
U.S. Seemingly Unaware of Irony in Accusing Snowden of Spying - urlwolf
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/06/us-seemingly-unaware-of-irony-in-accusing-snowden-of-spying.html
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brandall10
Discussed and declared dead yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5925294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5925294)

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doktrin
Seriously? Are we so hungry for opinions on this case that we rabidly up-vote
clumsily written satirical blurbs (twice)?

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nealabq
Andy Borowitz is a well-known satirist.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Borowitz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Borowitz)

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eli
Satire is really really hard to do well. The Onion's been a roll, however:
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-administration-
releas...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-administration-releases-
nations-phone-record,32712/)

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scotty79
If you get caught by your hand while stealing - claim it's not your hand.

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o0-0o
Now the New Yorker is posting articles like The Onion. The world really is
upside down at the moment.

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fnordfnordfnord
Borowitz has been doing satire at the New Yorker for a long time. This one is
just profoundly close to being not-satirical. The world isn't very different
from last month, except that more people are becoming more aware how our
government conducts itself.

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Nursie
This is the only thing that has been shocking to me - that so many people are
suprised.

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mgaw
This is doublespeak.

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milkshakes
Actually, it's satire.

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mgaw
Ah, I see. Thanks.

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Daniel_Newby
Could we _please_ stop with the NSA horseshit. The Democratic National Party
has identified techies as a target demographic for their Media Circus and is
seeding these stories to garner votes and attention.

We need to be concerned about the bigger picture, the story being covered up
by the "OMG Snowden is a cyberpunk, how dreamy". The bigger picture is that
Washington, D.C. has allowed the security apparatus to rot. Misplaced nuclear
missiles, abysmal physical security at nuclear bomb plants, total lack of
mandatory access controls on computer system, inability to close the decision
loop on protecting assets on foreign soil, etc.

The DNP keeps running these tech celebrity scandal stories to distract from
the catastrophic state of American security.

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DanielBMarkham
So the _Democrats_ are the ones to blame for making a big story out of
Snowden?

That's a very interesting theory. And you follow it up with a long list of
security state problems.

I don't want to dismiss you out of hand, but you have to acknowledge that not
every person writing about Snowden is a Democrat, or manipulated by Democrats,
or is somehow caught up in some tech celebrity hero worship.

I _hate_ tech celebrity stories. I'm a registered independent. Voted with the
Republicans a couple of times nationally, with the Democrats a couple of
times, and with a third party a couple of times.

I find it strange to be accused of being manipulated by one party. Hell, it's
both parties that got us into this mess. Why would the Democrats think they
could control this message? They're going to lose as many, and maybe more,
people from the center as the Republicans are.

And if you're seriously suggesting that we need even _more_ access and control
over information, instead of just cleaning up the bureaucratic mess we already
have, I'm at a loss for words. I suppose once the hole gets deep enough, the
only logical choice is to keep digging?

American security is in exactly the state that it deserves given the
completely shitty leadership both parties have shown over the last 30 years or
so. Nobody knows what their mandates are, nobody seems to have any idea of how
to identify and properly assess threats, and there's hardly anybody in charge.
This is a failure of Congress and the President. A good housecleaning would
not only fix privacy issues, it might straighten the rest of the mess out.
Maybe.

It might be just that we've created an intelligence and security apparatus
that's too damned big. In which case, it's all going to need to be
decentralized/privatized/deregulated somehow.

But all of that aside, your comment struck me as an attack on the readers and
voters here, so I felt I should reply. Snowden is but a small story in a much
larger tapestry of a security state gone to hell because of poor oversight and
structure. I don't think the Democrats have any more or less to do with that
than the Republicans. And I don't think they have much to gain by pointing out
what a mess they've helped create.

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skrebbel
> _I 'm a registered independent_

Completely off topic, but what does this mean? (I'm not American). You
register your political affiliation in the US? What for?

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LoganCale
Mostly to vote in primary elections, which occur within each party to vote for
who will be nominated as that party's primary candidate.

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skrebbel
So where do you register as an independent? Not at the democratic or
republican party offices, I imagine.

Does it grant you rights to vote in primaries of all parties? Or none? If the
latter, what's the point?

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LoganCale
You have to be registered with the government as a voter in order to vote at
all. When you register, you list your party affiliation. If it is one of the
major parties, that information also adds you to the party's list of members,
granting you the ability to vote in their primary elections. If you register
as an independent (e.g. unaffiliated) voter, it depends on what state you're
in, but sometimes you can vote in either primary and sometimes none at all.
Note that there is also an Independent Party, which is different from
lowercase independent, meaning no party affiliation at all.

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skrebbel
wow. I thought democracy meant voting is anonymous. Scary!

Thanks for the explanation

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LoganCale
The vote you place is anonymous. Your vote is not tied to your voter
registration, but you have to prove that you have registered in order to place
that vote.

