the only safety of people’s civil liberties is that someone gets a warrant to go through all the stored communications they’ve got. This is what Snowden really revealed - the data is already stored, a rougue sysadmin with the right privs can root through everything in that database with ease - no warrant required.

This is why the NSA is purging their ranks of sysadmins. But the system is still flawed from the Constitutional view: there should be no recording of innocent people’s data, absent a warrant. None. If they get a warrant, then they can start recording a target’s communications.

[stephenjohnbanker]

” Obama was going to (bring transparency to NSA) even if there
was no Snowden. And you can keep your own doctor and health
insurance policy too. And it cuts the deficit. “

Man! Obama really cares! : )

[OneWingedShark]

NSA had so many people with top level access that sooner or later an Ed Snowden would come along and spill the beans. I think I read about one million people had Snowden level access. Why. Because NSA idiots are more focused on bureaucrat empire building and making the NSA contactors (such as employed Snowden) rich and happy.

That last sentence is a good enough reason to disband the NSA altogether: it is not about security, any way that you look at it.

[OneWingedShark]

OK, so we are supposed to not allow our government to listen in to cell data in order to possibility stop an attack?

The Fourth amendment prohibits it.
Moreover, as Boston shows, there is no guarantee of such being effective: indeed, the Russians gave us intel/warnings on them which were ignored.

For people here to say that nothing has been stopped with this info is just BS.

Let's take a look at the recent debates in congress, the line was that the data/systems have been involved in [stopping] over fifty incidents. Now, since they are trying to justify the system, we have to realize that they're going to include the cases where the input was minimal/negligible (i.e. think the inverse of parallel construction). — so it could be quite the case that the PRISM stuff has really uncovered five or six terrorist plans.

Why terrorist and not terrorist? Because the government has put out documents that label perfectly legitimate dissent from the statist mind as being a possible terrorist. Indeed, terrorist activities have been expanded to the point where innocent people can be snapped up in the LEO/judicial system based on flimsy evidence. (The Hautree Militia, for example, which was to the militia movement what the Zimmerman-trial was to Stand Your Ground.)

Sort of obvious that they have, as we have been told. Come on now...you cannot deny an obvious fact just to try and support your point of view.

Actually it's not at all obvious: nothing the NSA and its secret court does is obvious or [really] open.

I agree it is not the best thing to have to do, however, we are at war and during war time, in order for our nation to survive, it may not be wrong to disobey the Constitution.

Here's the problem with that idea: the War on Terror, which I assume you're referring to, is unwinnable.
Why? — Because there is no victory condition.

Moreover, your argument that disobeying the Constitution might be fine is laughable on its face: if it is ok to ignore the Constitution, then it is ok to ignore any [and all] other laws precisely because they are inferior to the Constitution and, if actual laws (as opposed to usurped power) then they derive their authority from the Constitution. Thus, to violate the Constitution is to declare that the lesser laws have no meaning/power/authority.

It happened in the civil war.

So? Does precedent make it right? — If I kurder someone, and get away with it, then does that mean that it's a-ok to murder?
Ridiculous.

And of course the borders are priority, but the fact of the matter is that the terrorist cells are already here!

WTF? The borders are a priority? What country have you been living in? Certainly not the United States, because the borders have never [in the past decade, maybe two] been a priority of the ruling caste.

I think you ought to read this.

[OneWingedShark]

The weak-kneed, go along-get along, hey, me too GOP is my enemy.

But, but, but they're the lesser of two evils! You can't not vote for them! Id you don't vote for them, you're not a real conservative:
The Tao of Republican Orthodoxy
[Direct Link]

[/sarc]

[fabian]

Ok..just tell that to the 3000 murdered on 9-11.

[fabian]

the cells are already here! So you guys are crying not to have mass cell phone data listened to while it is obviously stopping some murder. Come on now...and yes, I think Lincoln took similar measures in order to win the war. I think you guys sound bit ridiculous and reacationary.

[OneWingedShark]

the cells are already here!

I didn't say they weren't.

So you guys are crying not to have mass cell phone data listened to while it is obviously stopping some murder.

