
Edward Snowden says a report critical to an NSA lawsuit is authentic - nabla9
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/03/edward-snowden-nsa-lawsuit-jewel-authentic/
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raprp
> U.S. prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage.

Was anyone of the US Government criminally charged for this whole thing or
they only bothered to charge the guy who exposed the crime?

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boomboomsubban
The Government doesn't admit it did anything illegal, any court cases trying
to show otherwise will take a decade as this one has, and currently the only
one I'm aware of was dismissed as the courts ruled they could not prove damage
had been done.

Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any
prosecutors trying individuals involved.

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CogitoCogito
> Though, even if found to be violating the law I find it hard to imagine any
> prosecutors trying individuals involved.

Well except for Snowden of course.

And frankly Clapper's testimony to Congress was obviously perjury. The
prosecution of only Snowden is rank hypocracy.

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Brotkrumen
Germany had something similar: a fact-finding committee tried to figure out
what to do about NSA and our local spies spying on Germans local and abroad.
Pro privacy parliamentarians wanted to rely heavily on Snowden docs, ruling
party and anti-privacy required an in-person interview in Germany of Snowden
to admit the docs as evidence.

Of course tthey didn't wwant to guarantee Snowdens freedom while here, so that
interview never happened and the docs were ignored.

I bet that's going to be the NSAs play here too

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Theodores
The thing is that people are no nearer to understanding why it was that this
spying on the general public had to happen.

Capitalism - and any other system - has to have bogeymen and terrorism as a
fear, the thinking being that anything outside the system is a fate worse than
death and therefore the system, in this case capitalism as we know it is
better than the alternatives. We all know there aren't any 'al-qaeda'
terrorists really, it certainly is not necessary to monitor everyone's phone
just because of that.

Going through the courts to discern whether these Stasi style systems were/are
constitutional or not is noble and good on the EFF for doing these things.
However we have not acknowledged why these things had to happen, we still go
along with the 'al-qaeda terrorist fear' meme.

The point of surveillance and letting everyone know that they are under
surveillance is to stop people communicating in a way tantamount to dissent.
The Catholic Church and the Stasi had these things in place, not to root out
protestants or Western spies, it was always to keep people in line with their
system of rule. When it comes to our own Western surveillance we somehow
believe the authorities that it is to catch the terrorists, a noble cause that
nobody could possibly argue with. Yet really it is to keep people in line and
not dissenting.

In the Bush years the powers-that-be were genuinely concerned they might have
a Berlin Wall moment where people just see through the lies and decide not to
stand shoulder to shoulder waving flags.

Their fears were seriously unfounded though, people really were deeply wedded
to the system to the point of being indoctrinated and brainwashed. No matter
how feeble the phantom enemy was people went along with it, it sold newspapers
and meant people didn't even dream of getting organised in some revolutionary
way. Occupy Wall Street was about it, a very damp squib.

Whether the details of the mass surveillance infrastructure were technically
constitutional or not does not answer the bigger question regarding what the
Bush government were so scared of.

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TeMPOraL
I don't think this situation requires any level of intentional conspiracy.
Intelligence agencies always want to know more secrets, law enforcement wants
their job to be easier, and digital media were trivial to wiretap since early
beginnings. Surveillance systems like NSA's seem like something that would
naturally evolve - and accelerate post 9/11, as there was suddenly lots of
money available to anyone uttering the words "fighting terrorism" and
"national security".

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sametmax
Pretty much. You build an mowner, it's going to mown. If you give it more
horse power, it's going to mown more. If you make it autonomous, it's going to
mown everthing it can. The mowner is nor good or bad, but it still hurts if
your foot is the way and the safeguards were badly designed.

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Theodores
I am not sure that analogy is that helpful.

Did the NSA catch hordes of these evil al-qaeda types with their dragnet? No.
Were any of these card-carrying al-qaeda terror operatives given due process?
No.

There are logical fallacies that we must endeavour to see through. Did the spy
dragnet keep the al-qaeda menace at bay? Originally there were supposed to be
tens of thousands of al-qaeda terror operatives in sleeper cells. They said
the same about the Russians a generation earlier. It wasn't so.

There may be fancy computers at Fort Mead but these still cost money. Money
that could have been spent on infrastructure that benefited the citizens.
There is opportunity cost, many people have actually died in collapsed bridges
since the NSA went crazy.

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prolikewh0a
I don't know if I've ever heard of the NSA having any good effect on the USA,
just always negative. Always leaks about how everything they're doing is
illegal. There have still been terrorist attacks and mass shootings all around
the country since it's inception. I agree with your point above that it's
probably likely that these agencies are more so there to track and crush
domestic and foreign dissent (and I think it's intentional, see COINTELPRO).

That money definitely could've been spent on infrastructure that benefited the
actual citizens of this country and actually saved lives. Unfortunately a
great part of American culture is pure jingoism and war propaganda, so nothing
changes.

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Theodores
I forgot about COINTELPRO. Thanks for reminding me. That is still going on
today, so useful to know.

I do find it interesting how people find reasons to believe a lie, the lie
being that the post 9/11 spying wasn't on the domestic population just to make
sure there was no dissent. With a population that believes the lie then things
are kind of doomed. A dark age happens. People find justifications to believe
it ain't so. In a unipolar world this becomes a lot more interesting. In
previous times there was an 'other' out there, the people in Germany could
tune into propaganda from the West, this propaganda could be true facts and it
would undermine the regime, Nazi or Stasi if too many people were in on it. In
a unipolar world there isn't this possibility.

There is also a trust problem between government and people. In former times
gentlemen didn't read each other's mail. Acceptance of otherwise is a betrayal
of trust. You have to have good reason to snoop. What was the good reason and
what was the excuse in the post 9/11 world? Fear.

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xupybd
legal question: How can Snowden submit a declaration while he is effectively
considered a legal enemy of the state?

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JumpCrisscross
> _while he is effectively considered a legal enemy of the state?_

We don’t really describe people as enemies of the state in America. Snowden is
accused of certain crimes, and has the right to communicate with legal
counsel. Such counsel could provide this attestation to a court.

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xupybd
Sorry I didn’t mean to offend. I thought that was the correct term. I think I
asked the question incorrectly too. It’s more will a court recognise his
attestation while charges stand against him. I’d have thought his charges
would hold special status as I though he was accused of treason.

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jjeaff
Innocent until proven guilty.

