Posted on 08/11/2013 6:30:03 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
We live in an age of terrorism, with mass murder being able to be stopped by listening into cell phone data...then that makes sense. How is that hurting any law abiding citizen? If we have a city go up in an nuclear explosion, don’t worry, we are all going to lose far far more rights! The very fact that Snowden went to our enemies speaks volumes, does it not?
http://boingboing.net/2013/08/09/nsa-firing-90-of-its-sysadmin.html
The arithmetic is simple: if Snowden is a traitor, then Obama, under whom NSA operates, is a hero who represents this nation’s best interests.
You cannot avoid this conclusion cake owners, and, simultaneously, eaters.
The NSA has been listening and downloading this information WITHOUT warrants now for three to four years. How did that prevent Boston? We even were warned by Russian and the NSA still missed it? How did it prevent Benghazi? The Ambassador on the ground warned the administration about the dangers and still the NSA missed the clues. (But some poor schmuck is in jail for making some sort of video that had nothing to do with the attack.)
This illegal/contra-constituional activity is rife for abuse. And it is already beginning.
Sure wish you weren’t brainwashed.
Who, in your opinion, is more of the Patrick Henry type — Bambi or Snowden?
Don’t you get it??? NSA never really needed these sys-admin people in the first place. These people are employed by large NSA contractors and the NSA blows billions each year on un-needed contractor services like this and such as building new NSA buildings and installing new super computers and data storage.
The NSA is a typical Federal money pit. Most of the reason they now find it necessary to spy on all Americans is a money thing. Contractors have made billions off this un-Constitutional NSA expansion into Utah data storage of all Americans electronic communications and also ongoing expansion at the NSA Fort Meade Maryland location
San Antonio, too.
The NSA has been listening since 911. It's a foolishly childish argument to suggest we can prevent every attack. Do cops cops catch every one who speeds every day? What Snowden did was provide Americas enemies with our detailed ways & means of attacking them.
Sure wish you loved America as much as you love your commie kissing traitorous hero Snowden. Maybe I’m wrong, are you American?
Snowden surrendered his fortune, his country, his life, because he feared for the future of America. PERIOD. That makes him a hero. PERIOD.
You really have no clue. The threat to your freedom is not coming from Moscow, it’s coming from Washington. Grow a brain.
Yeah Putin has your back. You sir are a special kind of fool. Putin loves ball-less men like you and your traitorous hero Snowden. He’ll parade gutless cowards like you two as examples of American “manhood”. You, Snowden and everything you represent are national embarrassments. Why don’t you cut & run to a commie country like your hero?
at the end of the day, does anyone think that Obama is unhappy with America ‘s priceless secrets, bought with billions of taxpayers dollars, in the hands of Chinese and Russian communists?
I’ve got a newsflash for you:
They’re recording phone calls, emails, the works. It goes into a huge data vacuum cleaner and stored on petabytes of disk storage.
Then, when they want to examine what you’ve said, they not only put out a query for what you’re GOING to say, but what you’ve ALREADY said.
Hell half the FReepers on this thread think Snowden is a hero.
I don’t know if it is or isn’t.
What I now do know, with certainty, is that the civil liberties of innocent Americans are being shredded without any due process whatsoever, on a routine basis, with data sharing among agencies, and it is being done in the name of “national security,” while delivering no actual security. If it did, the Boston marathon bombers would not have been a surprise.
Oh, wait, the Russians told us about those clowns. And we didn’t listen.
As for how much the Russians “know” - I’ve got to believe that with or without Snowden, they already knew quite a lot. Thanks to our lax immigration policies and US industries no longer enforcing background checks on employees for sensitive materials and projects, the Russians know most anything they want to know. The PRC also knows most anything they want to know - for the same reasons.
Hell, we’ve had Chinese nationals removed for spying from Los Almos, where they have access to nuclear secrets. The Chinese have absconded with sensitive and proprietary information from the commercial sector that is essential to the defense of the nation. And the “free trade” idiots, many of whom claim to be “conservatives,” see this as a perfectly fine outcome.
So in the big picture of things, I seriously doubt that Snowden, even if he has turned over whatever he has to the Russians, it isn’t all that damaging to the US from the Russians’ perspective. All the Russians can do now is laugh as they realize that the US has its very own version of the east German Stasi, who spied on everything and everyone, all day, every day.
Which “priceless secrets?” Please enumerate them for me.
“San Antonio, too.”
NSA having large facilities there is logical. Lots of military live there and a few bases are there. NSA is a Federale jobs program so why not San Antonio too!!! Retired military can get NSA jobs too...hop on the Federales grave train
Agree on everything and free trade too!
Think of NSA as just another Fderal jobs program. It could do a much better job if scaled back to 10% of what it is and spent 10% the money it does. This means no spying on every American and resident then storing this data. (except illegal aliens who mostly live off grid, pay cash, earn in cash etc)
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