No, it is not obviously stopping murder. Terrorists have been fairly careful to become as untraceable as possible, this is why cell phones (moreso, SIM cards) were important for intel when they were captured, This I know because I worked the property-room in Iraq doing detainee ops.

Come on now...and yes, I think Lincoln took similar measures in order to win the war. I think you guys sound bit ridiculous and reacationary.

You don't understand: it's not just the 4th amendment here. It's the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Arguably the 1st, too.
If this is acceptable then we have a government that is totally out of control, oh there might be show-trials but there will be no real chance to defend yourself from an accusation — and it will come to the point where opposing political viewpoints are grounds for such accusation.

Seriously, read this and you see the future if such unlawful government activity is allowed to stand:

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[RetiredTexasVet]

I would agree with you if they were collecting “only” foreign calls, emails, financial transactions, purchases, etc. which could easily be and rightly obtained with a search warrant. Additionally, you would possibly need ten large servers at the most to store the data collected. The same false sense of trust brought the Russians 75 years of hell, the US CommieCare, Argentina communism and bankruptcy, etc. The security game isn’t an “all or nothing”, you can pick and choose what is legal and what works.

[lentulusgracchus]

“We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor” — Snowden did this more than most people. He risked it all to do what he thought he had to do for his country.

I've still got my doubts. The right forum for this debate is in a secure committee room in the Capitol among congresscritters who have security clearances to discuss these "national means".

Snowden's unfiltered dump will necessarily and inevitably have contained masses of material whose release would be harmful to USG's attempts to run a foreign policy. Just look at all the static we're getting from friendly countries -- we need this stuff to be handled in committee, not in the pages of the Sun and Paris Match.

We need congresscritters like Allen West and Ted Cruz, and potential congresscritters like Roger Mourdock and Sarah Palin and others, to stand up for the People's liberty interest in the Congress. All this shouldn't be out in the street with the rioting terrorists.

[lentulusgracchus]

I'm disappointed at the lack of replies to your provocative and interesting post.

[noinfringers2]

I don’t see Snowden or Obama(like a pot calling the kettle black) “patriots”. Having served overseas in WWII and losing an only brother on Okinawa I lean toward a ‘patriot’ as being a person who was/is willing if push came to shove to physically put their lives on the line for the USA. Neither Snowden or Obama has shown this character but one can make the case Snowden makes a better fit than Obama. If I recall correctly Cheney never did serve in the military having some kind of 4-F disability. I don’t know exactly about Cheney’s classification but I do know that in WWII many 4-Fs were just plain draft dodgers.

[fabian]

There’s not going to be trials from talking on your phone and expressing your opinions. Even if you were talking about a terror plot but had not put anything to action, there is no threat. Right now I think you guys are sort of peeing in the wind wasting time on this while while Ombama is doing his best to transform the nation by further taxing us to death.

[Chgogal]

Fabian, in post 60 I said that I have NO problem if the NSA gathers data on
Americans with a Direct link to terrorists abroad.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3053569/posts?page=60#60

“I have no problem with the NSA collecting data on foreigners abroad and then getting warrants on each and every communication with that foreigner. I have no problem with communication companies storing the data and when given a proper warrant from the government, the company giving that private citizens' communications to the government.”

I am sick and tired of people like you allowing the government to search my fellow Americans by the hundreds of millions without probable clause and a warrant. Shame on you.

[Chgogal]

The government may not collect data on my fellow citizens without due process and a warrant. Period.

[fabian]

Listening in to cell phones for fell tale phrases in order to avoid mass murder is certainly not allowing people and their homes or possessions to be searched...so stop with your feigned outrage. Be outraged at the excessive taxation that is ruining our once free nation...that is far far worse!

[Nowhere Man]

I say he is a patriot. Sure we might have to take some or even a lot of damage, but America is a sick with cancer now, the cancer of control over freedom. It's like my mother with her breast cancer right now, sometimes you have to get sick and go through a lot in order to get better. We need to go through chemo, surgery and radiation and Snowden is a part of it.

It's not the America of 1953 anymore or even 1983. We are a much different place now.

[antceecee]

How bout you just let them listen to you? You are so willing to give up your Constitutional rights... I’ll keep mine.